In order to keep a better watch on Chinese nationals living abroad, Chinese government authorities have opened an “overseas police service station” in New York City, as first reported by the human rights organization Safeguard Defenders.
Officially, the branch in New York City was established by the Public Security Bureau in Fuzhou, the capital city of the Fujian province. Other provincial governments in China have organized police branches in numerous foreign cities.
In a report entitled “110 Overseas: Chinese Transnational Policing Gone Wild,” Safeguard Defenders took a deep dive into the specifics of the initiative, discovering that the plan began with stations being set up by 10 “pilot provinces” in 2018. These stations also are called 110 Overseas, 110 being the Chinese equivalent of 911.
“These operations eschew official bilateral police and judicial cooperation and violate the international rule of law, and may violate the territorial integrity in third countries involved in setting up a parallel policing mechanism using illegal methods,” the Spain-based NGO writes in its report.
For its part, Safeguard Defenders knows firsthand about the power of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Safeguard Defenders’ predecessor, China Action, was forced to close in 2016 after Chinese authorities targeted it in a violent crackdown resulting in the detainment, death, and disappearance of many of the group’s key staff members.
The CCP-affiliated police station set up in Manhattan was one of the “first batch” of 30 overseas police service stations established in 21 countries, with operations beginning on February 15, according to Chinese news reports controlled by the Fujian government. The office in New York City is officially called the Fuzhou Police Overseas Service Station and is physically located on Broadway, sharing space with American ChangLe Association (ACA), a separate NGO, itself affiliated closely with the CCP.
As remarkable as it sounds, given that this police station is located literally within the territory of the United States, how many such stations might be operating within the United States is unknown.
“There is no complete list of such ‘110 Overseas’ police service stations available, the Safeguard Defenders report reveals. “The number is undoubtedly larger and such stations more widespread.”
As for ACA, it began in 1998 and is aimed at influencing the government of the United States to officially recognize Taiwan as part of a unified China.
The ACA in Manhattan is merely a grassroots front for the Chinese communist regime and is in reality a powerful piece of the CCP’s “united front” system. The “united front” is an umbrella term for the thousands of branches set up by the Chinese government to lobby for CCP interests and to exert influence over the foreign policy of countries where the regime has extended its physical reach. Of course, the unspoken but undeniable purpose for the “united front,” the ACA, and the New York City-based police force is to identify and suppress Chinese dissidents living overseas, including those living in the United States of America.
A secondary, but equally important and invasive purpose is the gathering of intelligence and the transfer of technology.
The strength of the ties of the ACA to the CCP is not hidden by the group. In fact, on the ACA website, there is a letter from the Chinese consulate recognizing the work of ACA in facilitating the visit of Xi Jinping to New York City in 2015.
Of course, officially the CCP line is that all of the overseas police stations — including the one in New York City — exist solely for the purpose of helping Chinese nationals living abroad to feel the “care and love” of their homeland, as asserted by ACA Chairman Lu Jianshun in an interview with Chinese outlet, Dongnan News. Of interest in the story is that Lu is named as a member of the staff working at the Manhattan station.
“Care” and “love” are not two words typically associated with the CCP specifically or the ruling regime in general. In August, a report revealed that the Chinese government’s “arbitrary and discriminatory detention” of Uyghurs and other Muslims in its Xinjiang region may constitute crimes against humanity. In other words, same old, same old.
As for the particular policies being surreptitiously carried out by the Chinese police presence in New York City, the Safeguard Defenders report points to a purpose other than the “care and love” of Chinese nationals living abroad.
The hidden agenda of these CCP-affiliated police stations is to “resolutely [crack] down on all kinds of illegal and criminal activities involving overseas Chinese,” the report reveals. There are stories of other stations being “implicated in collaborating with Chinese police in carrying out policing operations on foreign soil,” the group said.
Of course, this sort of personal intimidation by Chinese police on American soil is reprehensible. The Safeguard Defenders exposé additionally claims that the stations exist to persuade Chinese nationals to return home to their families.
“These methods allow the CCP and their security organs to circumvent normal bilateral mechanisms of police and judicial cooperation, thereby severely undermining the international rule of law and territorial integrity of the third countries involved,” the report reveals.
“It leaves legal Chinese residents abroad fully exposed to extra-legal targeting by the Chinese police, with little to none of the protection theoretically ensured under both national and international law.”
This circumvention of international law by the Chinese Communist regime must not be tolerated, particularly within the territory of the United States. Furthermore, the activities of the ACA and the Chinese police stations should be immediately exposed and all officials working with these groups should be expelled by the Biden administration.
To that end, Representatives Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) and Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), along with Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Banks of Indiana, have reportedly sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding to know how the Fuzhou police were able to open a branch of that force in New York City.
Banks said in a statement to Fox News Digital that “the Department of Justice and State Department must explain why the Biden administration has allowed CCP (Chinese Communist Party) police to set up an office on US soil.” He continued, “When Republicans take back the House, we will hold the Biden administration accountable for their continued efforts to aid and abet the Chinese Communist Party,” as reported by Fox News.
As of the time of writing this story, neither the White House nor any of the Biden administration agencies have commented on the physical presence of a Chinese-regime affiliated police station in the United States.
