Report: Beijing Runs Dozens of Police 'Liaison Points' Inside the U.S. to Watch and Pressure Chinese Communities

The Chinese Communist Party's reach into American neighborhoods may be far larger than a single storefront in Manhattan. A new report from the human rights group Safeguard Defenders says Beijing runs a global network of police "liaison points" embedded in diaspora organizations, including dozens in the United States, to monitor and pressure Chinese communities abroad, The Epoch Times reported ^[1].

What the Report Found

Safeguard Defenders, a Spain-based rights organization, published the report, titled "A Formula for Repression: China's Global Grid for Community Control," on November 6, according to the group's website ^[2]. The group said the study draws exclusively on open-source evidence from the Chinese party-state itself and describes efforts to control and surveil the diaspora that are expanding at the direction of Xi Jinping ^[2]. It centers on what the group called a global network of united front operatives, the network the group notes the party itself calls its "magic weapon" ^[2].

According to The Epoch Times, the report documents 1,247 liaison points in at least 91 countries, run by more than 10 police forces from five Chinese provinces working with Chinese prosecutors, courts and justice bureaus ^[1]. The paper reported that the report identifies more than 40 such outposts in the United States, at least 10 of them in New York, with others in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston and in cities including Pittsburgh, Washington, Salt Lake City, Omaha, St. Louis, St. Paul and Charlotte ^[1].

The report says many outposts handle ordinary tasks such as helping settle disputes, but others take on work that amounts to a breach of sovereignty and transnational repression, The Epoch Times reported ^[1]. In one example the paper cited, the head of a hub in Brussels was assigned to build information files on prominent overseas Chinese figures ^[1]. The report's author, Laura Harth, urged governments to treat the United Front as the root of the problem and to use its ties to trigger foreign-agent registration requirements, according to the paper ^[1].

The Manhattan Case

Americans have already seen one of these operations up close. Safeguard Defenders noted that in May a U.S. jury convicted a man for operating a Chinese Ministry of Public Security police station in lower Manhattan, which the U.S. Attorney's Office in Brooklyn said was part of a global initiative by the ministry ^[2].

The Epoch Times reported in May that the defendant, Lu Jianwang, 64, former president of a Fujianese hometown association, was convicted in federal court in Brooklyn of acting as an unregistered agent of China and of obstruction of justice for deleting messages, and was acquitted of a conspiracy count ^[4]. Prosecutors said the station, which operated out of the association's Chinatown offices in 2022, offered driver's license renewals but also tracked dissidents and pressured Chinese nationals to return home ^[4]. His lawyer said Lu would appeal ^[4]. A co-defendant, Chen Jinping, pleaded guilty in December 2024, the paper reported ^[4].

A Pattern Abroad

The report's examples reach well beyond New York. Safeguard Defenders said French courts this year upheld the expulsion of the de facto leader of a Fujianese business association in Paris, and that prosecutors in Milan this month closed an investigation into ten people accused of targeting a Chinese dissident influencer ^[2].

Lawmakers Respond

The report is already driving action among China hawks in other democracies. At its summit in The Hague, the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China said 54 lawmakers from 26 countries, responding to the Safeguard Defenders report, demanded an end to what they called willful blindness toward Chinese interference and called for six urgent measures to counter foreign interference and transnational repression ^[3]. The Epoch Times reported that the measures include stronger foreign-agent registration laws with criminal penalties, disclosure of United Front ties and reporting channels for diaspora communities ^[1].

Related FBI Seizes More Than $1.2 Billion Stolen in Binance Hack as DOJ Moves Against North Korea's Crypto Thieves

Why It Matters

For Chinese Americans and Chinese students in this country, these networks are not an abstraction. As prosecutors described in the Manhattan case, they can mean being tracked as a dissident or pressured to go back to China ^[4]. The First Amendment protects everyone on American soil, and no foreign government should be allowed to police speech in Houston or St. Paul.

The Justice Department's prosecution in Brooklyn shows that existing law can reach these operations when investigators act ^[4]. The question now is whether Washington will follow the report's trail to the dozens of other outposts it describes ^[1].

What Comes Next

Expect the new Congress to face pressure to strengthen foreign-agent laws and to require disclosure of United Front ties, the steps lawmakers abroad are urging ^[1][3]. Lu Jianwang's sentencing date has not been set ^[4].