The rise in the establishment of Chinese police stations across the world has raised several concerns, which if go ignored can lead to serious consequences in the balance of sovereignty across different countries.
The Chinese government has been reported to have set up various undeclared police stations across different countries mostly to harass political dissidents and overseas citizens from China, International Forum for Right and Security reported.
The establishment of such a security setup on foreign soil is a clear violation of a country’s sovereign rights and can lead to severe consequences.
The forum citing some reports said that China might be operating as many as 54 “overseas service centres” in 25 cities across 21 countries and 5 continents. It includes countries like the Netherlands, Canada, Ireland and Nigeria and several others.
After the reports, Canada and Netherlands authorities have started investigating the illegal sites and their nature of functioning. England and Scotland have also stated that they will be carrying out an investigation to seek further clarification on such steps.
The forum also cited a report by a Spanish civil rights group claiming that the Chinese forces from the cities of Fuzhou and Qingtian were running police stations across the world. The purpose of these is to persuade overseas Chinese citizens to return. Another aim of these police stations is to threaten those dissidents that differ from CCP’s ideological functioning.
On the other hand, the Chinese explanation of the matter has been quite vague. Although they haven’t outrightly denied the allegations, different Chinese embassies have come up with different answers.
While the Chinese Embassy in Canada stated that the station exists only to provide consular and bureaucratic assistance to Chinese citizens.
However, the forum cited recently declassified documents in New York, suggesting that China has been engaged in such interference campaigns for many years and it is only now that they are being noticed.
Similar concerns were also raised in the House of Commons in the U.K, by Sarah, an MP from Croydon Central regarding the presence of such establishments in the heart of the country.
The establishment of the overseas police station has come as an addition to China’s surveillance and spying methods that the world has largely remained unaware of. China has a history of carrying out surveillance in Africa, and now it has expanded to other countries as well.
The nations that are having such Chinese establishments functioning need to act soon, and demand closure as well as a detailed explanation from their Chinese counterparts for breach of trust and infringement of sovereign rights.
However, China’s notorious nature in carrying out surveillance is not a secret. For instance, in 2018, the African Union building in Addis Ababa Ethiopia was found to have a rigged cluster of servers that was stealing videos from the premises of the AU. The Chinese authorities had established a digital network in the AU building, which also had a backroom channel for transferring sensitive data, the forum reported.
The International Forum for Rights and Security further believes that China’s intrusion in setting up a police force in the name of administrative consultation is too far-fetched to be taken at face value.
So, all the nations that value their sovereign rights need to act against these ‘Chines tactics’, or else these Chinese advances succeed in expanding their influence much beyond its territorial borders and also into sensitive regions.