“We will find you all”: How China illegally hunts down dissidents in Germany

China operates illegal police stations worldwide, including in Germany. Officially, Chinese can extend their passports there or apply for a driver’s license. Chinese dissidents are unofficially monitored, persecuted and sent back to China from there. In fact, they should have been closed long ago.

If you eat lunch in a Chinese restaurant, you may have ended up in a Chinese authority without knowing it: in an illegal Chinese police station. There are said to be 102 such overseas police stations in 53 countries worldwide the human rights organization Safeguard Defenders found out in several reports. Distributed across Europe, but also on the American continent, in Asia and Africa. Also in Germany According to the report, there should be such an office in Frankfurt am Main.

The Federal Ministry of the Interior has middle of May given specific numbers. Accordingly, the security authorities assume that there are even two so-called overseas police stations in China on German soil. How many there actually are is difficult to say. “We are just beginning to reconstruct how many of these unofficial police stations there are,” says Mareike OhlbergSenior Fellow in the Indo-Pacific Program at the German Marshall Fund, in the ntv podcast “Learned again”.

In the Chinese media in particular, many more cities have been mentioned in the past. In addition to Frankfurt, Ohlberg also names Düsseldorf, Berlin, Hamburg and Munich as other well-known locations for such police stations. “A few months later there was another report of 16 more that surfaced in the Chinese media. Some of these may be super active, others may really just have the badge but are actually doing nothing.”

The China expert explains that the details of foreign police stations are usually known through reports in the Chinese media. The Chinese boasted about what they had achieved in Germany and other countries. However, the reports are often quickly taken off the Internet again, “because the Chinese side has now realized: Oh, someone is looking at it now. Other countries don’t like it.”

Contacts to the Chinese Embassy

These police stations do not have permanent offices. They settle where the Chinese community is already active. In the case of an existing organization or a restaurant, another sign is simply hung on it, reports Ohlberg. “Sometimes it’s Chinese restaurants, sometimes it’s already existing diaspora organizations, cultural centers that already exist, maybe a travel agency where there are already contacts with the Chinese embassy anyway. They then have an additional task and say we’ll do it that in addition.”

Real police officers do not work in these overseas police stations, but mostly people from Chinese society, some of whom have German citizenship. They are in contact with the Chinese embassy and are trusted by China’s security authorities. According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung the “policemen” are said to be partly connected to the Chinese secret service.

The Federal Ministry of the Interior calls them “community leaders” – these people help Chinese living in Germany with certain services and mediate between the regional authorities in China. For example, when someone wants to get married, wants to renew their driver’s license or at funerals. Several thousand people are said to have used the counseling services. Counseling is in person, but mainly via chats.

Regime critics are monitored and threatened

Incidentally, propaganda and ideological guidelines are spread about it, that’s how it had been China itself described in the past. In addition, the overseas police spies on dissidents and puts them under pressure. “Because we are also familiar with this from other organizational formats, it is not unreasonable to assume that some activities in the community are reported, that a certain degree of mutual monitoring takes place and that information is passed on to state authorities,” says Ohlberg in the ” Learned something again” podcast.

This can go so far that critics of the regime are threatened and put under pressure. “We know of cases where these centers have been used to persuade people to surrender to Chinese authorities, to return to China, voluntarily in quotation marks and not through normal legal channels, but often through these informal channels,” the expert said. The families at home would be used as leverage.

Crimes are also punished abroad

According to Ohlberg, the Chinese central government is not behind the police stations. They are outposts of local governments and cities from typical emigrant regions of China. Such as the coastal provinces of Fujian, Jiangsu and Zhejiang.

With their presence abroad, they wanted to show that China is also committed to national security there. “That no one thinks they can just hide abroad and commit crimes there. Both crimes that would also be considered crimes in our country, as well as things that are purely political in nature,” said Ohlberg in the “Learned again” podcast . The authority makes it clear: “We make sure that we find you all and that we take the order from the central government seriously.”

Actually, foreign police officers on foreign territory need one permit. There are no bilateral agreements between Germany and China about the Chinese police stations. You are illegal with it. However, the German security authorities have known since mid-2018 that they exist, reports the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

China denies existence of police stations

The Foreign Office had asked the Chinese embassy to close overseas police stations in Germany in early November 2022, “such stations that are not in line with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic and Consular Relations. These are two agreements that regulate how state authority is exercised abroad may be,” said spokeswoman Andrea Sasse middle of May stressed.

According to Sasse, the Chinese side replied to the verbal note at the beginning of February that there were no such police stations. Any service stations, as described by the Chinese side, have been closed.

Apparently, the USA is taking stricter action: in Chinatown in New York, such a foreign police station was closed in mid-April. Police arrested two men suspected of monitoring and intimidating government critics there for a local branch of China’s Ministry of Public Security.

In Germany, the security authorities are keeping an eye on what is happening in the Chinese police stations, says the Federal Ministry of the Interior. They still exist though, although the plaques now appear to be Have disappeared. Even if they are closed, it does not mean that they are no longer active. “You can demand the closure and also officially bring it about. But that doesn’t stop the activities,” clarifies China expert Ohlberg.

The police sign at the Chinese restaurant is quickly unscrewed. As long as the alleged police officers are not caught, they can continue to spy on and harass Chinese in Germany.