An article written by a police officer in Qingtian county of China’s eastern Zhejiang Province covers details of how the county’s police conduct long-arm overseas policing in collaboration with Chinese consulates.
Yan Huarong, the author of the essay, was chief of the Qingtian County Police Bureau in 2019 when the essay was published, according to the official website of Lishui city.
Yan’s article, titled “Exploration and Practice of New Age Fengqiao Experience in Foreign Countries—A Case Study of Qingtian County,” depicts how the county’s police have carried out its long-arm policing in foreign countries by mobilizing overseas Chinese people of Qingtian origin.
The so-called “Fengqiao experience” refers to the practice of Fengqiao township authorities “of mobilizing the masses and strengthening dictatorship over class enemies,” which was applauded by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) back in the Mao era in the 1960s. Fengqiao is a town in Zhejiang Province.
In 2013, the CCP’s current leader Xi Jinping bragged about Fengqiao’s way of dictatorship as the experience of “relying on the masses to solve conflicts locally.”
Yan’s article boasts about learning from Fengqiao’s experience and setting up huge policing networks in foreign countries by mobilizing Qingtian-born overseas Chinese people to carry out policing on foreign soil.
Overt and Covert Overseas Policing by Qingtian Police
Yan’s article was published in April 2019 in the Public Security Science Journal of Zhejiang Police College, but it is now no longer available online. The Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times was able to obtain a copy of the full article.Qingtian county is under the administration of Lishui city, Zhejiang Province. It is well known as the “hometown of overseas Chinese,” with a history of over 300 years of overseas settlement. According to Yan’s paper, there are currently over 300,000 overseas Chinese originating from Qingtian, scattered across 128 countries and regions.
Qingtian county police, according to Yan, focus on the mobilization of Chinese expatriates born in Qingtian or descents of these people for the purposes of “national security and service guarantee for the construction of One Belt and One Road.”
The long-arm policing of Qingtian county can be both overt and covert, with the danger of the majority of its activities not previously being exposed to the public.
Overtly, the Qingtian police bureau has set up 15 overseas police service centers in cities of 11 countries, including Barcelona, Madrid, Rome, and Paris. The police stations make use of offices of overseas Chinese associations and share information primarily online via video conferencing and collaborate closely with Chinese consulates and embassies.
- Qingtian county police have set up 314 overseas Chinese organizations across the world.
- There are 84 overseas Chinese people from Qingtian county engaged in political affairs or are government officials. Nearly 14,000 individuals hold social positions in foreign countries. Qingtian police sourced proxies from among these prominent overseas Chinese and utilized them to incite pro-CCP overseas Chinese people to confront Chinese dissidents and engage in other activities.
- Yan suggested establishing CCP branches in overseas Chinese organizations and contacting CCP members overseas. He also proposed to recruit new CCP members from younger generations who speak the language of their resident country.
- Former police officers and their family members now residing overseas.
- In the summer of 2018 alone, 647 young Chinese from 19 countries participated in summer camp activities, “cultivating nationalism of young overseas Chinese and educating them on the anti-cult campaign,” Yan wrote.
- Grid surveillance mechanism: According to Yan, major overseas Chinese organizations perform the actual surveillance and monitoring, while overseas Chinese organizations’ leaders, CCP members, and overseas police liaison officers are the managing personnel.
Yan wrote that by using all these overseas Chinese organizations and individuals, Qingtian overseas Chinese police service centers have “successfully interfered with 15 protests” when top CCP leaders paid visits overseas. Qingtian police have set up an organization in Spain to specifically suppress Falun Gong practitioners’ activities.
Interfering with overseas religious groups is another focus of Qingtian police. According to Yan, in 2014 “under the timely guidance and help of Qingtian county police bureau,” an overseas Chinese organization in Spain harassed the Shen Yun Performing Arts show in Barcelona.
A Threat to Western National Security: China Analyst
Heng He, a China analyst on NTD’s “Focus Talk” and a contributor for The Epoch Times, told the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times that the national security of the countries where the CCP has set up overseas police service stations is “subject to the severe threat by the CCP’s overseas policing due to their focus on the immediate interests and long-time appeasement policies to the CCP.”“It has been a long time since the CCP infiltrated Western countries and violated the sovereignty of other countries. If not for the exposure by Safeguard Defenders, most of these countries would still be in the dark or just turn a blind eye to the situation,” Heng told The Epoch Times on May 25.
Heng said that Chinese police take care of domestic security and its activities are confined within the country, while the CCP’s state security acts outside China. Now with Chinese police enforcing Chinese law overseas and its practices being published in the form of essays, it signals that the practice has become “a policy from the highest level of the CCP,” with state funding for the setting up of the service centers.
“Western countries have not experienced this before and have been negligent in taking precautions. Now they are beginning to realize that they need to make quick and strong responses in legislation and law enforcement. Otherwise, the consequences are unimaginable,” said Heng.
A November 2022 report by Safeguard Defenders shows that 14 governments, including the United States, Canada, Spain, Germany, and Sweden, are now probing Chinese overseas police service stations.
“The U.S. has now started arresting unregistered agents of the CCP, and this is just the beginning. Many other countries will also follow suit,” Heng noted.
“The CCP extensively exploits pro-CCP overseas Chinese communities in host countries to engage in criminal activities that violate the sovereignty, national security, and basic rights of citizens of other nations. This is unprecedented even in historical terms, including during the Cold War period,” Heng added.
Heng said overseas Chinese people should preserve evidence regarding threats posed by pro-CCP agents and to immediately contact local and federal law enforcement agencies to protect themselves.
