Two New Yorkers have been charged with running a secret “police station” for China

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Two Americans were arrested in New York on Monday for allegedly running an illegal “police station” in Manhattan on Beijing’s orders, as part of a broad crackdown on what US prosecutors have called the Chinese government’s “transnational repression” schemes.

“Harry” Lu Jian Wang, 61, and Chen Jinping, 59, who allegedly opened and ran the office in Lower Manhattan’s Chinatown until late last year, are accused of conspiring to act as agents of the Chinese government and erase evidence.

Prosecutors alleged that Lu was involved in arranging counter-protests during President Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington in 2015, as well as efforts to return the fugitive to China. Prosecutors said he also agreed to help locate a pro-democracy activist of Chinese descent living in California.

The defendants were instructed to do so [People’s Republic of China’s] “Bidding bids, including assistance in locating a Chinese dissident living in the United States,” Brion Pace, US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.

“just imagine [New York City Police Department] Unannounced secret police station opening in Beijing.” “It would be out of the question.”

FBI Assistant Director Michael Driscoll said, “Upon learning of the FBI investigation . . . the defendants erased their communications to conceal their activities.”

Prosecutors alleged that the “police station” was set up on the orders of Chinese National Police officials, adding that members of the Chinese consulate in New York visited the building after it opened.

“Today’s action sends a strong message that we will not allow CCP officials to violate US law or harass, intimidate, or surveil anyone in the United States,” said Mike Gallagher and Raja Krishnamurthy, R-Chair, Raja Krishnamurthy, R-Chair and Raja Krishnamurthy, R-Chair. Respectively, in the US House Committee on China.

The Chinese embassy in Washington said the Chinese police “do not engage in” cross-border repression and coercion”.

Embassy spokesman Liu Bingyu said the center was set up by overseas Chinese to help other Chinese citizens and has no connection with the government. “By initiating the prosecution of Chinese nationals under the pretext of ‘cross-border repression’, the US side is exercising long-term judicial power based on trumped-up charges,” Liu said.

Separately, prosecutors on Monday charged 10 individuals, including eight Chinese government officials, with allegedly directing a former CEO of a US telecom company, believed to be Zoom, to silence dissidents.

US prosecutors had previously charged Julian Jin, an executive at Zoom based in China, in 2020 with disrupting video meetings in which she was discussing the Tiananmen Square massacre. Zoom did not respond to a request for comment.

The US Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn also unsealed charges against 34 Chinese law enforcement officials for allegedly harassing Chinese dissidents in New York and elsewhere in the US through fake personas created by a troll farm.

Prosecutors said the defendants created social media accounts on Twitter and other platforms that praised the Chinese Communist Party and mocked its critics. Prosecutors said they posted divisive topics including the killing of George Floyd and the Covid-19 pandemic.

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The FBI has previously raised concerns about the existence of “police stations” in the US linked to Beijing. The practice “violates sovereignty and circumvents the standard judicial cooperation in law enforcement process,” FBI Director Christopher Wray told a congressional hearing in November.

We have seen a clear pattern of the Chinese government. . . Export [its] Repression is here in the United States,” he said, adding that authorities have issued several indictments related to China’s “uncoordinated law enforcement” in the United States, which included “harassment, stalking, surveillance, and extortion of people they don’t like or disagree with Xi’s regime.”

The US Justice Department last year charged five individuals with spying, harassing and stalking dissident members of the Chinese diaspora on behalf of Beijing’s secret police, including in what Washington described as its first case of election interference involving China.

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