Authorities arrested two men accused of establishing and running a secret Chinese police outpost in New York City and charged 34 members of the country’s national police force with harassing Chinese nationals living in the U.S., officials with the Justice Department said Monday.
Lu “Harry Lu” Jianwang, 61, and Chen Jinping, 59, are charged with conspiracy to act as agents of the Chinese government and obstruction of justice. Authorities said that in 2022, the pair helped to open a secret police outpost in an office building in Chinatown at the direction of a member of China’s Ministry of Public Security.
At a news conference Monday, U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said Chinese officials never notified the government about plans to provide government services out of the office building.
“To do even that, the law requires that individuals like the defendants, who act as agents of a foreign government, give prior notice to the attorney general before setting up shop in New York City,” Peace said. “That didn’t happen. More troubling, though, is the fact that the secret police station appears to have had a more sinister use. On at least one occasion, an official with the Chinese national police force directed one of the defendants … to help locate a pro-democracy activist of Chinese descent living in California.
“In other words, the Chinese national police appear to be using this station to track a U.S. resident on U.S. soil.”
Investigators said Lu and Chen admitted to deleting communications on their phones with a Chinese Ministry of Public Security official. They deleted the items after learning of the FBI investigation, Peace said, prompting the obstruction charges.
The police station is one of dozens established worldwide by Chinese officials, authorities said. In Ireland, Canada and the Netherlands, officials earlier called for China to end similar operations, The New York Times reported.
Chinese officials have called the outposts volunteer-run sites aimed at helping citizens abroad who are trying to access China’s online service platform, according to Reuters. They have denied any law enforcement connections to the sites.
On Monday, Peace said that authorities working the case in New York “are the first law enforcement partners in the world to make arrests in connection to the Chinese government’s overseas police stations.”
“This prosecution reveals the Chinese government’s flagrant violation of our nation’s sovereignty by establishing a secret police station in the middle of New York City,” the U.S. attorney said in a statement. “Such a police station has no place here in New York City — or any American community.”
Authorities also charged 34 members of China’s Ministry of Public Security with conspiracy to transmit interstate or foreign threats and conspiracy to commit interstate harassment, officials said.
“The MPS officers who have been charged today are not focused on preventing crime,” Peace said. “Rather, the complaints charge these MPS officers with engaging in transnational repression schemes targeting members of the Chinese diaspora community in New York City and elsewhere in the United States.”
Peace said the group threatened and harassed Chinese dissidents online and used fake personas to spread Chinese government propaganda. They also allegedly spread disinformation, including conspiracy theories about the U.S. being responsible for the coronavirus pandemic and sought to sow political divisions in the country, authorities said.
The officers also repeatedly interfered with dissidents who were using U.S. technology platforms to meet, according to officials.
“For example, in an online video conference on the topic of countering communism, task force officers flooded the video conference and drowned out the meeting with loud music and vulgar screams and threats directed at Chinese dissidents,” Peace said. “In crashing and disrupting these online meetings, the MPS subjected Chinese dissidents living here in the United States to the authoritarian rule of the PRC. That is unacceptable.”
