China is establishing its own police stations in other nations in order to keep track of Chinese nationals in different places, reports say.
The communist Chinese government has established more than 50 "overseas police stations" to monitor Chinese citizens in other countries around the world, a report from Safeguard Defenders revealed, according to the Washington Times. There are a total of 54 overseas stations located in 30 countries across five continents.
Per the report, the CCP uses the "110 overseas stations" in its supposed crack down against "illegal and criminal activities" involving Chinese citizens in other countries. These said activities include fraud and telecommunications fraud, the report noted.
The "110" in the name refers to the Chinese police emergency number.
According to the report, these overseas stations were partly established to handle other things such as allowing Chinese citizens to renew drivers licenses, among other administrative tasks, but China's United Front Organizations use them to regulate and control the actions of Chinese citizens abroad.
Between April 2021 and July 2022, for example, about 230,000 Chinese nationals have been supposedly "persuaded" by their authorities to return to the Asian country. These citizens were to face criminal proceedings upon their return.
The CCP, per the Washington Times, "typically" uses a variety of methods to persuade Chinese nationals to return to China. These methods include intimidating or imprisoning their family members. It also includes depriving the suspects' children the right to an education in China.
Persuasion
The report provides some examples of said Chinese nationals who were already abroad but were still targeted by the Chinese government. One of them is a Chinese woman in Cambodia.
The woman was running a restaurant in the Southeast Asian country when the Chinese government contacted her and demanded that she return to China in March. In her defense, the woman said she was simply running a business and was not committing fraud.
Chinese authorities, in response, warned her months later that they'd put her name in a telecom suspect list, and that if she did not return to China they would cut off the water and power supply in her mother's home.
Soon, the mother's home was spray-painted with the words "House of Telecom Fraud."
The report also mentioned that homes belonging to other fraud suspects were defaced with spray-painted messages.
The Safeguard Defenders report, which was released last month, also said China had labeled nine countries as "forbidden," meaning Chinese nationals are banned from entering and staying in these nations unless they have "good reason."
Those who want to know more about the matter can download Safeguard Defenders' full report here.
