The Chinese regime has mounted the “largest transnational crackdown in the world” to ensure that Chinese communities globally toe the Party line, according to a recent report.
The regime also directly exerts pressure on at least nine foreign states, demanding the arrest of individuals in those countries wanted by Chinese authorities.
Around 60 million ethnic Chinese live outside of China, with America seeing the fastest-growing Chinese population, according to the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, an administrative body under China’s cabinet-like State Council that liaises with overseas Chinese.
To the regime, this population is a “priority target” for influence operation, the report said, because they have easier access to uncensored views critical of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and are likely to spread such information to their relatives in mainland China.
Despite a vast majority of them having foreign citizenship and therefore not considered Chinese nationals, Beijing has maintained that all Chinese overseas are members of one “big Chinese family” bound by blood ties, while branding those who step out of line as “traitors.”
On Aug. 23, 2019, the Chinese ambassador to Lithuania and Chinese embassy officials took part in counter-protests to disrupt a pro-Hong Kong rally in support of the city’s democracy movement. After police intervened and arrested two Chinese citizens, several Chinese diplomats approached police with their embassy badges demanding the detainees’ release. Lithuania later protested by summoning the Chinese envoy, saying the Chinese embassy staff “were involved in organizing unlawful actions.”
“What is most important to you? Your values or your father?” she recalled him saying.
'It Can Happen to Anyone'
Intimidation is another tactic deployed by the CCP, the report noted. Targets, for instance, have received abusive phone calls at midnight, while activists and politicians who take a critical stance on China are also blackmailed.The regime has also sought to discredit dissidents by impersonating them, such as by sending insulting emails to foreign officials pretending to be from the dissident, the report said.
Chinese-Canadian politician Richard Lee, the deputy speaker for the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, was detained for eight hours upon his arrival at a Shanghai airport in 2015 over activities “endangering national security.” The police examined both his personal and government phones before expelling him from Chinese territory. Lee revealed his experience in 2019 and believed it was linked to his vocal support for human rights in China, including his annual participation in a candlelight vigil to commemorate those killed during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
The fact that a high-profile official like Lee “could be harassed means that, as he says himself, ‘It can happen to anyone,” the researchers wrote.
Targeting Falun Gong
In the bid to wipe out the spiritual group Falun Gong, which from 1999 became the target of a sweeping persecution campaign, Beijing has recruited more than 1,000 agents in Canada, including Chinese Canadians, businessmen, and students, the report said citing Hao Fengjun, a former police officer from the Gestapo-like 610 Office set up specifically to clamp down on Falun Gong.The regime had set up informant networks targeting the group in Australia and the United States, according to Chen Yonglin, former first secretary for the Chinese consulate in Sydney whose job was to “monitor and persecute" Falun Gong, the report said. Diplomats were also given directives to identify Falun Gong practitioners and put them on a blacklist preventing their return to China, according to Chen, who defected to Australia in 2005 and obtained asylum the same year.
Informant networks of a similar scale described by Hao also exist in the United States and Australia, Chen said.
Suppressing Overseas Media
Some journalists with The Epoch Times network have also fallen victims to the regime’s bullying campaign. In 2010, Tao Wang, a reporter for the Chinese-language NTD, an affiliate of The Epoch Times, revealed that he had received phone calls from Chinese agents issuing death threats.The threats escalated after he refused to comply with their demands.
“They said, 'You actually think there is nothing we can do to you because you are in Canada?'' They also mentioned, 'If you ever go public on this, you are—in Chinese words—seeking death,’” Tao recounted to local media at the time.
Tao, who also had a company in China, learned that Chinese agents also visited his customers telling them Tao was "was participating in illegal activities in Canada that harm China’s national security.” The same day after he received that phone call, his company’s bank accounts in China were frozen.