Investigating China’s Secret Overseas Stations | 101 East Documentary

Foreign Europe Chinese dissidents live in fear, saying stalking and harassment by Chinese agents are destroying their lives. Some believe this alleged intimidation is linked to a global network of Chinese

secret

police outposts. Everything can make more than 100 I forgot. The revelations have caused a stir. the world forces national authorities to take action the accused work together to establish a police station abroad China denies the accusations 101 East investigates what these

stations

are really used for and who is behind them thanks foreigner I have come to a small town in Germany to meet a man who claims he is being harassed and threatened by Chinese agents here in Europe hi, I'm Ali, nice to meet you, this is Yang Wei dong, he is an activist and artist who fled China in 2017 after what he describes as more than a decade. from harassment by foreign authorities Yang gained notoriety for a controversial

documentary

based on hundreds of interviews in which he asked the Chinese what chassis they needed.

He began the project in 2008 after his father's death the previous year, which he claims was caused by an altercation with a foreign public official. Angry foreigners at the restrictions placed on him and his family Yang staged a naked protest that led him to 114 days in prison foreigner thanks Yang fled with his wife and elderly mother to Germany, where they were granted political asylum. He hoped they would be safe here, but he says from the moment they arrived they were harassed by Chinese agents posing as by refugees inside the Asylum Center. He's fine, for sure. Yang says his family has been targeted by Chinese authorities since the late 1980s because his mother was a ministry medical official. four months after arriving in Germany, the family was moved to a small town in the south where they hoped to find some peace, but it was short-lived.

On another occasion, he says he was followed by a different group. of people who followed him to the bus, what do you think they are trying to accomplish? a foreigner thinks he may have the answer what we found is what we can only define as clandestine centers of police services abroad throughout the world we found more than 100 of them in more than 50 countries. She is the author of a report published by the NGO Safeguard Defenders that claims there is a network of hidden Chinese outposts around the world, known as service centres, working with Chinese police. She believes this network is being used for monitoring. and harass dissidents China attempts to mitigate critics to silence them through various means, directly approaching the target abroad, so this may consist of sending undercover agents abroad, sending people from embassies or consulates or using proxies For example, people linked to these police forces abroad. gas

stations

by the statements of the PRC authorities themselves by the evidence provided buy them or buy their media, it is very clear that the configuration of these stations is not innocent the stations you refer to are part of a program called one one zero

overseas

run by various police districts in China 110 is the police emergency number.

It is advertised as a primarily online service that includes an app's phone numbers and a social media platform for

overseas

Chinese citizens to contact police in their country, but there are also locations around the world linked to the scheme. foreign. On the part of the police we requested interviews with the Chinese authorities, but they directed us to statements made by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The service appears to be used to renew IDs and driver's licenses, but these are functions traditionally performed by police in China and a promotional video claims. The 110 service can also be used to tackle crimes, according to Chinese media, the service has been used to report crimes, arrest criminals and help trafficking victims return to their homes at the center of Safeguard Defenders believes this service can also be used to circumvent extradition laws and illegally coerce people to return to China to face criminal charges, by their own admission, they have said that doing so legally is quite cumbersome, in fact, it takes time, it is under the sovereignty of other countries, but I think mainly what they mean is you know when you want to take back an individual for prosecution that person has rights that person has the right to defend themselves in court against that extradition procedure since President Xi Jinping came to power China has made efforts to address transnational crimes according to state media in recent years hundreds of thousands of people have been persuaded to return or extradited as part of a crackdown on online fraud and scams most of these returnees are from South

east

Asian countries I want to know if dissidents living in Europe are attacked in this way and if this network of overseas service centers is involved Today I will meet a man in the Netherlands who claims to be a objective hello hello nice to meet you I'm Wong Wang Jinyu is a political dissident based in The Hague, who claims to have been harassed by people connected to this service since 2022, they start starting with Funko.

For me, you know, every day they use that, I mean the official number of the overseas Chinese police station in Rotterdam and did you know who the person was? The callers identified themselves from the Chinese overseas production service. He tells me that he has received thousands of calls and messages from different phone numbers and that he has been harassed and threatened in person by people he believes are Chinese agents in Europe almost every day. a phone call I don't understand and they tell me oh, I don't think another country will protect you or the child always a very strong Wong left China in 2019 after the police questioned him for posting support for democracy protesters in Hong Kong on social media in 2021 publicly questioned the official number of Chinese soldiers killed in a border clash with India the previous year said the Chinese government under the Chinese government gave an award to state media after the police announced criminal charges against Wang, says they started calling He asks her to come home and hurt herself and also sends me a message.

I gave you three days to return to China. Many of the rest of your family or your parents have a problem when he did not return to China. He says. His parents were detained in April 2021 while on a flight from Türkiye to New York. He says he was arrested in Dubai, where he claims Chinese embassy staff visited him and tried to get him to sign documents in Arabic. Why did he come to Dubai to arrest him? me because of China and they put me in prison for almost two months the Dubai government told 101 East that Wang was detained on internal charges and the Chinese authorities did not ask about him or ask that he be deported human rights groups intervened and the charges They were removed shortly after he moved to the Netherlands where he sought asylum, but since then he says his life has been dominated by constant harassment and says some of it comes from the official number of a 110 service station abroad. .

This is a lie under how often I called you and this is in the middle of the night yeah 2am 4am I'll just say I said hi obviously you are because I saw your phone number or the different Safeguard records you're a Chinese police abroad oh I'm so scared Wang says what started as calls and messages escalated to bomb threats made in his name and in-person meetings. He has made dozens of police reports about these incidents and has collected mountains of evidence on his cell phone. A man sent me a message and said please come from Germany to Frankfurt I guess he is on the train to Holland he said he would kill me and after a few hours I think someone pressed the yellow ones he showed me his life he said I'm going to kill you , the man fled before police arrived, but sent photos of his passport and claimed he was paid as a government agent.

I say I'm from the Chinese government. You are my enemy. I don't care, please. Do you think this is really coming from the Chinese authorities? he has a lot of money this guy has some contact cream they actually have a lot of money he serves us he says that today I received the new money the Chinese authorities did not respond when asked about the harassment complaints made by Wang I decided to go to Rotterdam to learn more about the gas station Wang says he has been calling him a few minutes after arriving. Hello, a young man opens the door.

I'm from Al Jazeera. He tells me that he lives here, but he strenuously denies it. It's being used as a Chinese gas station, it's all fake, I don't know what they're talking about, we just left here, so that was one of the addresses listed in the Safeguard Defenders report as a Chinese police station in the foreigner, it looks like just an ordinary house, the guy who lives there didn't want to be on camera, but denies any association with the Chinese police. However, he confirmed that the phone number that one says he called repeatedly belongs to his father.

I try to call the number, but there is no The answer if it is a service center abroad does not seem very official, but the Dutch government is taking it seriously, so the immediate reaction of the Dutch government was that the man The Chinese ambassador there closed these police stations and they are there. They have been closed shortly. A ruling Coalition MP says no permission was sought to establish these centres, so no matter how informal their existence is illegal, what I think worries me most is that our government was unaware of the existence. of these police stations, it is simply illegal to employ such activities without the explicit consent of the host countries.

He says the Dutch police are still

investigating

what these police stations were actually doing when it comes to working with our legal authorities and our police. There are very clear procedures that you must follow if you want to deal with, for example, the presence of Chinese criminals on Dutch soil, but passing through these police stations via an informal route avoids the fact that there needs to be formal contact between Dutch people. . and the Chinese, he believes there is definitely cause for concern, most Chinese operations start relatively small and then when they end, they go unnoticed or do not receive a strong response and the Chinese government sees this as an invitation to expand. its activities to improve its position in a certain country China rejects such claims Ians China has had bilateral agreements with law enforcement in Europe in the past conducting joint police patrols in countries such as Italy, but the stations do not appear to be official police posts manned by The law Instead, they appear to be located in existing offices, restaurants and homes of prominent members of the Chinese diaspora, often connected to hometown or friendship associations.

Ingrid de Hocher of the Klingendel China Center says these groups are not directly organized by the Chinese government, but many fall under its control. their influence, the Chinese government and the Communist Party in China are increasingly reaching out to these groups and strengthening relations with these groups because they consider Chinese people living abroad to be part of China, an inseparable part of China, and they are calling for to the leaders of these organizations who come to China to receive political training courses and then ask them to contribute to the homeland in 2020 a Chinese living in Spain was persuaded to return home by one of these associations that collaborate with prosecutors in China Europe is not the only place where In the US, the FBI arrested two men in connection with an offshore services center in New York's Chinatown in April 2023 and said that while the bureau was conducting some basic services, he also helped the Chinese government locate a Chinese pro-democracy activist. descent in California the Chinese National Police appeared to have been using the station to track an American resident on American soil the two defendants whose arrests we announced today destroyed evidence of their communications with the Chinese National Police when they learned of the FBI investigation these The two defendants knew they had something to hide and obstructed justice in an attempt to prevent the FBI from knowing the full extent of what they were doing a couple of months after I met Wang Jin Yu.

He contacts me again to tell me that he has news. Jinyu had to leave The Hague, she said his address was exposed and the harassment became too much, so I'm on my way to meet him at his new house which is in the middle of the countryside. Wong says he was forced to move because he had been receiving unwanted visitors all night every day, from 7 p.m. m. to 7 a.m. m.every half hour, someone will close my door with my name book, the ambulance taxi and baby care, other Uber Eats or yes, I can't sleep and the harassment has taken a different turn instead of handing out threats he says that now they are offering money they contacted me probably a month ago they asked me to do something and they will stop the bullying or harassment and they will give me some money and they asked me first is to stop the interview with the media of the August chapter, on the second day he stops talking about the chinese gas station abroad and the third is to stop the standard tweets, if I accept this they will stop harassing me, give me money and They even say they will promise me that they were freed by their parents.

We just asked him to stop talking about the gas station abroad. I think who he works for. Yes, he said that I am working for the Chinese embassy in Germany and I belong to the Chinese Foreign Ministry. Foreign Affairs, the Chinese Embassy in Germany says they have never had any contact with Wang nor have they attempted to silence or harass anyone. The messages include photos of cash and promises of delivery, but a quick reverse image search shows the photos are fake while I'm with him. The man sends a message to Wang again. He says that he will come to the Netherlands to give him 100,000 euros and has already sent 10,000 via PayPal.

He said we're on our way. We are not in Germany yet. Worried about his safety. Wang returns the money and blocks them. Contacted again, he is convinced that Chinese authorities are behind these approaches, but prosecutors in The Hague say they have no evidence that China is behind the harassment and the investigation has been halted due to a lack of leads; the Chinese government has not responded to the claims made in this film meanwhile Wang feels his life is on hold until the perpetrators can be arrested my parents are doing nothing the police department charged him my father my mother I can't get any information from Chinese authority I can't contact her I tried to get information from my family members but they are very scared.

My dream is the Dutch Authority or the German Authority. The confederate who did this and then they can perform a musical action if they do this. I think I'll be safe. The young Wei Dong had dreamed. to integrate into German society today even going to the supermarket scares you the police service centers abroad are just the tip of the iceberg the whole system is really created to silence people to scare people because the message that is constantly send from the People's Republic of China authorities and very openly we will pursue them to the ends of the Earth, the people you know should be afraid, we will find you, we can find you, you will use any means necessary, they may be miles from home, but for those who They have sought refuge in Europe, the shadow of China. still has great importance