Reports of the Chinese government operating overseas centres that police Chinese nationals living abroad provide a glimpse of the lengths to which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is willing to go to ensure its control over the Chinese State and the people. A report published by the human rights group Safeguard Defenders in October 2022 had said that China had set up 54 ‘police stations’ around the world that were used to surveil and control the Chinese diaspora. Apparently, these police stations are used to track down and return ‘suspects’ among Chinese nationals living abroad back to China. In addition to intimidation and harassment of relatives at home, undercover agents based abroad harass Chinese nationals online, even approaching them in person abroad to return to China. Since the Safeguard Defenders report published the details, several governments, mostly in Europe and North America, have investigated the claims made by the report. Their findings point to a far more alarming picture. It appears that the web of surveillance and control is expansive, involving over a hundred police centres across continents.
China has dismissed the report and allegations as “rife with speculation and lies.” It has said that the centres help Chinese tourists and nationals living abroad with services like document renewal. Beijing has also claimed that these have helped check transnational online fraud. However, the ‘overseas service stations’, as China euphemistically describes its police centres, are not quite as benign as Beijing paints them to be. They police and surveil the diaspora to stamp out dissent and shut down criticism of the CCP and the Chinese government. Chinese critics of the government are subjected to intimidation and harassment. Contrary to the Beijing’s claims that ‘criminals fugitives’ and ‘online fraudsters’ are “voluntarily” returning to China to be put on trial for crimes, force, blackmail and violence play a major role. China’s zero tolerance for criticism of the CCP and government policies and its brutal suppression of dissent at home are well-known. It was also known that pro-government elements among the Chinese diaspora bully and threaten Chinese nationals studying and working abroad to desist from criticising Beijing. What has emerged now is a systematic government-run operation of surveillance and intimidation to get people outside China to toe Beijing’s line.
The police centres are not legal entities. Spying and intimidation of people, even if they are Chinese nationals, on foreign soil is not legal under the laws of these countries. Foreign governments must act against those Chinese who are running these operations abroad. India has not been named in the Safeguard Defenders report. But the government must ensure that Chinese activities in India do not violate Indian laws.