While the nation is focused on the Chinese spy balloon hovering over U.S. airspace, a secret CCP police station in New York City has been shut down after a raid by the FBI.
Last fall, FBI counterintelligence raided a Chinese police station in Manhattan that allegedly acted as a branch of the security bureau of the city of Fuzhou.
The covert facility’s existence was brought to the FBI’s attention after a report by NGO Safeguard Defenders who has documented over 100 police stations run by Chinese provinces and cities in several foreign countries. They have also reported that there is evidence of four Chinese police stations in the U.S., two of which are in New York, one in Los Angeles, and another at an unknown location.
These Chinese “support centers” are part of the CCP’s “United Front” system and have been linked to Chinese-government kidnapping campaigns. These facilities and their operations have been described by FBI director Christopher Wray as “outrageous,” saying they violate “sovereignty and circumvents standard judicial and law-enforcement-cooperation processes.”
Now, the Manhattan CCP facility has been close down. In a statement to The Epoch Times, a State Department spokesperson said, “The FBI has confirmed that the ‘overseas police station’ in New York linked to Fuzhou has closed.”
“We continue to be concerned about PRC [People’s Republic of China] transnational repression efforts around the world and are also coordinating with allies and partners on this issue.”
The State Department spokesperson also they are taking the reports of the PRC police stations “very seriously.”
“Establishing so-called overseas police stations without the invitation or approval of the country in which they are operating raises serious issues of respect for the sovereignty of that country,” added the spokesperson.
Despite the probes into these police stations, Chinese authorities have maintained that the facilities are purely used to assist Chinese immigrants in foreign nations with basic tasks such as renewing driver’s licenses and visas.
However, the facilities’ linkages to the CCP’s United Front Work Department has raised concern among many nations. FBI Director Wray gave a statement on the facilities in November 2022, saying, “I’m very concerned about this.”
“I have to be careful about discussing our specific investigative work, but to me, it is outrageous to think that the Chinese police would attempt to set up shop – you know, in New York, let’s say – without proper coordination. It violates sovereignty and circumvents standard judicial and law enforcement cooperation processes.”
“The reason this is so important is because we have seen a clear pattern of the Chinese government, the Chinese Communist Party, exporting their repression right here into the U.S.,” Wray added. “We have seen plenty of situations… where the Chinese government, under the pretext of going after corruption, have essentially used that as a vehicle to surveil. We’ve had situations where they’ve planted bugs inside Americans’ cars.”