Monitoring Chinese Dissidents and Forcing Them to Return: Report Discloses the Activities of the Chinese Police Stations in Italy

The Guardian published the report of a Spanish human right group, Safeguard Defenders, stating that Italy hosts the highest number of unofficial Chinese “police stations” out of a network of more than 100 around the world.

The newspaper stressed that: “The northern Italian city of Milan was allegedly used by two local Chinese public security authorities as a European testing ground for a policing strategy to monitor the Chinese population abroad and force dissidents to return home.”

In September 2022, the Spanish Safeguard Defenders report highlighted the existence of more than 54 Chinese police stations around the world in at least 12 countries, including Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands.

In the new report published on December 5, the civil rights organization revealed that it had identified 48 additional stations, 11 of which are in Italy. Other newly identified stations were in Croatia, Serbia, and Romania.

 

Intimidation Evidence

The report listed the Italian cities hosting these centers: Rome, Milan, Bolzano, Venice, Florence, Prato—a town near Florence that hosts the largest Chinese community in Italy—and Sicily.

For its part, China claimed that the offices are merely “service stations” aiming to help Chinese citizens with bureaucratic procedures such as renewing a passport or driving license.

Safeguard Defenders claims that the investigation was conducted according to the publicly available Chinese statements and data and was limited to stations established by local Chinese public security authorities in countries where there is a large Chinese community.

The civil rights group alleges that the unofficial police stations are used by China to “harass, threaten, intimidate and force targets to return to China for persecution.”

The group stressed that it has evidence of intimidation being used to force the Chinese to leave Europe from Italy back home. The Guardian reported the case of a factory worker accused of misappropriation who returned to China after 13 years in Italy and disappeared without a trace.

Laura Harth, a spokesperson for Safeguard Defenders, said: “We monitor Chinese data and in April came across information from the ministry of public information which showed that 210,000 people were persuaded to return in just one year.”

The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, had previously launched Operation Fox Hunt to force targets who were accused of corruption to return home.

 

Italy’s Silence

Italy, which hosts 330,000 Chinese citizens, according to 2021 figures from the national statistics agency ISTAT, is fertile ground for potential Beijing influence owing to myriad agreements between the two countries. Among these is a joint police patrol scheme, first signed off in 2015, under which Chinese police patrol Italian cities for temporary periods, ostensibly to assist Chinese tourists.

Harth pointed out: “The fact that Chinese local authorities have been able to use these stations as pilots in Italy is pretty damning.”

The Safeguard report noted that “despite having the largest number of liaison outposts on its soil, the Italian government is among the very few European countries that has not yet publicly announced an investigation into the Chinese overseas police stations or declared their illegality.”

Italy, which has signed a series of bilateral security agreements with China on successive governments since 2015, has been largely silent during disclosures of alleged activities on its soil.

Between 2016 and 2018, Italian police conducted several joint patrols with Chinese police—first in Rome and Milan—and later in other cities, including Naples where they simultaneously found evidence of a video surveillance system being added to a Chinese residential area ostensibly to “deter crime there.”

In 2016, an Italian police official told NPR that joint policing would lead to broader international cooperation, exchange of information, and sharing of resources to combat criminal and terrorist groups that plague the countries.

The NGO determines that Italy has hosted 11 Chinese police stations, including in Venice and Prato near Florence.

According to videos posted on Chinese websites, a celebration was held in Rome marking the opening of a new station, and Italian police officials attended it in 2018, which indicates the close relations between the two countries’ police forces.

Earlier this year, the Italian newspaper La Nazione reported that local investigations at one of the stations did not reveal any illegal activity. Police chiefs were recently quoted by Il Foglio as saying that the stations do not cause any particular concern because they appear to be merely bureaucratic.

The Italian foreign and interior ministries did not respond to CNN’s questions about the data revealed by the Safeguard Defenders report.

 

Broader Penetration

China also concluded similar joint police patrol agreements with Croatia and Serbia between 2018 and 2019 as part of the country’s increasing strategic footprint along Xi’s specific foreign policy path, dubbed the Belt and Road Initiative.

Chinese media reported that Chinese officers were seen on joint patrol with their Croatian counterparts in the streets of the capital, Zagreb, as recently as July 2022.

A Zagreb police official said, in an interview with Xinhua news agency, that the patrols are necessary to protect and attract foreign tourists.

A Reuters report in 2019 said that Chinese officers joined Serbian officers on patrol in Belgrade to help handle the influx of Chinese tourists. One Serbian officer indicated that the Chinese did not have the authority to make arrests.

Safeguard Defenders also says that the Chinese stations have been able to gain a foothold in South Africa and in neighboring countries thanks to a similar agreement with Pretoria, which has been in place for years.

In November 2022, FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Homeland Security Committee that he was deeply concerned about the revelations. He explained that it is outrageous to think that the Chinese police will try to set up a shop in New York, for example, without proper coordination. It violates sovereignty and circumvents standard judicial cooperation and law enforcement procedures.

Ireland has closed the Chinese police station located on its soil, while the Netherlands, which has taken similar measures, is conducting an investigation, as is Spain.

Harth told CNN that the organization will likely find more stations in the future. “It’s the tip of the iceberg,” she said.

She stressed that China does not hide what it is doing. They say outright that they’re going to expand those operations, so let’s take that seriously.