FBI Director Christopher Wray confirmed the bureau is investigating the Chinese government’s efforts to set up police stations in the United States, saying he was “very concerned” about Beijing’s “outrageous” transnational repression schemes.
Investigations in the U.S. and in Europe, Canada, and elsewhere were spurred by Safeguard Defenders, a nonprofit organization, releasing a September report on “Chinese Transnational Policing Gone Wild,” with the Spain-based human rights advocacy group saying 54 overseas Chinese police service stations operating in 30 countries across five continents had been uncovered by the group so far, including in New York City.
Wray was grilled about the Chinese efforts by Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) during a Senate hearing Thursday, with the FBI director pointing the finger at Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
“Like you, I’m very concerned about this,” Wray said. “We are aware of the existence of these stations. I have to be careful about discussing our specific investigative work, but to me, it is outrageous to think that the Chinese police would attempt to set up shop, you know, in New York, let’s say, without proper coordination. It violates sovereignty and circumvents standard judicial law enforcement cooperation processes.”
Wray added: “The reason this is so important is because we have seen a clear pattern of the Chinese government, the Chinese Communist Party, exporting their repression right here into the U.S., and we’ve had now a number of indictments that you may have seen of the Chinese engaging in uncoordinated quote-unquote ‘law enforcement’ action right here in the United States, harassing, stalking, surveilling, blackmailing people who they just don’t like or who disagree with the Xi regime. And so it’s a real problem, and it’s something that we’re talking to our foreign partners about as well.”
GLOBAL INVESTIGATIONS LAUNCHED INTO CHINA’S OVERSEAS POLICE STATIONS
Scott asked the FBI director if the Chinese police stations had the right to operate in the U.S., but Wray didn’t answer directly.
“Well, we’re looking into the legal parameters of it, so I want to be a little bit careful not to get out over my skis on that,” Wray said. “But suffice it to say, I can tell you from an FBI director perspective, I’m deeply concerned about this, and I’m not just gonna let it lie.”
Wray said the Justice Department might need to pursue “remedies” and “there may be a State Department dimension to this that we’re looking into.”
The Chinese police station reportedly operates in Lower Manhattan and is run by the America ChangLe Association NY Inc., which had its tax-exempt status pulled by the IRS in May after it failed to submit its taxes for three years in a row. The outlet said documents show the nonprofit group was founded in 2013 and “paid $1.3 million three years later for the suite of offices that houses the Fuzhou Police Overseas Chinese Affairs bureau.”
Wray added of Chinese surveillance efforts: “We’ve had situations where they’ve planted bugs inside of Americans’ cars, for example. And one of the things that we’re seeing more and more is them hiring private investigators here in the U.S. to essentially be their agents to conduct some of this work. So this is something that we’re trying to call out.”
The FBI director said it was important for Chinese Americans and Chinese dissidents in the U.S. to report when they think they may have been targeted by this sort of Chinese conduct.
The U.S. government, in particular the FBI, has repeatedly warned about China’s “Operation Fox Hunt” — a global extrajudicial repatriation effort aimed at forcing Uyghurs and other Chinese dissidents abroad to return to China.
The Justice Department charged Chinese government officials in a transnational harassment scheme in October, when Wray accused China of “violating both our sovereignty and the norms of police conduct to run lawless intimidation campaigns here in our backyard.”
Safeguard Defenders said its report was corroborated when an anonymous official with the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs told El Correo, a newspaper in Spain, in October: “I don’t see what is wrong with pressuring criminals to face justice with all the guarantees contained in Chinese law.”
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“The sites you mentioned are not ‘police stations’ or ‘police service centers.’ They assist overseas Chinese nationals who need help in accessing the online service platform to get their driving licenses renewed and receive physical check-ups for that purpose,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said last month. “The venues are provided by local overseas Chinese communities who would like to be helpful, and the people who work on those sites are all volunteers who come from these communities. They are not police personnel from China.”
Zhao added: “There is no need to make people nervous about this.”
