The unofficial overseas Chinese police stations around the world that have grabbed headlines in recent months are used to surveil and suppress dissidents, says a Chinese police chief in a 2019 paper he authored on these so-called overseas police “service stations.”
Details about the operation of the stations are documented in an April 2019 journal paper penned by Yan Huarong, then-police chief of the Public Security Bureau of Qingtian County in China’s eastern Zhejiang Province.
There are at least seven of these covert Chinese police stations in Canada, including three in the Greater Toronto Area run by the Qingtian County police, according to a September 2022 report released by Spain-based NGO Safeguard Defenders. Two locations in Metro Vancouver are also suspected of being Chinese police stations, including one identified by The Epoch Times. The RCMP also announced ongoing investigations into two Chinese community service centres in Quebec suspected of doubling as overseas Chinese police stations.
Safeguard Defenders has identified a total 102 Chinese police stations in 53 countries, including in the United States, Australia, and a number of European countries.
Countries with "known" versus "newly revealed" overseas Chinese police stations, comparing the two reports published by Safeguard Defenders in September 2022 and December 2022. Safeguard Defenders
The NGO warned that some of the stations have been involved in the harassment, intimidation, and forced repatriation of Chinese nationals and dissidents living overseas. Tactics include sending agents abroad to directly coerce targets to return to China and harassing their relatives back home in order to “persuade” the targets to return.
The Chinese Embassy in Ottawa told CBC News in a statement last October that the stations in Toronto are staffed by volunteers who are “not Chinese police officers” and that their main purpose is to provide overseas Chinese with free assistance such as driver’s licence renewal during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But Yan’s paper indicates that the Qingtian police bureau’s overseas stations have been going well beyond such services to include activities that he says are required to “maintain social stability.”
‘Social Stability Maintenance’
One of the items that Yan said his police force focuses on is extending Beijing’s public security program abroad to carry out activities that include suppressing dissidents, rights activists, and persecuted groups.
Used for the purpose of “social stability maintenance,” the program received a projected budget of 208.972 billion yuan (US$30.5 billion) for 2023, according to figures released by the Chinese regime in March. It covers expenditures on all aspects of public security, from personnel and facilities to the instalment and maintenance of equipment such as surveillance cameras, computer networks, and recognition systems.
Yan’s paper provided examples of this overseas work by the Qingtian police bureau. The bureau has successfully dealt with at least 15 protests launched by overseas Chinese during visits by the Chinese leader abroad, he wrote.
He also said the police stations are actively involved in “visiting the family members” of individuals living abroad who are targeted for stability maintenance. After those targets are “persuaded” to return to China, they would receive “education and guidance” so as to establish “a legal deterrence,” the paper said.
Furthermore, the police stations are active in intelligence collection online, with Yan’s paper emphasizing their efforts in “establishing a network of overseas information officers to fully leverage their intelligence capabilities.”
In 2014, the Qingtian police bureau “provided timely guidance and assistance” to an overseas Chinese association in Spain, mobilizing it to launch a campaign to disrupt a performance by Shen Yun Performing Arts in Barcelona.
New York-based Shen Yun is a traditional Chinese performing arts company affiliated with Falun Gong. Chinese embassies and consulates continue to threaten and intimidate local theatres in Spain and other countries to cancel Shen Yun performances.
Falun Gong adherents gather outside the Chinese Consulate in Toronto at a rally on April 25, 2023, to commemorate a peaceful appeal in Beijing 24 years earlier, on April 25, 1999, that saw thousands of Chinese citizens attending. Andrew Chen/The Epoch Times
Falun Gong is a spiritual practice rooted in Buddhist traditions that involves meditative exercises and moral teachings based on the tenets of “truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance.” In July 1999, then-Chinese Communist Chinese (CCP) leader Jiang Zemin launched a violent persecution campaign aimed at eradicating the practice, as he viewed its teachings and popularity as a threat to the regime’s atheist ideology and totalitarian rule.
In the past 24 years, Beijing has continued to target Falun Gong adherents living in China as well as abroad.
Another case in 2013 involved a 3-year-old girl who Yan said died in an accident in Qingtian County and who had relatives overseas. His bureau successfully suppressed “a large number of negative comments online” initiated by the child’s family members in Hungary and some people in China, he wrote.
Overseas ‘Collaboration Safeguards’
The title of Yan’s paper, “Exploration and Practice of Overseas ‘Fengqiao Experience’ in the New Era - Taking Qingtian County as an Example,” suggests the extent to which the overseas police stations have been working with official and civil bodies in other countries to advance Beijing’s interests and exert control over the Chinese diaspora.
“Fengqiao Experience” refers to “mobilizing the masses in order to strengthen the dictatorship over class enemies,” according to the China Media Project. It is a term coined by CCP leader Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s as he urged Party members to learn from the experiences of Fengqiao Township, Zhejiang Province.
Yan’s paper describes the work of mobilizing Chinese organizations in other countries to advance Beijing’s political agenda as one of three overseas “collaboration safeguards.”
He said the Qingtian police bureau has “established regular cooperation mechanisms with over 230 Chinese community organizations and maintains regular contact with over 150 influential Chinese community leaders.” Their collaboration involves the bureau guiding these overseas entities and individuals to “actively participate in various global conferences on anti-separatism and promotion of reunification [with Taiwan].” He said this work has actively contributed to work of the United Front Work Department (UFWD) overseas.
In an issue paper published in 2020, Public Safety Canada cited an analysis by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute on the CCP’s use of the UFWD as a primary foreign interference tool.
Another collaboration safeguard described by Yan is strengthening close cooperation with Chinese embassies worldwide. He said that through “close communication and cooperation with police liaison officers stationed abroad and with local overseas Chinese leaders,” Chinese police successfully blocked a plan to protest the Chinese leader’s high-level visit to Germany in 2017 and his attendance at the G20 summit in Hamburg that year.
The third collaboration safeguard Yan discussed is strengthening close cooperation with former Chinese police officials and their family members living abroad, and establishing various bodies overseas such as police liaison mechanisms, Chinese public security associations, anti-cult associations, and mediation committees in order to “jointly handle major cases involving overseas Chinese nationals and resolve conflicts and disputes.”
Yan’s paper was published in the Public Security Science Journal—also called the Journal of Zhejiang Police College—but has since been removed. The publication is run by the Zhejiang provincial police bureau and co-managed by the Policy Research Office of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee of the CCP’s Zhejiang Provincial Committee.
After the paper was published, Yan was promoted from his county-level post to the position of deputy police chief in Lishui City, Zhejiang Province, in November 2020.
Andrew Chen is a news reporter with the Canadian edition of The Epoch Times.
