China — Police in America
At least six secret Chinese police stations have operated in several U.S. cities.
By Laurence F. Sanford
Chinese “police stations” in American cities? Who would ever think this could happen? Well, it did and probably does.
Due to a lack of American leadership in identifying the threat from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), at least six secret Chinese police stations have operated in several U.S. cities. The cities are New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, and other cities in Nebraska and Minnesota.
Safeguard Defenders is a not-for-profit organization headquartered in Madrid, Spain, that monitors the disappearance of dissidents in China. It lists over 100 Chinese police stations throughout the world, including the United States.
The FBI arrested two alleged Chinese police station operatives in New York City’s Chinatown in April 2023. The police station was listed as the Fuzhou Police Overseas Chinese Affairs Bureau. The building was owned by the America ChangeLe Association NY Inc., a nonprofit whose mission was to act as a “social gathering place for Fujianese people.” The IRS removed the group’s tax-exempt status for failure to file taxes for three straight years.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams was the nonprofit’s guest of honor at its 2022 annual gala dinner. The event was not disclosed on the mayor’s official agenda. Other elite members of New York’s political and police infrastructure were also present.
Fujian Province (also known as Fukien or Hokkien) is located in southeastern China, with Guangdong Province (home to Hong Kong) to its south. On the Taiwan Strait, Fujian is the closest province to Taiwan. Emigrants from Fujian represent the largest percentage of the Chinese diaspora in Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia. A total of 50 million ethnic Chinese live outside of China, with five million in the United States.
Police stations serve as bases for spying on dissidents and others opposed to the CCP. Often, these police stations hide behind Chinese nonprofits and community organizations. The stations participate in “intimidation, harassment, detention or imprisonment” of dissenters, and in the return of migrants to China for criminal prosecution. Operation Fox Hunt and Operation Sky Net are CCP programs in which officials hunt down allegedly corrupt government and financial fugitives abroad and pressure them to return home to China. Since 2014, over 10,000 have been forced to return to China.
A major role in intimidating dissidents is through family connections. If the dissident doesn’t return to China, then his family is punished. Zhang Jinrui, a law student at Georgetown University and outspoken pro-democracy activist, told Radio Free Asia that his family in China had been harassed by state security police and ordered to “get him in line” or else. Police stations also participate in demonstrations against the Falun Gong, a religious movement persecuted by the CCP. Jailed Falun Gong believers in China are often executed so their body organ parts can be harvested for sale.
The 100-plus CCP police stations located throughout the world are run by the United Front Work Department (UFWD), a CCP agency that controls overseas ethnic and religious affairs through “gray zone” activity. The gray zone is that area of activity that is between actual shooting and diplomacy. The Chinese embassy said “there is no need to make people nervous” about the stations. They are staffed by volunteers helping Chinese nationals with routine tasks such as renewing their Chinese driver’s license.
Forty officers in China’s national police have been charged by the U.S. Department of Justice in transnational repression schemes targeting U.S. residents of Chinese descent. The alleged acts include the creation of fake social media accounts to threaten CCP critics and conducting surveillance operations out of secret police stations. College campuses are also the scene of CCP repression against students through censorship and acts of violence.
The CCP is brazenly terrorizing and intimidating critics of its brutal policies on American soil. It is poisoning American culture and politics through TikTok and WeChat. It is poisoning Americans through fentanyl. It is stealing American technology and promoting clean energy while being the world’s biggest polluter.
America is committing societal suicide in its quest for carbon-free energy through billions of dollars in subsidies for electric vehicles, solar panels, and wind turbines while tearing down carbon-based fuel industries. We are building up China’s industries and military and tearing down America’s industries and military.
ACTION
- The U.S. government should declare a policy of “we win, they lose” against the CCP. If you can’t define the problem, you can’t solve the problem. The CCP is a Marxist totalitarian dictatorship with the goal of world domination.
- Shut down all covert police stations and other illegal CCP operations, such as Fox Hunt, Sky Net, and biological labs.
- Immediately expel Chinese students who participate in campus censorship and violence. There are approximately 300,000 Chinese students in the U.S., many studying for the purpose of stealing the latest American technology.
- Significantly increase “gray zone” activities in supporting Chinese dissidents in China and elsewhere in the world. Hopefully, this will lead to the demise of the CCP with a whimper, not a bang. The Soviet Union disappeared with a whimper due to strong Western leadership and internal dissidents.
- Attorney General Merrick Garland should immediately reinstate Trump’s Department of Justice’s “China Initiative,” which focused on countering Chinese espionage and prioritizing CCP threats. The Biden administration shut down the program because of “allegations of intolerance and bias.”
- Reciprocity — If Americans cannot do something in China, then Chinese should not be able to do it in America.
Laurence F. Sanford is a senior analyst at the American Security Council Foundation.
