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According to a recent report, the Chinese administration has launched “the world’s largest cross-border crackdown” to ensure that the Chinese community confronts the party’s line globally.
The vast campaign targets dissidents who have fled China and dissidents who have a different view of the administration. According to about 650 pages, Beijing’s tactics include espionage, intimidation, harassment, physical assault, and pressure on remaining relatives in China. report It is conducted by the Military School Strategy Institute (IRSEM), an independent organization belonging to the French Ministry of Military Affairs, and comprehensively investigates the influential activities of China around the world.
The administration has also put direct pressure on at least nine foreign countries, demanding the arrest of individuals in those countries that Chinese authorities want.
According to the State Council’s Office of State, which is the administrative body of the State Council, such as the Chinese Cabinet, which keeps in touch with overseas Chinese, about 60 million Chinese live outside China, and the Chinese population is the fastest growing in the United States. ..
For the administration, this population is a “priority goal” for influential activities, the report said. Because they have easy access to uncensored views critical of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and could disseminate such information to relatives on the mainland. China.
Although the majority of them are not considered Chinese because they have foreign citizenship, Beijing is a member of a “large Chinese family” where all Chinese abroad are bound by blood. , Branding those who are out of line as “traitors”.
On August 23, 2019, the Chinese ambassador to Lithuania and Chinese embassy officials participated in an opposition movement to confuse pro-Hong Kong rallies in support of the city’s democratic movement. After police intervened and arrested two Chinese citizens, several Chinese diplomats approached the police with embassy badges and demanded the release of detainees. Lithuania later protested by summoning a Chinese envoy, saying Chinese embassy staff were “involved in organizing illegal activities.”
In Sweden, two leading Chinese businessmen sought to silence activist Angela Gui, the daughter of the Chinese-born Swedish bookstore Gui Minhai, who was put in prison for 10 years in Beijing in 2020. February 2019 meeting In Stockholm, the report said the businessman promised to secure his father’s release if she stopped talking to the media. One of the men told her that if she didn’t trust them, she might never see her father again.
“What is most important to you? Your values or your father?” She remembered what he said.
The conference was initiated by Sweden’s Ambassador to China Anna Lindstedt. After public protests in Sweden, the country recalled Linstett from Beijing and put her under investigation.
Gui was far from the only overseas Chinese who experienced threats from CCP agents.
Canadian actress Anastasia Lin elicited Beijing’s anger at being a practitioner of her candidness on Falun Gong and human rights in the persecuted religious group. She noticed that she had been declared “Persona non grata” by Beijing and refused her Chinese visa. After being elected to Miss World Canada in 2015, she received a call from her father, who ran a large company in Hunan Province, southern China, that Chinese security forces had visited. Under pressure from the authorities, Lynn’s father begged her to stop her activity.
“It can happen to anyone”
The report states that intimidation is another tactic deployed by the CCP. For example, targets receive abusive calls late at night, and activists and politicians who take a critical position against China are also blackmailed.
The administration is also trying to undermine the dissident’s credibility by impersonating the dissident, such as by pretending to be a dissident and sending insulting emails to foreign officials, the report said.
Richard Li, a Chinese-Canadian politician who is the Vice-Chair of the British Columbia Parliament, was detained eight hours after arriving at Shanghai Airport in 2015 for a “risk national security” activity. .. Police examined both his personal and government calls before expelling him from Chinese territory. Lee revealed his experience in 2019 and said it was related to his voice support for human rights in China, including an annual participation in Candlelight Vigil to commemorate those killed in the 1989 Tiananmen Square Incident. I believed.
The fact that a prominent official like Lee “can be harassed” means, as he himself says, “it can happen to anyone,” the researchers wrote.
The report said what happened in Canada had evolved “in all liberal democracy with China’s large diaspora.”
Aim for Falun Gong
Beijing has recruited more than 1,000 agents in Canada, including Chinese Canadians, businessmen and students, to wipe out Falun Gong, which has been the target of persecution since 1999, the report quotes Hao Fengjun. Said. Former police officers in 610 offices, such as the Gestapo, were specially set up to crack down on Falun Gong.
According to Chen Yonglin, the former secretary of the Chinese Consulate in Sydney, whose mission was to “monitor and persecute” Falun Gong, the administration has built an information network for groups in Australia and the United States. Diplomats were also instructed to identify Falun Gong practitioners and blacklist them to prevent them from returning to China, according to Chen, who went into exile in Australia in 2005 and went into exile the same year.
Information networks of similar size exist in the United States and Australia, according to Chen.
In 2004, Toronto’s Deputy Consul General of China, Pan Xinchun, was convicted of Liber for using sneaky language to attack Falun Gong practitioners. Of Alberta.
Suppression of overseas media
Some journalists with a network of The Epoch Times have also been victims of the administration’s bullying campaign. In 2010, Tao Wang, a reporter for Chinese NTD, an affiliate of The Epoch Times, revealed that he had received a call from a Chinese agent threatening to kill him.
The threat escalated after he refused to comply with their demands.
“They said,’Are you really thinking that there is nothing we can do because you are in Canada?'” They also said, “If you publish about this, you- In Chinese-I’m looking for death, “Tao told local media at the time.
Tao, who also had a company in China, learned that a Chinese agent also visited a customer and said that Tao was “participating in an illegal act in Canada that undermines China’s national security.” The same day he received the call, his Chinese bank account was frozen.
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Eva Fu is a New York-based writer of The Epoch Times, focusing on Sino-US relations, religious freedom, and human rights.
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