Alexandra Sharp
First there was the Chinese spy balloon. Now it’s a secret Chinese police station with “sinister” intentions. On Monday, the FBI unveiled three cases targeting alleged Chinese spy and intimidation efforts in the United States. The first involves the arrest of two men accused of operating an “illegal overseas police station” in Manhattan’s Chinatown on behalf of the Chinese government. Lu Jianwang and Chen Jinping, both U.S. citizens, were charged with using the facility to track and intimidate Chinese dissidents and pro-democracy activists in the United States. (The station itself, part of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, closed last fall after individuals working there learned of the FBI’s investigation of the premises.)
The second case accuses 34 Chinese national police officers of working to silence dissidents in the United States. All 34 individuals are believed to be currently living in China, and none of them have been apprehended yet. According to the U.S. Justice Department, the accused are part of the 912 Special Project Working Group, which aims to positively influence public perception of China by having members pose as Americans on social media and post pro-Chinese Communist Party information. A few of the individuals were also accused of issuing death threats against Chinese dissidents and pro-democracy activists in the United States.
Finally, the third case builds on a December 2020 criminal complaint alleging that a China-based Zoom employee worked with the Ministry of Public Security to spy on Zoom meetings on topics China considers sensitive, including meetings commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
Beijing has rejected the Justice Department’s claims, calling the FBI’s investigation “political manipulation” and a “slander and smear campaign.” These arrests and unsealed cases are just the latest in a series of federal prosecutions focused on stopping Chinese intimidation tactics in recent years. “This is a blatant violation of our national sovereignty,” said Michael Driscoll, who leads the FBI’s New York field office.
However, China has been waging a spy war for decades, one Washington failed to recognize before it was too late, historian Calder Walton argues in Foreign Policy. And arrests like these may not be enough to stem the tide. “Relax,” Walton writes, “it’s much worse than you think.”
foreignpolicy.com
