The Chinese Embassy in Ottawa seen in January 2005. (SimonP/CC BY-SA 3.0)
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Two more unidentified Chinese police stations in Canada have been identified among an updated list containing 48 additional illegal police outposts operated by Beijing around the world, a new report by human rights NGO Safeguard Defenders says.
The report, released on Dec. 5, titled “Patrol and Persuade,” is the third publication in a series of studies conducted by the Spain-based organization. The NGO used open-source statements from the People’s Republic of China to identify the police outposts, which Safeguard Defenders said is part of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) transnational repression and long-arm policing.
This brings the total number of unofficial Chinese police stations discovered to 102, with an overall claimed in-country presence in 53 countries, including two more in Canada, with one found in Vancouver and another, whose exact location is yet to be identified.
A previous report, published in September, found two provincial-level police authorities under the Chinese Ministry of Public Security have been operating 54 overseas Chinese police service stations around the world, including three that are posted in the Greater Toronto Area. The service stations are run by the Fuzhou Public Security Bureau in Fujian Province and the Qingtian Public Security Bureau in Zhejiang Province.
Safeguard Defenders’ new report identified two other local Chinese police jurisdictions that have also been running at least 48 other overseas Chinese police service stations, including 29 stations set up by the Nantong Public Security Bureau, based in Jiangsu province, and 12 created by the Wenzhou Public Security Bureau, which is also in Zhejiang Province. Six additional stations are found operated by the Qingtian police and one station is set up by the Fuzhou police authority.
The Dec. 5 report says the operations of the Wenzhou police authority began with a 2016 “pilot” project in Milan, Italy, and the Nantong police authorities began its overseas campaign in February 2016. The Qingtian police bureau also began its overseas operations in Milan in 2018.
“This directly refutes PRC authorities’ statements that the operations started in response to the Covid 19 pandemic,” Safeguard Defenders said in its report.
Operation Fox Hunt
Safeguard Defenders initiated its investigation after it saw the Chinese authorities touting the success of the overseas police service stations in supporting a Beijing campaign aimed at fighting telecommunications fraud committed by Chinese nationals living abroad.
According to the September report, between April 2021 and July 2022, the Chinese police “persuaded” up to 230,000 claimed fugitives to return to China “voluntarily” to face criminal proceedings, though it has also admitted that not all the targets have committed crimes.
“Persuasion to return” is a key method of the Chinese government’s “involuntary returns” operations, which include its “Operation Fox Hunt” and broader “Sky Net” campaign, Safeguard Defenders said. The method entails either “tracking down of the target’s family in China in order to pressure them through means of intimidation, harassment, detention or imprisonment into persuading their family members to return ‘voluntarily,’” or directly approaching the target “through online means or the deployment of—often undercover—agents and/or proxies abroad to threaten and harass the target into returning ‘voluntarily,’” according to the report.
The Dec. 5 report cited new data from an Oct. 27 working report by the CCP’s Central Commission for Disciplinary Inspection, which said that since the start of the operations in 2014 and October 2022, over 11,000 successful Fox Hunt operations have been concluded in 120 countries.
New information also identified at least one illegal “persuasion to return” operation run through the Wenzhou station in Paris, France; and at least 80 cases where the Nantong overseas police stations have assisted in the capture and/or persuasion to return operation.
“This contradicts PRC authorities’ statements that the stations are merely providing administrative services,” said the report.
The Chinese embassy in Canada has previously acknowledged the existence of the three police service stations in the GTA in response to a CBC News inquiry, but argued that the stations are for providing Chinese citizens living abroad with civil services such as driver’s licence renewal, and that the stations are staffed with volunteers, who are “not Chinese police officers” and are “not involved in any criminal investigation or relevant activity.”
Safeguard Defenders, however, pointed to a contradictory statement from the Qingtian Public Security Bureau, which claimed to have “hired” 135 people to manage its first 21 service stations, according to a statement published on May 2019 by the People’s Public Security Daily, a state-media under the Ministry of Public Security.
The news article also indicated the Qingtian police service stations’ participation in Beijing’s Fox Hunt operation, saying that “Through the construction of overseas service stations, Qingtian police have achieved new breakthroughs in overseas pursuit of fugitives.”
“Since 2018, they have successfully concluded 6 criminal cases involving overseas Chinese. Through the assistance of the ‘Police and Overseas Chinese Liaison Office,’ one person on the red notice was arrested and two have been persuaded to return to China. The [City of Qiantian] ranks number one in “Fox Hunt Operation,” the state media outlet said.
Another jurisdiction, Wenzhou, uses similar language announcing the hiring or appointment of 19 persons early after the launch of their first stations, which was further confirmed by a certificate for a Stockholm “overseas liaison officer” for the station, according to Safeguard Defenders.
Canadian Ambassador Summoned
Weldon Epp, director general for Global Affairs Canada’s Asia Pacific Bureau, told MPs last week that the Government of Canada has summoned the Chinese ambassador over the issue of the illegal police stations, and has formally asked that the Chinese ambassador and its embassy account for “any activities within Canada, that fall outside of the Vienna Conventions, and account for those, and ensure that they cease and desist.”
Under the international Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, administrative services in a foreign country have to be carried out by embassies and consulates. Those international treaties also state that diplomatic agents or consulate officers have “a duty not to interfere in the internal affairs” of the countries they are posted at.
Safeguard Defenders said that at least 14 countries have launched official investigations to look into the reports of the illegal Chinese police service stations.
In its latest report, the organization also raised concerns that some countries in Asia and Africa have agreed to set up official Chines service stations within their territories, citing a 2019 article by Matt Schrader, chief editor for the Jamestown Foundation. The article, which reported the establishment of 13 “Chinese Community and Police Cooperation Centres” in South Africa, highlighted the centres’ direct link with the CCP organ United Front Work Department (UFWD), which is in charge of global influence operations.
“Both the PRC embassy and the centers are open about embassy support for the centers, in the form of money and personnel,” Schrader wrote.
“Both parties emphasize that the centers exist for the legitimate reason of protecting the lives and property of individuals of Chinese descent in South Africa by facilitating a more productive relationship with South African police,” he added.
“But in their English statements, neither party mentions that the center’s top leader also runs an important United Front Work Department body, one with expressly political aims, and in which capacity he has repeatedly expressed strong public support for CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping’s political agenda.”