China's Global Repression a Risk for the US: Commission Advising Congress

China is using a toolkit of methods to silence critics in the U.S. and worldwide that is damaging the sovereignty of countries and citizens' rights and undermining global law enforcement, according to a new report by a U.S. congressional advisory commission exclusively obtained by Newsweek.

The "broad toolkit" of seven methods includes digital surveillance and harassment, deploying state security officers overseas to pursue and repatriate targets, and "coercion-by-proxy" or actions on behalf of Beijing—often carried out by overseas Chinese. They were part of an increasingly aggressive campaign by the government and the Communist Party of China to "stalk, surveil, harass, intimidate, and assault its victims," according to the report released on Wednesday titled, "China's Global Police State: Background and U.S. Policy Implications."

The report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission highlights influence operations which Newsweek has investigated extensively.

It comes amid increasingly adversarial relations between China and the U.S., with Chinese leader Xi Jinping saying that he intends to drive changes in the U.S.-led world order including by establishing new norms of global governance and security via a flagship "Global Security Initiative" which envisions Chinese leadership of global security governance.

It also comes after protesters including Hong Kongers, Tibetans and democracy activists say they were harassed and some reportedly physically attacked by people they say were acting in a coordinated fashion on behalf of the Chinese state, on the fringes of a meeting in San Francisco in November between President Joe Biden and Xi.

The U.S. is scrambling to push back in multiple spheres, for example by deepening alliances including military ones, and issuing new rules to manage economic interaction and science and technology outflows which critics say strengthen China's advances.

"China's global efforts to suppress dissent, forcibly repatriate people, and engage in extraterritorial law enforcement actions violate the sovereignty of countries around the world, threaten the rights of their citizens and residents, and undermine international law enforcement organizations and agreements," said the report, published ahead of a hearing into "transnational repression" by a congressional committee on Wednesday in Washington, D.C.

'Slanders and Smears'

In an emailed statement, spokesman Liu Pengyu of the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., said the report presented a "false narrative" aimed at slandering China, and that the U.S. itself was engaging in secret surveillance of dissidents and other abusive practices around the world.

"China firmly opposes the U.S.'s slanders and smears, its political manipulation and the false narrative of transnational repression,'" Liu told Newsweek.

"We urge the U.S. to reflect on its suppression of dissent through secret surveillance, illegal wiretapping, global manhunts and behind-the-scenes deals, abandon its Cold War mentality and ideological prejudice, end political manipulation and stop the smears and attacks against China," Liu said.

China's activities against overseas critics, whom it sees as supporting efforts to restrain its rise, represented a national security risk to the U.S., the commission said. Created by Congress in 2000, it has a mandate to investigate the national security implications of the economic relationship between the U.S. and China and to recommend legislative and administrative action.

But the United States lacked a comprehensive strategy to identify or counter Beijing's transnational repression, the report said: "U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies likely lack sufficient mechanisms and sources to identify covert Chinese law enforcement activities and other forms of transnational repression occurring on U.S. soil."

While the F.B.I. and the Departments of Justice, State, and Homeland Security were deploying a dozen different measures, the U.S. should create new policy tools and leverage existing ones to address the challenge, it recommended.

Other parts of Beijing's toolkit included hacking, attempted kidnapping, physical and online threats, malign social media campaigns against persons, freezes on financial assets, efforts to coerce victims in the U.S. or other countries who are foreign-born to return to China, or threats against family members living in the victim's country of birth. Human rights specialists say different methods are often in the mix, and the actions reflect what already happens in China.

'Multiple Acts of Intimidation'

"Transnational repression is often multiple acts of intimidation. Sometimes it's concurrent and sometimes one thing follows another," said Maya Wang, acting China director at Human Rights Watch, in an interview.

"In the U.S., transnational repression takes place primarily through overseas Chinese who may be agents of the Chinese government or mobilized by them, or members of criminal gangs. And there is also spying within the communities, spies recruited by one community to spy on another," Wang said.

In China, "domestic security is really a lot about mass mobilization, and this is some version of that outside China," she said.

Wang highlighted what she said was intimidation and violence against pro-democracy protesters during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in San Francisco, when athletic-looking men wearing what appeared to be communication earpieces, some carrying long metal poles, engaged in behaviors such as pulling demonstrators from stories-high locations.

"Are these individuals actually security agents of China, and if they were, how were they allowed to be there or did the U.S. government not know they were there? There needs to be better protection," Wang said.

The commission said that the CCP's repression of overseas Chinese dissidents and foreign critics was not new, "but recent reporting has drawn attention to the evolution and expansion of its efforts." For Beijing, managing potential threats within the Chinese diaspora—which it broadly defines as all ethnic Chinese regardless of citizenship—was necessary to maintain the CCP's domestic rule, it said.

The report highlighted what it said were structures enabling transnational repression, including illegal "overseas police stations" run by Chinese law enforcement authorities via proxies or undeclared agents, and scores of "Chinese Students and Scholars Associations" operating on U.S. campuses that may work closely with Chinese diplomatic missions abroad and other parts of the Chinese state to silence student activists and prevent discussion of politically sensitive topics for the CCP. The report also said China was increasingly leveraging international extradition agreements to carry out transnational repression including of the Uyghur ethnic group in western China, Taiwaners and Hong Kongers.

Notably, the report focused on what it said was China's abuse of the "Red Notice" system of the International Criminal Police Organization, or Interpol, saying Chinese authorities sought false warrants to target political opponents in a violation of Interpol's constitution. Wang of Human Rights Watch said that Interpol had attempted to address the issue of false warrants, but that "abuse of the Interpol Red Notice system is one of the ways the Chinese government extends its long arm."

Last April, its secretary-general, Juergen Stock, met with China's Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong in Beijing, the report noted. State news agency Xinhua announced that "China is willing to work with Interpol to promote the implementation of the Global Security Initiative." Interpol did not respond to a request for comment from Newsweek.