US discovered six more Chinese spy bases after the FBI busted Chinese ‘police station’ in New York City, reported New York Post (NYP). The FBI helped shut down a clandestine Chinese “police station” in Manhattan after the arrest of two alleged operatives earlier this week.
Lu Jianwang, 61, and Chen Jinping, 59, both New York residents, are facing charges of conspiracy to act as China’s agents and obstruction of justice. Meanwhile, NYP informed that there are several more of these illegal organizations scattered across the US.
“We found at least four listed in the US by PRC (People’s Republic of China) public security authorities, plus flagged an additional four overseas Chinese service centers in the US set up by the UFWD networks responsible for manning the stations,” a spokeswoman for Safeguard Defenders told NYP. In addition to the Chinese police station above a noodle restaurant in Manhattan’s Chinatown, there is another station at an undisclosed address in New York City, as well as an outpost in Los Angeles, according to a new report by Safeguard Defenders.
In addition to Los Angeles and New York, the nonprofit has found so-called “overseas service stations” in San Francisco and Houston as well as in cities in Nebraska and Minnesota. The Madrid-based human rights group initially published a report last year detailing 100 clandestine Chinese police stations around the world.
These law enforcement organizations, operated by the Chinese Communist Party, are tasked with spying on Chinese nationals around the world, reported NYP. However, Beijing denied running these stations, characterizing them as “service centers” for overseas Chinese nationals.
UFWD is an acronym for United Front Work Department, a Chinese government agency that controls overseas ethnic and religious affairs. Often, the police stations — whose operatives allegedly spy on dissidents and others — hide behind nonprofits and community associations, according to Safeguard Defenders’ reports.
These police stations are part of at least 100 functioning across 53 countries, including the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Last month, Canadian police initiated an investigation into two sites near Montreal suspected to be Chinese police outposts.
Beijing is apprehensive about its citizens going rogue in a “third” country, particularly in the US and European cities. As a result, Chinese security agencies have been actively intimidating dissidents abroad to avoid international embarrassment on human rights issues and quash any signs of rebellion.
Interestingly, Chinese government uses ‘Chinatowns’ in different cities across the globe for its covert activities. In Chinatown, the police station was run by the America ChangLe Association NY Inc, which owns the building at 107 East Broadway where the operation was located, NYP revealed in October.
The nonprofit, which listed its charitable mission as a “social gathering place for Fujianese people,” paid USD 1.3 million in 2016 for the suite of offices that houses the Fuzhou Police Overseas Chinese Affairs bureau at the East Broadway location, filings show. As reported last year by Safeguard Defenders, a human rights organization that monitors disappearances in China, Beijing has established 102 covert police stations across 53 countries to monitor and harass Chinese citizens residing abroad.
These stations are primarily located in Europe, with nine in Spain, four in Italy, three in France, two in the Netherlands, and three in the United Kingdom, specifically in London and Glasgow, where their activities have been under police investigation. With China’s increased geopolitical assertiveness under President Xi Jinping, the country has become more aggressive in safeguarding its global image by employing repressive measures against its own citizens in various parts of the world.