House committee to crack down on China’s clandestine operations across U.S.

The House select committee on China is preparing proposals to crack down on the Chinese government’s suspected use of clandestine “police stations” inside the United States to monitor dissidents and expatriate Chinese nationals, said Rep. Mike Gallagher, chairman of the recently created panel.

China has sharply denied the existence of such stations, but U.S. officials say Beijing uses the secret operation for a range of activities, including spying on dissidents living in the U.S. Governments have cracked down on similar offices in Canada, Australia and Europe and in other countries with significant communities of anti-regime Chinese nationals.

Mr. Gallagher told The Washington Times in a weekend interview that lawmakers are studying ways to increase penalties for transnational repression and to encourage the FBI to step up operations.

The Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party is taking action after the arrests last week of two men in New York City on charges that they were running a police station for the Chinese government from a noodle shop in Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood.

The FBI arrested U.S. citizens “Harry” Lu Jianwang, 61, and Chen Jinping, 59.

The case has raised concern about the scope of clandestine Chinese government operations inside the United States.

Beijing may have as many as six more illegal police stations across the nation, said human rights group Safeguard Defenders.

In a separate development last week, the Justice Department filed charges against 34 officers of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security. Officials accused them of operating a program to harass Chinese nationals living in the New York area and elsewhere across America.

Specific connections between the cases are not clear.

Mr. Gallagher said the FBI briefed lawmakers weeks ago on the issue of foreign police stations on U.S. soil. The Wisconsin Republican expressed frustration about the lack of detail in the briefing.

To combat the foreign police and persuade the FBI to act, Mr. Gallagher said, he is examining options to increase punishment for violations of existing laws.

“The idea is that by enhancing penalties for two types of crimes that are in U.S. code right now, you could force the FBI to take it more seriously and you could, it would have a deterrent effect,” he told The Times. “The Chinese wouldn’t try to do something like this.”

Mr. Gallagher said the crimes involve interstate harassment to suppress rights on behalf of a foreign adversary and the failure to register as a foreign agent in the U.S. while conducting police work for a foreign adversary.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act is designed to identify and register people engaging in American politics at the direction of a foreign country. Mr. Gallagher said the statute is riddled with loopholes.

He previously introduced legislation requiring Chinese business agents to register with the U.S. government. The bill also would end exemptions applying to foreign agents who say they engage exclusively in nonpolitical activity.

New scrutiny

China’s suspected use of clandestine police stations outside its borders has drawn scrutiny of its efforts to spread influence through nontraditional means.

The Madrid-based Safeguard Defenders identified more than 50 stations around the world last year and told the New York Post that the Chinese government had established stations in California, Minnesota, Nebraska and Texas.

The presence of China’s clandestine stations is a top issue for the House committee. Mr. Gallagher joined Reps. Neal Dunn, Florida Republican, and Ritchie Torres, New York Democrat, at a rally with human rights activists and dissidents in February outside one suspected unauthorized station in New York City.

“We have a moral duty to stand with you,” Mr. Torres said at the rally. “A few years ago, the FBI said, the Justice Department said that it’s committed to turning Operation Fox Hunt on its head so that the hunters become the hunted and the pursuers become pursued, and we will see to it that that promise is kept.”

Operation Fox Hunt is an initiative by the Chinese Ministry of Public Security designed to track down and repatriate refugees in the U.S. and other countries who have fled to escape prosecution, according to the Justice Department.

Critics say a fuller picture of how China spreads its ideological reach has begun to emerge publicly.

Mr. Gallagher said the U.S. law enforcement and intelligence communities still lack an understanding of how the Chinese Communist Party uses a network of nonprofits to exert its influence.

“It’s really the most poorly understood but insidious swarm of CCP aggression,” Mr. Gallagher said, “this united front work, this sort of complex combination of traditional espionage operations and influence operations and economic coercion and elite capture.”

Lawmakers from the China committee, established when Republicans took control of the House this year, visited Miami in March to study Chinese-made cranes because of concerns that China may use the machinery to track sensitive trade to the U.S. This month, committee members traveled to California for meetings with technology leaders in Silicon Valley and the entertainment industry in Hollywood.

Mr. Gallagher said the panel might hold additional events at other suspected clandestine police stations. He said he is determined to find the extent of the Chinese policing operations in the U.S.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry denied all allegations that Beijing is operating overseas police stations. It said U.S. officials are making “groundless accusations” and the suspect “service stations” were established to help Chinese and Chinese Americans with processes such as applying for travel visas or qualifying for driver’s licenses.

Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters that the accusations against China applied more accurately to the U.S. government.

“The U.S. has long suppressed dissent through secret surveillance, illegal wiretapping, global manhunts and behind-the-scenes deals,” he said. “‘Transnational repression’ is an allegation that best matches the U.S.’s own practices.”

• Guy Taylor contributed to this report.