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Chinese Overseas Policing Violates All Norms of Sovereignty and Refugee Rights

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Chinese local public security agencies claim that there are more than 102 verified Chinese Overseas Police Service Stations in more than 53 countries, according to data from the human rights NGO Safeguard Defenders. Two recently discovered local Chinese authorities in Nantong and Wenzhou cities, set up the great bulk of the newly reported stations beginning in 2016. Four distinct local police jurisdictions have now been identified as having established such foreign police service centres. The Chinese authorities’ claims that the activities began in reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic are directly refuted by this.

As per recent revelations, there were at least 80 instances where the Nantong overseas police system participated in the arrest and/or “persuasion to return” operation. This includes at least one illegal “persuasion to return” operation that was carried out through the Wenzhou station in Paris, France. In addition, there are operations in Serbia and Spain that have previously been made public. The Chinese authorities’ claims that the stations only offer administrative services are also disputable. 

According to one police jurisdiction, they employed 135 personnel to run their first 21 stations. In this context, the word “employed” is better understood as “contracted, hired, or appointed.” Similar terminology is used by another jurisdiction (Wenzhou) to announce the appointment or hiring of 19 people before the opening of their first stations. Such reports are further supported by a certificate for a Stockholm “overseas liaison officer” for its station in Sweden. 

Chinese assertions revealed that some of the stations in Africa and Asia were built with the official consent of the host nations. The later installation of European “pilot” stations in Milan (Italy) in 2016 (by Wenzhou police) and 2018 (by Qingtian police) appears to have been directly influenced by a bilateral agreement on collaborative police patrols between the Ministry of Public Security and the Italian government in 2015.

China’s exploitation of multilateral or bilateral cooperation agreements is not a new phenomenon. Safeguard Defenders and other organisations have frequently criticised the ongoing abuse of international policing cooperation mechanisms like the INTERPOL or the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to legitimise the Chinese domestic judicial system, despite its flagrant violations of internationally acknowledged norms and standards, and to spread fear among dissident and other persecuted communities.

Bilateral agreements between various countries’ national law enforcement and Chinese entities are also a source of worry in this regard since they may discourage persons who are the targets of illegal operations from coming forward. Additionally, especially if they are not informed about the rapidly rising usage and methods of transnational repression, they frequently increase local law enforcement’s sense of trust in their Chinese counterparts.

New data on the actions of the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) Central Commission for Disciplinary Inspection’s (CCDI) pursuit of fugitives abroad, known as “Fox Hunt” is provided in the commission’s most recent Work Report, which was issued on October 27, 2022. In total, nearly 11,000 successful Fox Hunt operations in 120 countries have been completed since the start of operations in 2014 until October 2022, according to data that has already been made public. These are the kinds of operations that have recently been the subject of three US Department of Justice (DOJ) indictments and three FBI investigations.

No other nation in the world has filed any known charges against these operations as of yet. The vast majority of those are carried out using illegal “persuasion to return” techniques, according to data and recurrent declarations. For instance, according to a CCDI report from 2021, between January and November of that year, Operation Sky Net (of which Fox Hunt has been a part since 2015) recovered 1,114 “fugitives,” but only 13 requests for assistance from foreign law enforcement and the criminal justice system were made. In a similar vein, statistics for 2018 reveal that only 17 out of 1,335 people were extradited and returned.

China states that from April 2021 to July 2022, 230,000 suspects of fraud and telecom fraud were successfully “persuaded to return” to China in response to the growing problem of fraud and telecom fraud by Chinese nationals residing abroad. In a full-fledged “guilt by association” campaign, official declarations describe the use of depriving suspects’ children’s right to school in China, along with additional actions against relatives and family members.

Chinese people are no longer permitted to remain in the nine nations that China has identified as having severe cases of fraud, telecom fraud, and web crimes unless they have “good reason” to do so. The utilisation of “Overseas Police Service Stations” and large web campaigns, frequently in conjunction with local “Chinese Overseas Home Associations” connected to the CPC’s United Front Work Department (UFWD), have been implicated in these operations across five continents. These activities disregard formal bilateral law enforcement and judicial collaboration, violate the rule of law internationally, and may violate the territorial integrity of other countries taking part in the establishment of a parallel policing system utilising illegal techniques. 

The CPC’s agencies are working to co-opt and influence “representative figures” and groups both inside and outside of China through the UFWD, with a focus on religious, ethnic minority, and diaspora communities. As frequently stated in the investigation by Safeguard Defenders, it prefers to work with foreign “NGOs” or “civil society associations” on all five continents to establish an alternative policing and judicial system, directly implicating those groups in the illegal methods used to pursue “fugitives” in place of cooperating with local authorities while respecting territorial sovereignty.

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