China's Diaspora Crackdown Reaches Deep Into Europe, Report Finds Hundreds of Policing Outposts

Beijing is overseeing nearly 1,250 overseas policing outposts in more than 90 countries to crack down on dissidents, according to a report by the human rights advocacy organization Safeguard Defenders. The report described Europe as a hotspot, with hundreds of Beijing's policing offices across some two dozen European countries, exposing China's growing attempts to control its diaspora.

Researchers at the Spain-based organization gathered open-source evidence from the Chinese Party-state to examine the extent to which the Chinese diaspora is monitored, surveilled and policed around the world. These policing outposts, according to the report, act as Chinese Communist Party operatives for community surveillance and enforcement abroad.

The report lands at an awkward time for Europe's trade officials. Ditte Juul Jørgensen, head of the EU's trade department, which has been working to balance the trade relationship with Beijing, will meet China's Vice Minister of Commerce Ling Ji in Brussels on Thursday.

Europe is attempting to walk a fine line in its relations with Beijing. EU legislation proposed in January seeks to remove risky Chinese suppliers from Europe's most critical industries over cybersecurity concerns, while supply chain dependencies and political coercion remain ongoing challenges. The EU's top diplomat Kaja Kallas has also raised concerns about what she said was China's enabling of Russia's war in Ukraine and credible reports of China training Russia's military.

The report builds on initial revelations from Safeguard Defenders in 2022 that identified more than 100 facilities around the world, which the NGO described as overseas outposts of China's security apparatus. That report said Beijing had announced its first batch of 30 overseas police service stations in 25 cities in 21 countries.

Following the revelations, some governments denounced the overseas police stations as illegal, and some pursued criminal investigations, the NGO said in its latest report. In response, Beijing claimed the stations had been closed, it added.

But the new report says that far from closing, the evidence shows expansion: today more than 10 police forces from five Chinese provinces work through a global network of Chinese Communist Party operatives abroad.

The latest paper was presented at a conference hosted by the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), a gathering of 52 cross-party lawmakers from 30 countries that campaigns for a more coordinated response to the Chinese Communist Party, held in The Hague earlier this month. Policymakers there raised concerns about security threats to critical infrastructure, trade dependencies and potential risks from a future conflict between China and Taiwan that would disrupt shipping.

China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its European Union mission did not respond to requests for comment on the report. China has previously denied running overseas police stations and says it does not interfere in other countries' internal affairs and that it respects international law. In 2023, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson rejected the term 'police stations,' saying the institutions helped overseas Chinese who could not return to China due to the pandemic renew their driving licences and perform physical examinations.

These 1,250 offices are 'the tip of the iceberg,' according to report author Laura Harth, who said the NGO was conservative in how it mapped and linked them to China's policing system. To be counted, they had to be officially connected to China's police or prosecutors and have open-source evidence of overseas activities, which meant broader influence or interference operations were excluded. 'All of them serve to control and instill fear in diaspora communities,' she said, adding that all of them represent a standing national security risk.

Slovakian MEP Miriam Lexmann, a member of the European Parliament's trade committee and China delegation, said people needed to become more aware of the security threats posed by China. 'It means that our free countries are no longer free anymore for everyone because they are not able to guarantee freedom of speech, freedom of behavior to people who are in our country,' she said. She compared China's surveillance through facial recognition and interference in communications to the behaviour of the former Soviet Stasi, but worse, since the technology is now much more sophisticated.

The main concern expressed by lawmakers attending the IPAC conference was China's relationship with Russia, and its help in propping up the Kremlin's war in Ukraine. Dutch lawmaker Jan Paternotte, who co-chaired the conference, said the road to escalation in the Taiwan Strait can run right through what is happening in Ukraine and in Kyiv.