Chen Jinping, 60, pleaded guilty Wednesday to acting as an illegal agent of the Chinese government and faces up to five years in jail. Jinpung wasn't a spy or a smuggler, though: he operated a secret police station, as used by the Chinese Communist Party to "police" its own citizens in other countries.
Such "police" stations are becoming more widespread—or at least more widely known about. The BBC tallies 100 across the world. Canadian authorities have reportedly mapped secret Chinese police operations within the country, focusing on alleged covert activities linked to Beijing. Australia is investigating allegations that two secret Chinese police stations are operating on its soil, and Germany has accused China of continuing unauthorized police activities within its borders.
US officials said that while the secret police station did perform some basic services, such as helping Chinese citizens renew their Chinese driving licenses, it also served a more "sinister" function, including to help the Chinese government locate a pro-democracy activist of Chinese descent living in California.
The arrests came after the justice department charged more than a half-dozen people in 2020 with working on behalf of the Chinese government in a pressure campaign aimed at coercing a New Jersey man wanted by Beijing into returning to China.
The station took up an entire floor in an office building in Manhattan's Chinatown and was shut down by the FBI in 2022; Chen was nabbed in the raid along with the evidence that convicted him.
Previously:
• Canada's secret police to government: we need torture to keep this country safe
• CNN blurs faces of Trump's 'secret police', then admits it screwed up
• Photographs from the archives of the Stasi, East Germany's legendary, paranoid secret police
