Two Chinese nationals who were allegedly operating a Chinese-government-run police station in New York City and using it to collect information on pro-democracy opponents of the Communist Party have been arrested by federal authorities.
The police station is believed to be one of approximately 100 clandestine police stations established across some 53 countries in the world, including Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, and others, where they are allegedly used to monitor and harass Chinese critics of the Communist Party.
The Madrid-based human rights group Safeguard Defenders, which monitors the CCP’s activities abroad, says that similar clandestine police stations have been set up in California, Texas, Nebraska, and Minnesota.
The Chinese Communist Party, however, denies that they are police stations, instead calling them “service centers” that exist mainly for overseas nationals with services like renewing driver’s licenses.
Lu Jianwang, aged 61, and Chen Jinping, aged 59, both New York City residents, were arrested by FBI agents Monday, April 17th. The two men have been charged with conspiring to act as foreign agents, which could carry a jail sentence of up to five years, and obstruction of justice—a charge which carries a maximum penalty of twenty years in prison.
The two men, on behalf of China’s Ministry of Public Security, worked to establish the first overseas police station in the United States, the U.S. Department of Justice alleged on Monday.
On the day of the arrests, federal agents filed charges against 34 officers working at China’s Ministry of Public Security for using fake social media accounts to not only harass critics and dissidents of the CCP residing in the United States but to spread official Chinese government propaganda as well.
Speaking of the arrests, Breon Peace, the top prosecutor in Brooklyn, said: “This prosecution reveals the Chinese government’s flagrant violation of our nation’s sovereignty by establishing a secret police station in the middle of New York City.”
Mathew Olsen, the assistant attorney general from the U.S. Justice Department’s National Security Division, said the actions of the CCP “go far beyond the bounds of acceptable nation-state conduct. We will resolutely defend the freedoms of all those living in our country from the threat of authoritarian repression.”
The Chinese government, for its part, reacted aggressively towards the charges against its citizens, vehemently denying the existence of any overseas police stations, and accusing the United States of leveling “groundless accusations.”
“The relevant claims have no factual basis, and there is no such thing as an overseas police station,” Wang Wenbin, the spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said on Tuesday in response to the arrests in New York.
“China firmly opposes the smear and political manipulation by the U.S., who maliciously fabricated the narrative of so-called cross-border suppression and blatantly prosecuted Chinese law enforcement officials,” Wang added.
