Chief of China’s police agency with remote offices in Canada says stations are used for surveillance and suppression of dissidents
The unofficial overseas Chinese police stations around the world that have made headlines in recent months are being used to monitor and suppress dissidents, a Chinese police chief says in a 2019 paper he wrote about these so-called overseas police “gas stations.” .
Details on the operation of the stations are documented in a magazine article from April 2019 written by Yan Huarong, then police chief from the Public Security Bureau of Qingtian District in China’s eastern Zhejiang Province.
There are at least seven of these secret Chinese police stations in Canada, including three in the Greater Toronto Area that are operated by the Qingtian County Police Department, according to a September 2022 report released by Spain-based NGO Safeguard Defenders. Two locations in Metro Vancouver are also suspected of Chinese police stations, including one identified by The Epoch Times. The RCMP also announced ongoing investigations into two Chinese community service centers in Quebec suspected of doubling as overseas Chinese police stations.
Safeguard Defenders has identified a total of 102 Chinese police stations in 53 countries, including the United States, Australia and a number of European countries.
The NGO warned that some stations have been involved in harassing, intimidating and forcibly repatriating Chinese nationals and dissidents living abroad. Tactics include sending agents abroad to directly force targets to return to China and harassing their home country relatives to “persuade” the targets to return.
The Chinese Embassy in Ottawa told CBC News in a statement last October that Toronto stations 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 license renewals during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But Yan’s paper indicates that Qingtian Police Station’s overseas stations have gone far beyond such services and include activities he says are necessary to “maintain social stability.”
‘Preservation of social stability’
One of the points Yan said his police force is focusing on is expanding Beijing’s public security program abroad to carry out activities that include suppressing dissidents, rights activists and persecuted groups.
Used for the purpose of “maintaining social stability,” the program received an estimated budget of 208.972 billion yuan (US$30.5 billion) for 2023, according to figures released by the Chinese regime in March. It covers expenses for all aspects of public safety, from personnel and facilities to the installation and maintenance of equipment such as surveillance cameras, computer networks and recognition systems.
Yan’s paper gave examples of this overseas work by Qingtian Police Station. TThe agency has successfully dealt with at least 15 protests launched by overseas Chinese during visits by the Chinese leader abroad, he wrote.
He also said that the police stations are actively involved in “visiting relatives” of individuals living abroad who are targeted by stability enforcement. After those targets are “persuaded” to return to China, they would receive “education and counseling” to create “a legal deterrent,” the paper said.
In addition, the police agencies are active in online intelligence gathering, with Yan’s paper highlighting their efforts to “establish a network of overseas intelligence officers to fully utilize their intelligence capabilities.”
In 2014, the Qingtian Police Station provided “timely guidance and assistance” to an overseas Chinese association in Spain, mobilizing it to launch a campaign to disrupt a Shen Yun Performing Arts performance 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 theaters in Spain and other countries to cancel Shen Yun performances.
Falun Gong is a spiritual practice rooted in Buddhist traditions that includes meditative exercises and moral teachings based on the principles of “truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.” In July 1999, the then leader of the Communist Chinese (CCP), Jiang Zemin, launched a violent persecution campaign to eradicate the practice, seeing its teachings and popularity as a threat to the atheist ideology and totalitarian rule of the country. regime.
Over the past 24 years, Beijing has continued to attack Falun Gong practitioners living both in China and abroad.
Another case in 2013 involved a 3-year-old girl whom Yan said had died an accident in Qingtian County and who had relatives abroad. His agency successfully suppressed “a large number of negative comments online” initiated by the child’s relatives in Hungary and some people in China, he wrote.
Overseas ‘Cooperation Guarantees’
The title of Yan’s paper, “Exploration and Practice of Overseas ‘Fengqiao Experience’ in the New Era – Qingtian County as an Example”, suggests the extent to which the overseas police agencies have cooperated with official and civilian agencies in other countries to promote Beijing’s interests representing and exercising control over the Chinese diaspora.
“Fengqiao experience” refers to “mobilizing the masses to strengthen 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 when he urged party members to learn from the experience 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 “cooperation safeguards”.
He said the Qingtian Police Station “has established regular cooperation mechanisms with more than 230 Chinese community organizations and maintains regular contact with more than 150 influential Chinese community leaders.” Their partnership includes the agency guiding these overseas entities and individuals to “actively participate in various global conferences on anti-separatism and the promotion of reunification. [with Taiwan].” He said that this work has actively contributed to the work of the United Front Work Department (UFWD) abroad.
In an issue paper published in 2020, Public Safety Canada cited an Australian Strategic Policy Institute analysis of the CCP’s use of the UFWD as a primary tool for foreign interference.
Another safeguard for cooperation that Yan describes 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 high-level Chinese leader’s visit to Germany in 2017 and his participation in the G20 summit in Hamburg that year.
The third cooperation guarantee that Yan discussed is to strengthen close cooperation with former Chinese police officials and their relatives living abroad, and to set up various agencies abroad, such as police liaison mechanisms, Chinese public security associations, anti-cult associations and mediation committees 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 deleted. The publication is walk by the Zhejiang Provincial Police Bureau and co-managed by the Policy Research Bureau of the Political and Legal Commission of the Zhejiang Provincial Committee of the CCP.
After the newspaper was published, Yan was promoted from his provincial-level position to the position of deputy police chief in Lishui CityZhejiang province, in November 2020.
