China’s police are ensnaring thousands of suspects abroad | Hacker News Reader

China’s police are ensnaring thousands of suspects abroad

economist.com

197 pointssohkamyung101 comments

Irish Times- Why is there a Chinese police outpost on Dublin’s Capel Street?

One could make the case, that the people working there should be a) arrested or b) expelled from the country. Same goes for every other nation in which China maintains those stations, they are all over Europe it seems.

But hey, at least China is doing it themselves instead ofisusing Interpol red notices like other authoritarian regimes do.

> people working there should be a) arrested or b) expelled from the country

If they’ve threatened or kidnapped someone on behalf of the CCP, they should be tried as what they are: covert agents, possibly of an adversary.

Absolutely. That's not gonna happen so, is it? And from a very cynical poijt of view I get it, this is basically an intelligence (as in spy craft during the cold war) war. And our Western intel services propably have a high interest in learbing as much as they can about the methods, tools and operations of their Chinese counterparts. And as long as China only kidnaps and harasses their own people, who cares? Heck, even if it would be "own" people, it would still be a trade-off.

> as long as China only kidnaps and harasses their own people, who cares

They’re also Americans and Britons. Most people do care. In America, I find it highly unlikely we won’t see a push for severe prosecution of this. There is no downside; you can still get counterintel by sealing records and moling them.

I would have trouble imagining, in the 1980s, a KGB station on M Street NW, DC. So what's with Chinese police stations ?

> In an article in 2021 two scholars from Jilin University warned that pressure on police to achieve success in the repatriation of fugitives could easily lead to the use of “inappropriate” methods, including “threatening and terrorising” suspects and putting pressure on their relatives.

If you owe money or are wanted in China, the government may go after your family to pressure you to return. This pressure can be as extreme as keeping your family members' kids from attending school.

If only this was limited to debtors and criminals. China uses these kind of pressures to suppress political dissent even among Chinese citizens living abroad - for example, Chinese students studying at foreign universities.

Here's one account:

> [W]hen I was a lecturer it was relatively common to go through an entire semester without a single criticism of the Chinese regime by Chinese students in front of their classmates. Occasionally, a courageous student would privately explain why. Students who voiced objections were monitored by their classmates and denounced to the home government. They in turn had representatives within the student bodies whose job it was to warn students about their activism and remind them of the consequences of dissent. By making sure the students knew they were being watched, the students would self-censor (as a minimum requirement) or defend China in whatever debate was taking place.

> In this way, the Chinese students provide something priceless to the cultivation of China’s national image—they make the regime appear to be popular at home. Ask a Chinese student (from the mainland) in public whether or not they approve of Chinese government policies, and you’re likely to get either a nervous and uncertain reply, and possibly a question about why a Westerner cares about Chinese affairs, or you’ll be provided with a vigorous defence of China’s reputation. This isn’t accidental. This is a product of deliberate, well considered policies, crafted by a dictatorship to subvert countervailing foreign policy initiatives.

https://archive.is/XucW7

It's not difficult at all to find Chinese people in China who criticize the government in private conversations about politics.

What's often shocking to Westerners, however, is that most people in and from China have a fairly positive view of their country. If you start telling them that China is a dystopian nightmare, yada yada, and they push back, it's because they actually don't agree with you, and may even be offended. If they're silent, it's most likely because they don't want to get into an argument with you. You don't have to invent stories about them fearing being reported to the authorities back home.

These forces are used to spy on, harass, and oppress Chinese dissidents and human rights advocates. You can find many other news sources focused on that:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=chinese+police+new+york&iar=news&i...

Including the NY Times:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=chinese+police+new+york+site%3Anyt...

Why did the Economist omit that entirely (unless I overlooked something)? Also, why repeat Chinese government claims that these are criminals, using the word 'alleged' only in the first paragraph. Xi's crackdowns on fraud, etc. are at least in part crackdowns on political enemies - it's a basic tactic in the dictator's playbook.

I haven't read The Economist in a long time. Do they look the other way on China?

I don’t see how this article can be read as “looking the other way” in any sense.

The alternative of "looking the other way" is "tried to fight it but China won".

One way you can push propaganda as an agent is not to promote something obviously bad, especially if you would never get away with it, but to criticise it less than it deserves.

Not saying it's happening in this case, but suppose you're the Economist and want to win favour with the Chinese. You might consider an article criticising this activity as infringing on the sovereignty of the west and others in the pursuit of justice, rather than in the pursuit of destroying political opposition.

> You might consider an article criticising this activity as infringing on the sovereignty of the west and others in the pursuit of justice

Yes, it reads to me like an implicit justification, an argument that the issues are merely legal, about sovereignty, and not moral and political, an attack on innocent people and on freedom.

Come to think about it. Russia took a page from the NATO supported war or terrorism euth invasion of Ukraine (badly executed as it was). And so did China, Guantanamo Bay is still not closed, prpably all the other black sites neither. And back then e.g. Germany did nothing when people were illegally flown their from German territory. In fact, the foreign minister of Germany at the time (who did exactly nothing about those kidnappings) is now German President and was re-elected for a second term last February.

I don't know about China, but Russia took a page from their own playbook since war with Ukraine is not much different with what happened with Georgia (South Ossetia, Abkhazia), Moldova (Transnistria), Chechnya, many years before the start of the "War on Terror".

The wording “suspect” comes to mind. Are they? If they are in fact dissidents.

> One way you can push propaganda as an agent is not to promote something obviously bad, especially if you would never get away with it, but to criticise it less than it deserves.

Technically yes, but this argument is on its own very dangerous - it's one small step from turning into "by not denouncing this thing strongly and visibly enough, you're actually supporting the enemy, and therefore on their side". This has been a common argument used by all kinds of groups throughout history to stir up conflicts, justify violence and abuse.

Or maybe a newspaper that was known to peddle Iraq War propaganda shouldn't be treated as the source of truth when it comes to known about America's enemies. I'm not saying that it's wrong in this instance, but it's definitely sensational.

The Economist trusts that its readers can come to their own conclusion when it comes to extrajudicial extraditions. Just because they said something positive about China's motivations, doesn't mean they're kowtowing to China.

NYT fired editors and journalists over that

> New York Times: we were wrong on Iraq

2004

https://amp.theguardian.com/media/2004/may/26/pressandpublis...

> NYT fired editors and journalists over that

This isn't quite what the article says. It mentions Howell Raines, but he seemed to have been ousted due to staff discontent as well as a plagiarism scandal [1].

The article also mentions Judith Miller, and her case was interesting to say the least. The NYT assigned her to work closely with American intelligence, so of course she's going to report what they have to say, so she was somewhat of a scapegoat. Then, in 2005, she gets arrested at the behest of the CIA for refusing to disclose the leaker in the Plame scandal. Only then, over a year after the NYT apologized about being wrong in Iraq, did they pressure her to resign.

[1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-jun-06-na-nyt6-...

I think you're overestimating the importance of politics and underestimating the prevalence of people wanting to make a quick buck.

An active warzone like Myanmar is not a good choice when you're a dissident looking for safety, but quite convenient when you're running a highly profitable criminal enterprise and can get an armed gang to give you protection for a cut.

Now, many of the 54,000 that quanfan is claimed to have returned from Myanmar likely weren't there entirely voluntarily (recruiters promise people high wages and generously charter a bus to get them to their new workplace; failing to mention that it's going to be a cross-border trip, they won't be allowed to leave until they've "paid back their debts", and room and board aren't free) and others are only providing ancillary services to the gangs (shops, restaurants, bars...) and didn't commit any crimes beyond crossing the border illegally, but from what I've read about people who were enslaved in Myanmar and managed to escape (e.g. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/rA9JHSPQJWjnjgaqC-B76g ) the drain caused by quanfan led to personnel shortages for the gangs, making it easier to get away.

It doesn't omit it entirely:

> Operation Fox Hunt is a worldwide effort to repatriate people it describes as corrupt officials (the FBI says many are also wanted for political reasons)

I'd be curious to know the numbers of people being extrajudicially extradited in this way for political reasons vs actual crime, but I can't imagine those numbers are readily available.

It's 100% correlated. Being unaligned with the CCP is "moral" corruption. It's a good old witch hunt. The CCP is obviously super-corrupt itself but it is not self observing.

Thanks, I overlooked that.

No they don't.

I can highly recommend their podcast series on Xi Jinping, The Prince

https://www.economist.com/theprincepod

China is really terrifying. I watched a video today of them taking pets from people and beating those pets to death as an anti covid measure this year. A billion plus people, largely uneducated, run by a despotic dictator- scary shit.

[WARNING: It can be graphic] https://twitter.com/search?q=china%20covid%20dog&src=typed_q...

Some of it's pretty sickening, but during covid Twitter has made little to no effort to remove alot of the animal abuse videos from its platform.

I thought I'd merely be disgusted, I'm actually crying now. Animal mass murder. And having fun while doing it.

I dare not look since I'd probably follow suit. What can be done, if anything, about this evidently deep-seated capacity in some of us, to 'have fun' while knowingly inflicting pain and suffering on other living creatures who share our planet?

I am not clicking that.

Those covid measures were they locked doors in buildings, and then people burned alive, screaming for help into the night. And that dystopian nightmare is allowed to harass all that has as ethnicity han.

> A billion plus people, largely uneducated, run by a despotic dictator- scary shit.

It’s for things like this that I laugh in private when some people say that China is the future.

For sure the future of a shittier world.

> A billion plus people, largely uneducated

You do realize that this is the exact excuse used by the CCP for not allowing general elections?

Openly support CCP's policies won't get you too far on HackerNew.

What people don't realize is that extra-judicial "persuasion" is also commonly applied for strategic business interests. I recall a discussion with a someone at an electronics company a while ago where they described recent breaches and leaks of IP to Chinese state companies by unwitting employees pressured by these extra-judicial police.

nitpick: not sure if those employees would be "unwitting", probably closer to "unwilling" or something along those lines

Coerced?

No question that this is a threat, but at this point I also feel compelled to point out that the US(&UK) judiciary has been accused of the same :

1.) https://www.economist.com/business/2019/01/17/how-the-americ...

(Notably, some of the most vocal opponents of Macron go as far as to accuse him of treason for personal gain in this case, though their case is IMHO kind of thin.)

2.) https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51277946

Tom Enders, his compliance officer John Harrison, DARPA's & silicon valley's Paul Eremenko and others have been accused of (ab)using this probe with the result that Airbus' strategic information (including business one) became openly accessible to the USA, and through them, to their competitor : Boeing.

3.) Not to be forgotten : https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32542140

I'm not seeing the similarities to what the parent comment describes.

The people accused of participating of wrongdoing in these articles weren't pressured to participate by threats to their families from their "home" government. They did it for personal gain.

Will the evil win in the end? They learned to totally control their populations. AI technology helps a lot with this, unfortunately. So once a country falls into a dictatorship black hole, there seems to be no way back. Will the entire world fall into this, one country after the other?

Late to the thread but to make a comparison here are American[1] and Chinese[2] "extradition treaty blocs", 150 ~ 50 countries.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_extradit...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition_law_in_China#/medi...

Interestingly if you are keen to slip the grasp of law enforcement (note: this is no sanction of illegal activity of any sort), and you reside in, for example, Australia Turkiye or Mexico, you are within the extradition jurisdiction to either China or USA, a kind of extremal legal coverage/exposure. The caveat being, there is a concept called dual criminality which is essentially the intersection of crimes from the one country and the extraditing country.

Extra credit: 1997 congressional report on the unprecendented (at the time) US-Hong Kong extradition treaty. [3] https://www.congress.gov/congressional-report/105th-congress...

I don't know if it's mentioned in this paywalled article, but a few years ago Chinese police came to Fiji and arrested 77 people they claimed were Chinese criminals.

They put them on a chartered plane and flew them back to China.

Fiji's then government let this happen and even helped them. They were not given their day in (a Fijian) court... simply bundled into a plane and flown away on the say-so of the Chinese.

China will pull these stunts elsewhere if they can get away with it. Fiji has a new govt now that wouldn't allow this. Choose good leaders.

I said PAYWALLED, which was true, and there was no alternate link.

Why UP-vote inaccessible content, and then go apeshit when someone points it out?

Hacker News is degraded by this infantile, hypocritical behavior. Why perpetuate, let alone PROMOTE it?

Downvote the inaccessible CONTENT, not the remark about it. DUH.

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