![]() The European offensive is underway, and embattled It’s unclear how extensive the network is and whether the Safeguard Defenders’ report - and follow-up by individual governments confirming the existence of such outposts - has prompted Beijing to scale back the program to avoid detection. Investigations into other outposts are ongoing in countries including the United Kingdom, Japan and the Netherlands, but there have been no arrests of individuals connected with those operations. Safeguard Defenders has reported that one of the purposes of these stations has been to “persuade” Chinese citizens who are implicated in crimes to return to China.Īuthorities in at least five countries have confirmed that at least some of these are indeed Chinese government operations that violate laws barring the activities of foreign police personnel inside their borders. They’re a “perfect platform to advance operations that are favorable to Chinese government interests, including misinformation and disinformation,” said Heather McMahon, a former senior director at the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, which monitors the intelligence community’s compliance with the Constitution and relevant laws. They provide toeholds in neighborhoods with large ethnic Chinese and Asian communities - the Manhattan facility was in Chinatown - that allow those operatives to function with relative anonymity. The stations appear to provide civilian cover for Chinese government operations deemed too risky for official Chinese diplomats to pull off. The Spain-based nonprofit advocacy organization Safeguard Defenders published data from China’s Ministry of Public Security in September that revealed that Beijing had announced its “first batch” of “30 overseas police service stations in 25 cities in 21 countries.” By December, Safeguard Defender’s tally of such facilities had grown to more than 100 in countries including the U.S., Canada, Nigeria, Japan, Argentina and Spain. ![]() Here’s what we know about the network of Chinese police stations across the world: It’s a sprawling network
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