Report: China Has Dozens of Police ‘Service’ Stations Around the World – Including New York

The NGO Safeguard Defenders revealed in an extensive report published this month that Chinese police officers had established dozens of overseas “service stations” around the world, including in New York and Toronto. Canadian newspapers this week investigated the supposed stations, finding little in the way of formal offices.

The Safeguard Defenders report — titled “110 Overseas,” after the name given to the “service stations” by Chinese officers — compiled evidence that the Chinese Communist Party is using the stations to threaten, silence, and “voluntarily” repatriate individuals it deems to be threats to the Party. The stations are not a secret, but Chinese government officials claim they exist for benign reasons such as helping Chinese nationals in foreign countries renew driver’s licenses or help them report transnational crimes where the government has reason to believe the criminal remains at large in China.

A large volume of materials — interviews with victims, leaked government documents, documentary evidence from defectors, among other kinds of evidence — overwhelmingly indicates that China is committing crimes against humanity against millions of its citizens. Paramount among the victims are the Turkic people of East Turkistan, where dictator Xi Jinping is actively committing genocide. The Chinese state claims that these people, the majority of them Uyghurs indigenous to the Central Asia region, are a terrorist threat based on their ethnic identity and their Islamic beliefs. Beijing routinely pressures nations where Uyghurs have escaped to avoid the genocide to extradite them, often with disastrous results for the targets.

Other individuals at risk include ethnic Tibetans, Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, Christians, and anyone who has publicly denounced Chinese state human rights abuses.

The full Safeguard Defenders report notes that Chinese police use the excuse of fighting telecommunications fraud most often in attempting to repatriate dissident individuals and has identified nine “forbidden” countries where Chinese police claim a large number of these crimes are committed: Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia, Philippines, and Indonesia. Notably, a significant percentage of these countries are majority Muslim. In Turkey’s case, the Uyghur community has a direct ethnic bond with the local population and availed itself of this to escape the genocide.

Also notably, the vast majority of the known “service stations” outside of China are not in these countries, but in supposedly free states in Europe and the Americas.

Among the cities boasting a “service station” are Dublin, Ireland; Prague, Czech Republic; Budapest, Hungary; Paris, France; Madrid, Spain; London, England; New York, America; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Toronto, Canada; Tokyo, Japan; and two cities in Nigeria and Tanzania.

New York is home to a large Han Chinese population, many originating from Hong Kong, and a significant Tibetan refugee population. New York’s Tibetans have objected for years to Chinese government operations in the community ranging from staging propaganda displays to fabricating Tibetan community groups to promote Beijing’s interests to infiltrating the community for espionage purposes. In 2020, authorities arrested an NYPD officer on charges of spying on the Tibetan community on behalf of the Communist Party.

The dozens of “service stations” exposed by Safeguard Defenders are only those known to be operated by the Public Security Bureaus of Fuzhou, Fujian province, and Qingtian, Zhejiang province, leaving the possibility open that thousands of similar operations are active globally. The New York “service station” is under the administration of the Fuzhou Public Security Bureau.

Safeguard Defenders noted that evidence exists that these stations are an expansion of a campaign to target potential dissidents. Among the intimidation tactics used against them is the threatening of family still in China with loss of health services or banning related children from school, as well as loss of public transit privileges or other services. The NGO notes that the Qingtian centers reportedly admit to aiding in the “collection of overseas Chinese sentiments, public opinions and policy information push.”

“China claims 230,000 suspects of fraud and telecom fraud were successfully ‘persuaded to return’ to China from April 2021 to July 2022,” the report noted.

In Canada, the Globe and Mail newspaper attempted to track down the three Toronto “service centers” this week, with few tangible results.

The Globe and Mail visited three addresses in the Greater Toronto Area on a list of overseas Chinese police service stations published by state media — two in Markham and one in Scarborough.

All were in areas with large Chinese populations, but no one The Globe spoke to was aware of a police service station or had heard of the Fuzhou Public Security Bureau. One address in Markham was a private home, while the other was a mall full of small Chinese businesses and restaurants. The third property, in a business park near a highway, is owned by the Canada Toronto FuQing Business Association, a federally incorporated non-profit.

FBI Director Christopher Wray warned in 2020 that Operation “Fox Hunt,” the Chinese police project to repatriate and disappear dissidents, had created a global repressive apparatus active in much of the free world.

“We’re talking about political rivals, dissidents, and critics seeking to expose China’s extensive human rights violations,” Wray said during an event at the Hudson Institute at the time. “Hundreds of the Fox Hunt victims that they target live right here in the United States, and many are American citizens or green card holders. The Chinese government wants to force them to return to China, and China’s tactics to accomplish that are shocking.”

Wray shared an anecdote of a Chinese national in America who received a visit from a Communist Party messenger, who said “the target had two options: return to China promptly, or commit suicide.”

Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.