The National Security Bureau (NSB) has warned the public to remain alert to the threat of covert surveillance by illegal Chinese police stations overseas.
China has been operating more than 100 “overseas police service stations” since 2016 to track dissidents and alleged criminals, a report that the bureau submitted to the Legislative Yuan said.
The police stations, which often operate out of convenience stores, diners and private homes, are used to surveil overseas Chinese and persuade those accused of committing a crime in China to return, the bureau said.
Photo: Reuters
A majority of the service stations are supervised by Chinese public security authorities based in Wenzhou, Lishui and Qingtian cities in Zhejiang Province, Nantong City in Jiangsu Province, as well as Fujian Province, it said.
The bureau said it would continue working with other countries to monitor any Chinese movement that threatens Taiwanese, adding that the personnel manning China’s secret police stations have kept a lower profile after the US began criminal proceedings against one such operation earlier this year.
Two New Yorkers on April 17 were charged with opening and operating an illegal overseas police station in lower Manhattan for a provincial branch of China’s Ministry of Public Security, the US Department of Justice said.
US authorities alleged that Beijing used the overseas police station to harass US residents, including through the use of “repeated unsolicited telephone calls ... and threats of violence against family members” of those who refused to return to China.
“The People’s Republic of China’s [PRC] actions go far beyond the bounds of acceptable nation-state conduct. We will resolutely defend the freedoms of all those living in our country from the threat of authoritarian repression,” the department said.
Last year, civic groups in Taiwan, including Safeguard Defenders, urged the government to step up efforts to counter China’s campaign of transnational repression.
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