Chinese Transnational Policing Gone Wild

As part of a massive nationwide campaign to combat the growing issue of fraud and telecommunication fraud by Chinese nationals living abroad, Chinese authorities claim that from April 2021 to July 2022, 230,000 nationals had been “persuaded to return” to face criminal proceedings in China.

This campaign, which started on a humble scale in 2018, has developed alongside the establishment of overseas Chinese police “service stations”, sometimes called “110 Overseas” after the national
police emergency phone number, now found in dozens of countries across five continents.This investigation looks into these two related and recent developments, especially in view of the expansion of other forms of long-arm policing and transnational repression by the PRC.

This investigation follows the release of new Chinese governmental data and is part of Safeguard Defenders’ ongoing monitoring of China’s growing global transnational repression.

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