China disputed U.S. charges linking its government to Monday's high-profile arrest of two Chinese-Americans accused of running a now-shuttered "secret police station" in New York City at Beijing's behest.
"China firmly opposes the U.S.'s slander and smears, its political manipulation, the false narrative of 'transnational repression,' and blatant prosecution of Chinese law enforcement and cyber administration officials," its foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told a regular media briefing on Tuesday.
The presence of more than 100 Chinese police stations around the world was first reported last year by the Spain-based rights group Safeguard Defenders. It used publicly available documents, including press releases, to chronicle a network of clandestine overseas outposts operated by public security bureaus in a number of China's coastal cities.
The police center in Lower Manhattan ostensibly offered services such as driver's license renewals, but it failed to disclose its work to U.S. authorities, according to prosecutors. Instead, they said, China's Ministry of Public Security (MPS) used the office as a proxy to surveil critics and harass dissidents—the subject of a Newsweek investigation late last year.
"The U.S. drew malignant association between overseas Chinese service centers and Chinese diplomatic and consular officials and made groundless accusations against China," Wang said. "There are simply no so-called 'overseas police stations.'"
A trio of cases unsealed by U.S. officials this week included the arrests of Lu Jianwang, 61, and Chen Jinping, 59, two U.S. citizens who authorities said opened and ran the Chinese police post in early 2022 under the guise of a nonprofit.
Before it closed during the investigation last fall, the operation—the first known overseas police station in America—occupied an entire floor in a nondescript building in Chinatown, said Breon Peace, the top federal prosecutor in Brooklyn.
"As alleged, the defendants were directed to do the [People's Republic of China's] bidding, including helping locate a Chinese dissident living in the United States, and obstructed our investigation by deleting their communications with a Chinese Ministry of Public Security official," said Peace of the U.S. Attorney's Office of the Eastern District of New York.
"Such a police station has no place here in New York City—or any American community," said he at a press briefing, where he declined to comment on whether investigators were probing other such outposts in the country.
U.S. officials said diplomats from the Chinese Consulate in New York had visited the site during its operation. The consulate didn't return an emailed request for comment before publication.
If convicted, Lu and Chen face up to five years in prison for acting as Chinese agents and up to 20 years for obstruction of justice. Theirs is the first known case anywhere in the world linked to an undeclared police center, although over a dozen countries, including Canada, have announced closures or reviews of similar outposts in recent months.
"The MPS established a concrete outpost, an off-the-books police station right here in New York City, to monitor and intimidate dissidents and other critics of the PRC within one of the United States' most vibrant diaspora communities," said David Newman, the Justice Department's principal deputy assistant attorney general for national security.
The second case unsealed on Monday included charges against 34 Chinese officers, who remain at large in China. They staffed a national police task force that Peace described as "a troll farm to attack Chinese dissidents in our country for exercising free speech in a manner that the PRC government disfavors, and spread disinformation and propaganda to sow divisions within the United States."
"The group carries out this mission by using a host of accounts created under false names on multiple social media platforms to promote narratives that portray the PRC government and the Chinese Communist Party in a favorable light, while criticizing and attacking their perceived adversaries, including the United States, and Chinese pro-democracy activists located throughout the world, including in the United States," the U.S. Attorney's Office said.
The third case added eight Chinese government officials to a 2020 complaint now charging 10 defendants—all at large in China—for harassing dissidents and activists on a U.S. telecommunications company. Among those charged is Jin Xinjiang, 42, a former China-based executive of Zoom.
"Today's action sends a strong message that we will not allow Chinese Communist Party officials to violate U.S. law or harass, intimidate, or conduct surveillance on anyone in the United States," said a joint statement issued by the offices of Reps. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin and Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, the leading Republican and Democrat on the House select committee on China.
"These arrests also serve as a reminder that the victims of this persecution are often Chinese-Americans who came to this country to achieve the American Dream. As chair and ranking member of the House Select Committee on the CCP, we will continue our vigilance in support of human rights and the rule of law in our own country and around the world," they said.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
John Feng is Newsweek's contributing editor for Asia based in Taichung, Taiwan. His focus is on East Asian politics. He ... Read more
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