Two men were arrested on Monday on charges that they helped establish a secret police station in New York City on behalf of the Chinese government, and about three dozen officers with China’s national police force were charged with using social media to harass dissidents inside the US, authorities said on Monday.
The cases, taken together, are part of a series of US Department of Justice prosecutions in recent years aimed at disrupting Chinese government efforts to locate in the US pro-democracy activists and others who are openly critical of Beijing’s policies and to suppress their speech.
One of three cases announced on Monday concerns a local branch of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security that had operated inside an office building in Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood before closing last fall amid an FBI investigation.
Photo: Reuters
The two men who were arrested were acting under the direction and control of a Chinese government official, and deleted communication with that official from their phones after learning of the FBI’s probe, the department said.
“This is a blatant violation of our national sovereignty,” Michael Driscoll, head of New York’s FBI field office, told a news conference.
The men, identified as “Harry” Lu Jianwang (盧建旺), 61, of the Bronx, and Chen Jinping (陳金平), 59, of Manhattan, both US citizens, were arrested at their homes on Monday morning.
Photo: Reuters
US Attorney Deirdre Vondornum, representing Lu, declined to comment. An e-mail message seeking comment was left with a lawyer for Chen.
Justice department officials in recent years have prioritized prosecutions of what is known as “transnational repression,” in which foreign governments work to identify, intimidate and silence dissidents in the US.
In a separate scheme announced on Monday, the department charged 34 officers in the Chinese Ministry of Public Security with creating and using fake social media accounts to harass dissidents abroad.
Prosecutors say the defendants also used social media to spread Chinese government propaganda and to try to recruit US citizens to act as Chinese agents. All of the defendants remain at large and are believed to be living in China.
In addition, prosecutors on Monday announced that eight Chinese government officials who are believed to be currently living in China were charged with directing an employee of a US telecommunications company to remove Chinese dissidents from the company’s platform.
Jin Xinjiang, a former China-based Zoom executive, was among 10 people charged in the scheme. He was first charged in December 2020, when authorities alleged that he tried to disrupt a series of Zoom meetings in May and June of that year that were meant to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.
At the time, Jin served as Zoom’s primary liaison with Chinese government law enforcement and intelligence services, regularly responding to requests by the Chinese government to terminate meetings and block users on Zoom’s video communications platform, authorities said.
In Beijing, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Wang Wenbin (汪文斌) said that China “firmly opposes the US smearing China and hyping up the so-called cross-border suppression plan.”
China does not operate stations for political purposes overseas, he added.
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