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Executive Summary
More stations uncovered (Chapter 2)
In addition to the previously revealed 54 stations, Safeguard Defenders documented the declaredestablishment by local Chinese public security authorities of at least 48 additional Chinese
Overseas Police Service Stations, bringing the total to 102 with an overall claimed
in-country presence in 53 countries.

More police jurisdictions operating stations uncovered (Chapter 2)
The vast majority of the newly documented stations have been set up starting in 2016 by two
newly discovered local Chinese jurisdictions: Nantong and Wenzhou. At this point, four different
local police jurisdictions have been exposed and shown to have set up such overseas police
service centers. This directly refutes PRC authorities’ statements that the operations started in
response to the Covid 19 pandemic.

Stations’ involvement in more “persuasion to return” operations uncovered (Chapter 4)
New information shows at least one illegal “persuasion to return” operation run through theWenzhou station in Paris, France; and at least 80 cases where the Nantong overseas police
system assisted in the capture and/or persuasion to return operation. This is in addition to already
exposed operations in Spain and Serbia. This contradicts PRC authorities’ statements that thestations are merely providing administrative services.

Police jurisdictions’ "hiring" of staff for its overseas stations revealed (Chapter 5)
One police jurisdiction claims to have hired 135 people to manage their initial 21 stations.
The language used, hire “聘请”, can best be understood as “contracted, hired or appointed” inthis context. Another jurisdiction (Wenzhou) uses similar language announcing the hiring or
appointment of 19 persons early after the launch of their first stations. A certificate for a Stockholm“overseas liaison officer” for its station further confirms such accounts.

Official police stations set up with cooperation of host governments (Chapter 3)
PRC statements claim part of the stations in Africa and Asia have been set up in explicit agreementwith the host country. A 2015 Ministry of Public Security bilateral agreement on joint police patrols
with the Italian government appears to have contributed directly to the later establishment ofEuropean “pilot” stations in Milan in 2016 (by Wenzhou police) and 2018 (by Qingtian police).

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Ch 1. BACKGROUND								 4Ch 2. CHINESE OVERSEAS POLICE SERVICE STATIONS			5

CENTRAL GUIDANCE							 8NANTONG “POLICE AND OVERSEAS CHINESE LINKAGESERVICE CENTERS”								 12WENZHOU POLICE OVERSEAS SERVICE STATIONS			

15

QINGTIAN POLICE OVERSEAS SERVICE STATIONS			17

FUZHOU POLICE OVERSEAS SERVICE STATIONS			

19

Ch 3. HOST COUNTRY COMPLICITY						

20CONSENT									 20(AB)USE OF BILATERAL AGREEMENTS					 21Ch 4. OVERSEAS STATIONS AND “PERSUASION TO RETURN”
OPERATIONS									 26Ch 5. OVERSEAS LIAISON PERSONNEL					

28Ch 6. INVOLUNTARY RETURNS AND FOX HUNT				30© 2022 Safeguard Defenders
Design by Safeguard Defenders
All rights reserved.
This document may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means
including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without expressed written consent of the publisher/
author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Keywords: China, human rights, criminal justice, transnational repression, long-arm policing

First published December 2022
December 13: Revision to fix table (page 6, 7), which missed two stations, plus a revised translation on page 27.

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Ch 1. Background
On September 12, 2022, Safeguard Defenders
released its investigation 110 Overseas – China’s
Transnational Policing Gone Wild, a follow-up to
its much larger January 2022 report Involuntary
Returns documenting the PRC’s illicit methods toharass, threaten, intimidate and force targets toreturn to China for persecution. The investigation
documented the existence of 54 clandestine
Chinese Overseas Police Service Stations aroundthe world and has since made global headlines.
Investigations have been launched by law
enforcement agencies in at least twelve countries
and the issue has been raised at the highest level,
including the bilateral meeting between Canadian
PM Trudeau and CCP Secretary General Xi Jinping
during the Bali G20. This follow-up investigation
has been made possible also thanks to the work ofindividual journalists in targeted countries.

Safeguard Defenders reiterates that all documentation is exclusively based on open-source
accounts published by Chinese authorities or State/Party media. The new evidence containedin this follow-up investigation includes a central government source praising the set-up of the
Nantong overseas stations, as well as documented presence of and collaboration with the
Chinese Consulates or Embassies in host countries.

We urge any reader to first familiarize themselves with the original
investigation 110 Overseas before reading this.

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Ch 2. Chinese Overseas Police
Service Stations
In addition to the previously reported 54
stations, Safeguard Defenders documented thedeclared establishment by Chinese authorities
of at least 48 additional Chinese Overseas
Police Service Stations by local-level Public
Security Bureaus, with an overall claimed incountry presence in at least 53 countries via
102 overseas police service stations.

These include 29 stations set up by Nantong
Public Security Bureau starting February 2016;12 stations set up by Wenzhou Public Security
Bureau starting with its “pilot” station in Milan,
Italy, in May 2016; six additional stations for thepreviously reported Qingtian Public Security
Bureau starting with its “pilot” station in Milan,
Italy, in 2018; and one additional station for the
Fuzhou Public Security Bureau.

Map 1. Chinese police jurisdictions

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Table 1. List of Chinese police jurisdictions and location of their overseas police service centers• indicates exact location unknown.

•

Red indicates newly revealed stations, and/or police jurisdictions in China running a system ofoverseas police service stations.

•Black indicates already revealed stations and police jurisdictions in China running them.
COUNTRY

NANTONG

Angola

Argentina
Australia

WENZHOU

Buenos AiresFUZHOU

Buenos Aires

SydneyAustria
Bangladesh

QINGTIAN

Vienna

Brazil

Rio de Janeiro

Sao Paolo
Bandar Seri
BegawanBrunei
CambodiaCanada

Phnom Penh
VancouverToronto 1

CanadaToronto 2

CanadaToronto 3

Chile

Viña del Mar

Colombia
Cuba

Bogotà
Czech Republic
Ecuador

EthiopiaFranceParis

PraguePragueGuayaquil

Quito

Paris

Paris 1

FranceParis 2GermanyFrankfurt

GreeceAthensHungary
Indonesia

Budapest

IrelandIsraelDublin


Italy

Milan

Bolzano

Italy

Prato

Firenze

Italy

Rome

Milan

Italy

Prato

Italy

Rome

Italy

SicilyItaly

VeniceJapanLesothoMadagascar

Budapest

Prato

Tokyo
MaseruAntanarivo
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COUNTRY

NANTONGWENZHOUQINGTIAN

Mongolia

FUZHOU
Ulaanbataar

Myanmar

YangonNamibia

New Zealand

Nigeria



Sudan



Panama

PeruBenin City

Portugal

LisbonPortugal

Porto
MadeiraRomania

Russia

Serbia

Belgrade

Slovak Republic

Bratislava

South Africa

South Korea



Johannesburg

Johannesburg

Spain

Barcelona

Barcelona 1

Spain

MadridBarcelona 2

Spain

Santiago deCompostela

Madrid 1

Spain

Valencia

Madrid 2

Spain

Valencia

SwedenStockholm

Tanzania

Dar es Salaam

The Netherlands

Amsterdam

UAE

Rotterdam

Dubai

UkraineOdessaUnited Kingdom

London 1

United Kingdom

London 2

United Kingdom

Glasgow

USA



USA

Los Angeles

New York

New York

Uzbekistan

Syr Darya

Vietnam

Zambia

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Central Guidance
The scope of both this and Safeguard
Defenders’ original investigation 110
Overseas is limited to the overseas police
service stations set up by local Chinese Public
Security services in foreign locations withlarge overseas Chinese communities hailingfrom those local jurisdictions. While these are
not directly run by central authorities, somestatements and policies are starting to show aclearer guidance from the central governmentin encouraging their establishment andpolicies. Furthermore, as in the original 110
Overseas, examples of persuasion to return
operations run through the stations include

several targets under the central authorities’
Fox Hunt campaign.
Furthermore, alongside the clandestine
stations, official stations involving central
government bodies are also being establishedacross Asia and Africa with the cooperation ofhost governments. While not the scope of thisfollow-up report, given the occasional overlap
or use of such centrally guided efforts in the(future) set-up of locally run stations, as well
as for further investigative purposes of law
enforcement agencies, their presence merits
some attention, as presented below.

State Council of the People’s Republic of China, 9 October 2017.

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8investigations
and briefings seriesThis October 2017 Economic Daily article on
global security governance, Sky Net and Fox
Hunt, published on the official website of the
PRC’s State Council, states:“In South Africa, Chinese police liaison
officers [official Embassy personnel, ndr.]
have united with major local overseas
Chinese associations to establish a Chinese
Community and Police Cooperation Center.
When Chinese and overseas Chinese
encounter problems, they can report to theChinese Community and Police Cooperation
Center, and then the center will communicate
and coordinate with the local police tosolve the problem. At present, nine Police
Cooperation Centers have been establishedin South Africa and extended to Lesotho,
Mozambique,Tanzania and other countries.”
Matt Schrader first reported on the set-up of
thirteen South African Chinese Community and
Police Cooperation Centers in agreement with
South African authorities in a January 2019

Jamestown China Brief, highlighting the direct
link with the [Chinese Communist Party organ]
United Front Work Department and politicalinfluence operations. In his report he also
highlights how “both the PRC embassy and thecenters are open about embassy support for thecenters, in the form of money and personnel”,
and how they appear to form part of a national
endeavor:“As explained in Chinese on their website
homepage, they are part of a global
network of “Overseas Chinese Service
Centers” (OCSC) established in 2014 by
the PRC State Council Overseas Chinese
Affairs Office. (The Overseas Chinese
Affairs office was merged into the CCP’s
United Front Work Department earlier thisyear.) In 2014, Qiu Yuanping (裘援平), thethen-head of the Overseas Chinese Affairs
Office, announced plans to establish
such centers in 60 countries around theworld (Center for China and Globalization,
March 19 2014).”The Jamestown Foundation, 5 January 2019.

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To date, the OCSC website lists addresses and contact details for 46 centers in 40
different countries (China Qiaowang; see above reported figure from Matt Schrader’s2019 Jamestown brief), while a January 5, 2018, article lists 60 "China Aid Centers"
across five continents:North America - Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, San Francisco, Houston, Minnesota,
Nebraska;Europe - Madrid, Milan, Rome, Prato, Paris, Dublin, London;Central and South America - Suriname, Peru, Sao Paulo (Brazil), Chile, Panama,
Argentina, Venezuela;Africa - Angola, Johannesburg (South Africa), Nigeria, Cape Town (South Africa),
Tanzania;

Asia - Yangon (Myanmar), Cambodia, Kazakhstan, Philippines, Tokyo (Japan), Laos,
Kyrgyzstan, Chiang Mai (Thailand), Korea, Mandalay (Myanmar), Sri Lanka, Nagoya(Japan), Thailand, Ulaanbaatar (Mongolia);

Oceania - Papua New Guinea, Australia, Auckland (New Zealand), Brisbane (Australia), Fiji.

The article further cites as their tasks:“In 2014, the Overseas Chinese Office of theState Council supported overseas Chinesegroups to set up ‘Chinese service centers’ incities where overseas Chinese live, providing
basic services such as emergency relief,
integration training, legal aid, and poverty
alleviation.”
This seemingly further distinguishes the OCSC’sfrom the Chinese Community and Police
Cooperation Centers cited on the State Council’s
website in 2017. Therefore, Safeguard Defenders

has not included this full list of cited OCSC’s
in its above “Chinese overseas police station”
overview list. However, given that the publishedaddress list does on occasion overlap withsome of the previously retrieved addresses for
Chinese Overseas Police Service Stations (see forexample Dublin, Ireland), and more recent articles
adopt language pointing to the next step for atransformation of “service centers” into “bridges
for police linkage” (see for example this July
2022 China Radio International article regarding
the United States), further investigation by local
law enforcement authorities in cited countries iswarranted.

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Map 2. Countries with known vs newly revealed stations

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Nantong “Police and Overseas
Chinese Linkage Service Centers”

State Council of the People’s Republic of China, 9 October 2017.

The above-cited October 2017 Economic Daily
article on global security governance, Skynet andFox Hunt, published on the official website of the
PRC’s State Council, further states:“In China, relevant protection models
have been under constant exploration andinnovation, among which the Nantong
Domestic and Overseas Police and Overseas
Chinese Linkage Service Center. In February
2016, the Nantong Public Security Bureau
took the lead in establishing the first policeoverseas Chinese linkage service centerin the country. While strengthening early
warning and prevention, as well as expanding
international police cooperation, the Nantong
police has used the strength and resourcesof INTERPOL to continuously strengthen thedetection of cross-border cases and form astrong deterrent to criminals who violate thelegitimate interests of Nantong enterprises
and personnel. According to statistics, in
2016, the Nantong police went overseas tocoordinate and organize the detection of morethan 20 cases, and transferred 22 suspects forprosecution.”

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Jiangsu Changan Net, 13 June 2017.

On 13 June 2017, Nantong police stated had“seized the construction opportunities of theBelt and Road Initiative” and had “licensed
and issued liaison cards” for overseas subcenters in Sudan, Namibia, Canada, Japan,
Panama, Australia and New Zealand, citing

sub-centers set up in a total of 20 countries
so far, including in “Angola, Zambia, Ecuador,
Romania, Cambodia, Myanmar, South
Africa, Indonesia, Chile, Madagascar, Nigeria,
Serbia, the United Arab Emirates and othercountries."

Ourjiangsu.com, 29 April 2020.

On 29 April 2020,“the Nantong Police and Overseas
Chinese Linkage Service Centers at home
and abroad held its first annual work
meeting and awarded licenses to the
Ethiopian branch center, Peru workstation
and Bangladesh workstation.” During themeeting, Zhang Xuan, deputy mayor
of Nantong City and director of theMunicipal Public Security Bureau, made avideo connection to some overseas sites,with reported contributions from “Xu
Weisong from the Israeli workstation and
Qin Jinsheng from the Serbia branch”.

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Ourjiangsu.com, 29 April 2020.

According to the same 2020 account of thefirst annual work meeting,“overseas sub-centers and workstations
have been established in 28 countries

and regions. Especially in 2019, it […]helped crack down on 43 overseas
criminals.”

Chinese Times, 17 September 2021.

A September 2021 article adds:“Relying on the Overseas Chinese Chamberof Commerce, Nantong Police and Overseas
Chinese Linkage stations were set up in
16 countries where overseas Chinese andoverseas Chinese businessmen are relatively
concentrated, such as the United States,
Russia, Canada, Romania, Serbia, Namibia,
Angola, South Africa and Ethiopia […]”

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Sina.com, 1 July 2022.

govern overseas Chinese, and police andoverseas Chinese linkage’. […] At present,
representatives of overseas Chinese andoverseas students have been hired in the
United States, Australia, South Korea andother places as overseas liaison officers
to cooperate with domestic officers bothinternally and externally.”

In May 2022, Libao Town (Haian County, Nantong
City) followed the higher-ups’ lead:“[…] the Libao Town United Front Work
Office and Town Police took the lead […] toestablish the Libao overseas Chinese police
service center in May 2022. […] exploringa new model of ‘using overseas Chinese to

Wenzhou Police Overseas
Service Stations

China News Network, 29 August 2019.

On 29 August 2019, China News Service
reported the Wenzhou Public Security Bureau’s

establishment of a May 2016 “pilot” of a Police andOverseas Chinese contact point in Milan, Italy.

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Central United Front Work Department website, 29 November 2017.

According to the Central United Front Work
Department website, by August 2016 theWenzhou Public Security Bureau had set up threesuch Police and Overseas Chinese contact points,
adding Paris (France) and Prato (Italy).

New Blue Network Zhejiang Network Radio and Television Station, 13 August 2018.

By August 2018, the Wenzhou Municipal Public
Security Bureau had opened a reported twenty
overseas police contact points in eleven cities,

including Rome, Sydney, Los Angeles, New
York, Vancouver, Brazil, Buenos Aires, Dubai andJohannesburg.

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Zhejiang Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, 7 April 2021.

According to a post by the Zhejiang Federationof Returned Overseas Chinese in April 2021,
outlining four different types of overseas
services being set up and which explicitly
distinguishes between the establishment of
its “Chinese Overseas Police Stations” andits service “overseas liaison system”, the latter
category — which appears closer in nature to

the OCSC’s flagged by Matt Schrader in 2019and is therefore not included in the main station
overview list — reached a total of sixteen contact
points in fourteen cities across eleven countries,
including France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany,
Netherlands, Brazil, Russia, South Africa, UAE
and Macau.

Qingtian Police Overseas Service
Stations
Safeguard Defenders’ prior investigation 110
Overseas already included the Qingtian Public
Security Bureau’s establishment of overseas

police service centers. Since September,additional stations have been uncovered:

China News Network, 2 December 2018.

In December 2018, China News Service reported
on the Qingtian Procuratorates’ establishment of

six overseas liaison sub-stations in Italy: in Prato,
Rome, Milan, Bolzano and Sicily.

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Zhejiang Qingtian Media Group, 6 April 2019.

On 6 April 2019,“Political Commissar Liu Guangxian readout the list of newly established Overseas
Police Service Centers, and together withother members of the party committee,
awarded licenses to six newly established
Overseas Police Service Centers including
Venice, Phnom Penh, and Bogotá. Jiang
Xiongxin, honorary chairman of theOverseas Chinese Association in Venice,attended the awarding ceremony on behalfof the Venice Overseas Chinese Police

Service Center. […] At the meeting, theparticipants watched the Qingtian public
security promotional video, and listened to
the report on the operation of the Overseas
Chinese Police Service Center by Liu
Jianguo, member of the Party Committee ofthe Qingtian County Public Security Bureau
and Director of the Political Department.
Relevant representatives from Venice,Barcelona, Amsterdam, Guayaquil, etc.
introduced the operation of the Overseas
Chinese Police Service Center and put
forward relevant opinions.”

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Qingtian Government, 9 February 2021.

An official summary of the Qingtian County
Public Security Bureau’s 2020 work report further
confirms that by that year

"Overseas Chinese Police Service Centers
have been set up in 21 cities in 15 countries
around the world.”

Fuzhou Police Overseas Service
Stations

African Times, 23 May 2022.

In May of this year, the Chinese-language
African Times reported that as of May 23rd, theJohannesburg Service Station of Fuzhou Police
and Overseas Chinese Affairs – establishedwithin the South African Chinese Community and
Police Cooperation Center (see Central Guidance)– was officially launched.

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Ch 3. Host Country Complicity

United Nations.

While the establishment of Chinese Overseas
Police Stations without the host country’s
consent represents a severe breach of territorial
and judicial sovereignty - even if they were toprovide “only” consular services such as therenewal of passports or driver’s licenses, as
articles 2 to 5 of the 1963 Vienna Convention
on Consular Relations expressly establishes -,according to PRC statements, some countries
have explicitly agreed to their set-up andlocal law enforcement, as well as the Chinese
embassies and/or consulates, closely cooperatewith the stations in those locations. In othercountries, while such consent is (or appears)
absent, PRC authorities seem to have (ab-)
used existing bilateral policing cooperation
mechanisms to further their clandestine goals.
While the focus of both the initial investigationand this follow-up is on the establishment of
unofficial – illegal – overseas police service
stations without host countries’ awareness, we
also look into the establishment of host country
approved operations, for further background on
general developments.

Consent
Safeguard Defenders and other human rights
organizations have frequently denounced
the complicity of certain governmentsin the repatriation of individuals to thePeople’s Republic of China without regard
for internationally established standards ofdue process and protection mechanisms.
As outlined in Involuntary Returns, suchmethods consist of the entrapment or luring ofindividuals to countries from where repatriation

is easier, or even kidnappings with the aid of
the third country’s authorities, in addition toharassment in host countries by agents and“persuasion” operations. Evidence of suchcases have been found also in relation to theChinese Overseas Police Stations (See part 3.
“Persuasion to Return” Operations).
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country and the cooperation of that outpost
with the local law enforcement agencies
may indeed provide a useful service to bothcommunities, they are a reason for severe
concern and – much like bilateral extradition
treaties – these agreements should put thosemost at risk from PRC persecution on high alert
when considering travel to those countries.
According to an article on the Nantong
Government's website that has since been
made inaccessible but which content is stillavailable on Legal Daily, the Nantong Overseas

and Domestic Police Linkage Service Center- with the support of the Public Security
International Cooperation Department – signed
a bilateral police cooperation memorandumwith the police department of Dobroesti in
Romania, and reached a consensus on police
cooperation with the police in Johannesburg(South Africa) and Lusaka (Zambia). They
further state that they had established directcontact with the Angolan and Cambodianpolice, while sending overseas security patrol
teams to “carry out field research and security
guidance”.

(Ab)use of Bilateral Agreements
The abuse of multi- or bilateral cooperationagreements by the PRC is not a novel feature.
Safeguard Defenders and other organizations
have frequently denounced the ongoingabuse of international policing cooperation
mechanisms such as INTERPOL or the United
Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)
to both instill a wider sense of fear within
dissident and other persecuted communities,
as well as to legitimize the PRC’s domestic
judicial system despite its blatant violationsof internationally recognized norms andstandards. Of particular concern in this regard
are also bilateral agreements between nationallaw enforcement and PRC actors, as these may

dissuade those targeted by illicit operations
from reporting. In addition they often enhance
local law enforcement’s sense of trust in their
PRC counterparts, especially if not instructedon the rapidly expanding use and means oftransnational repression.
Moreover, in the case of the establishment ofChinese Overseas Police Stations in countries
that did not give (or have not acknowledged
giving) consent, it appears such a bilateralpolice cooperation agreement may havedirectly contributed to the European “pilotruns” of both Wenzhou (2016) and Qingtian(2018) stations in Italy.

AGI, 27 April 2015.

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On 27 April 2015 - one year after the Ministryof Public Security’s launch of operation Fox
Hunt and the launch year for operation Sky Net- then Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni
signed four bilateral cooperation agreementswith his counterpart Wang Yi, among which a
Memorandum for Joint Police Patrols“in the ambit of the fight against terrorism,
international organized crime, illegal
migration and human trafficking”.

La Repubblica, 2 May 2016.

From 2 to 13 May 2016, the first Joint Police
Patrols take place in Rome and Milan. Upon
their return the four men composing the PRC
police team are met by Vice-Minister of Public
Security Meng Hongwei, who will soon thereafteralso become President of INTERPOL before hismonth-long disappearance under suspicious
circumstances – presumably in the CCDI’s Liuzhi
black jails – and his following conviction to
thirteen years in prison on corruption charges. His
wife remains under police protection in France forfears of forceful repatriation.

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China News Network, 29 August 2019.

Precisely in that same timeframe – May 2016 –Wenzhou’s Public Security Bureau reportedly“piloted the establishment of a Chinese
Overseas Police contact point” in Milan, Italy.

By August of that year, it establishes two
additional contact points in Prato (Italy) andParis (France).

Italian Interior Ministry, 24 July 2017.

In July 2017, then Italian Vice-Minister of Interior
Filippo Bubbico signed a bilateral Security
Cooperation Agreement with a delegationof the PRC Ministry of Public Security led bycounterpart Xia Chongyuan: “In the ambit of
the consolidated friendship between the twocountries of ancient civilizations, the initiative
aims to intensify the fruitful relations between
its respective public security bodies.” For
Bubbico, the agreement follows the “significant
importance of the joint police patrols”, while

Xia expressed the “fundamental value of
today’s agreement in the ambit of the Strategic
Sino-Italian Partnership, with a reinforcementof bilateral security cooperation”. The exact
content of the agreement remains undisclosed.
The second joint police patrols were held infour Italian cities in 2017, including Naples.
Deemed a “complicated security environment”,
what Chinese police officer Li Xiang and hiscolleagues perform that year was “morePatrol and Persuade: A follow-up investigation to 110 Overseas

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specific and with a more significant effect”:“With the assistance of the local gendarmerie,
the joint patrol team successively visited thegovernor of Naples, the mayor of Naples
and other dignitaries. In the end, under thecoordination of Li Xiang, the representatives ofthe local Chinese businessmen and the military
police department reached a consensus: theChinese Chamber of Commerce and the local
military police will each send a security liaison
officer to be responsible for solving security
cases involving the Chinese community […]A security meeting is held every two weeks,
and the two sides sit down to discuss security
issues. At the same time, with the supportof the local Chinese chamber of commerce,
Li Xiang also set up a team that is similar to
China’s “community crime prevention team"(治安联防队) for them and added a video
surveillance system in the Chinese residential
area to effectively deter crimes. ‘We exported
and promoted the domestic community
policing model in Italy’."On 18 December 2017, then Italian Foreign
Minister Angelino Alfano signed a joint
communiqué with Wang Yi in Beijing,applauding the July agreement and the successof the joint police patrols. The communiqué
further celebrated the “significant progressin bilateral judicial cooperation, agreeing
to further strengthen existing mechanismsof extradition, mutual assistance in civil,
commercial and criminal matters, and toincreasingly promote exchanges of experiences
and best practices in the fight against corruption.”
In 2018, for the third joint police patrols in Italy
from May 28 to June 18, the Ministry for Public
Security “entrusted the Zhejiang Provincial Public
Security Department to form a team”: “Ten police
officers, including Chen Yin (Lishui Public Security
Bureau) and Chen Qi (Qingtian Public Security
Bureau), conducted joint patrols with the Italianpolice in four cities: Rome, Milan, Venice andPrato, Italy, entering the Chinese community
and Chinese-funded enterprises, promoting
the pilot ‘police station’ and anti-telecom fraudpromotion.” Elsewhere, the Euro Chinese Daily
reports they hoped that “in addition to protecting
the safety of Chinese tourists”, through the third
joint police patrol “China hopes to learn fromthe Naples model and introduce the Chinese
community policing model into Prato”.

Xinhuanet, 14 June 2018.

On 12 June 2018, according to Xinhua, the“unveiling ceremony of the Rome ‘Police
Station’ was held during the Sino-Italian
Police and Overseas Chinese Cooperationand Exchange Conference at the Federationof Overseas Chinese in Rome”. An active
participant in the meeting was Giuseppe

Moschitta – then Commander of the Esquilino
Police Force, current head of the ItalianState Police Press Office – who was captured
on a propaganda video applauding theestablishment together with Italian police
colleagues present at the scene.

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By December 2018, the Qingtian (Zhejiang
Province) Procuratorate had successfully set
up six overseas stations in Italy, reportedly
headed by Ye Xianping, director of the
Italian Overseas Liaison Station of QingtianCounty People's Procuratorate. The move
was applauded in a speech by Wang Fuguo,
Consul General of the Chinese Consulate
General in Florence. Xinhua described it as“one of the most significant achievements of
the joint Sino-Italian police patrols”.

countries that has not yet publicly announced
an investigation into the Chinese Overseas
Police Stations or declared their illegality.
In a September statement to Il Foglio, theInterior Ministry under the former Draghi
Government said they “were of no particularconcern”. The joint Sino–Italian police patrols
were interrupted in 2020, following theoutbreak of the Covid 19 pandemic. No official
announcements regarding the future status of
the security agreements have been made.

To date, despite having the largest numberof liaison outposts on its soil, the Italian
government is among the very few European

Similar joint police patrols agreements on
European soil were also started in Serbia (2019)
and Croatia (2018).

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Ch 4. Overseas Stations and“Persuasion to Return” Operations
The prior investigation 110 Overseas contained
evidence on two persuasion to return
operations - including a Fox Hunt target conducted through the Qingtian overseas
stations in Madrid (Spain) and Belgrade(Serbia), and the Qingtian Public Security has
issued a statement that its overseas police
service stations have led to a breakthrough inthe overseas pursuit of fugitives, including in a
Fox Hunt operation.

Sina.com, 25 October 2021.

New evidence indicates that the Wenzhou
overseas police service station in Aubervilliers,
Paris, was involved in a persuasion to return
operation: The leader of the station —established in 2018 by the Overseas Chinese
Federation and the Public Security Districtof Ruian District in Wenzhou — is Hu Renai,

founder of the Sino-French Garment Industry
Chamber of Commerce. “In October 2019, I was
also entrusted by the domestic public security
organs to help persuade a criminal who had
been absconding in France for many years toreturn to China through many visits,” Hu said to
Chinese media in an interview in October 2021.

Jiangsu Belt and Road Portal, 18 July 2022.

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In addition, in July 2022, Nantong authorities
report that since their establishment the
Nantong Police and Overseas Linkage stations
have assisted in the capture or persuasion

to return of 80 “criminal suspects” to China,
without specifying from which countries
or which overseas stations may have been
involved.

Ourjiangsu.com, 18 October 2018.

In one example provided elsewhere, a Fox Hunttarget surnamed Gan reportedly fled to Angola.
In August of 2018 the Nantong Public Security
Bureau repeatedly contacted the Angola
Nantong Chamber of Commerce running theAngola overseas linkage station to ask for their“assistance and support”, after which “Gan’s
thinking changed”, preparing the ground forwhen Wu Zhongcan, Deputy Secretary of

the Party Committee of the Municipal Public
Security Bureau, travelled to Angola for police
cooperation. After the latter’s "heart-to-heart
talk"* with Gan, the man was successfully
persuaded to return to China and surrender.
(*this translation has been updated). That year,
Nantong’s Public Security services’ 2018 Fox
Hunt activities reportedly resulted in the returnof eleven “overseas economic fugitives”.

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Ch 5. Overseas Liaison Personnel
The status of the overseas liaison “personnel”
remains elusive. Language across reports fromthe different jurisdictions consistently speaks of
their “hiring” (聘请), and the personal account of
the above-cited Hu Renai at the Paris Wenzhou
station states he left his prior professional
activities to cover the needs of the station, but
no conclusive evidence has been retrieved
demonstrating payment for services rendered.

Without added context, the Chinese wording
could be translated in various ways: ranging
from contracted to hired or appointed. In
any case their elevation in role provides adangerous added level of legitimization andpower to the selected United Front Work“overseas leaders” to command and control
the overseas community.

Nordic Chinese, 26 December 2018.

New Blue Network Zhejiang Network Radioand Television Station, 23 May 2019.

A People’s Public Security Daily article from
23 May 2019, cited in 110 Overseas, states: “atpresent, the Qingtian County Public Security
Bureau has hired 135 Qingtian overseas
Chinese leaders and presidents of the Overseas
Chinese League as directors, deputy directors
and liaison officers of the centers.” In thesecond picture, we see a retrieved certificate
of appointment for Xia Hailong as the person

in charge of the Qingtian overseas Chinese
police service station in Stockholm for a periodof three years, stamped by the Qingtian Public
Security Bureau and signed by the Qingtianpolice bureau chief, which following Swedish
media scrutiny was removed from the websiteof the association in Stockholm but remains
available on its archived version.

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Central United Front Work Department website, 29 November 2017.

In November 2017, an article sourced fromthe Central United Front Work Department
website reports on the “selection and hiringof 19 Wenzhou overseas leaders with a strong
sense of responsibility, solid legal background,high overseas reputation, and enthusiasm forserving overseas Chinese as liaison officersof the Chinese Overseas Police Contact
Points”. It further goes on to cite the ambitionof “achieving a dedicated personnel service
model” for the police and overseas liaison
officers.

Sina.com, 1 July 2022.

The previously cited May 2022, Libao Town
(Haian County, Nantong City) initiative where“[…] the Libao Town United Front Work Office
and Town Police took the lead […] to establish
the Libao overseas Chinese police service
center in May 2022. […] exploring a new modelof ‘using overseas Chinese to govern overseas
Chinese, and police and overseas Chinese
linkage’, cites that at present: “Representativesof overseas Chinese and overseas students
have been hired in the United States, Australia,
South Korea and other places as overseas

liaison officers to cooperate with domestic
officers both internally and externally.”
The sources provided throughout thisinvestigation as well as numerous othersaccounts by authorities or state-owned orcontrolled media (see for example the 2020
commendation list of nine outstanding
overseas liaison officers from the Nantong
Public Security Bureau) further provide lists ofnames linked to the overseas stations which
may be of interest to local law enforcement
authorities investigating the matter.

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Ch 6. Involuntary Returns and Fox Hunt
The latest working report by the CCP’s Central
Commission for Disciplinary Inspection
published on October 27 of this year provides
new numbers on its overseas pursuit offugitives’ activities. Combined with prior data
released, between the start of operations in2014 and October 2022 over 11,000 successfulFox Hunt operations in 120 countries have beenconcluded. These are the type of operations
that have been targeted by FBI investigations
and three DOJ indictments over the past
years. So far, no other country in the world
has brought any known charges against suchoperations.

Central Commission for Disciplinary Inspection, 9 December 2021.

Repeated statements and statistics show thevast majority of those to be carried out throughillegal “persuasion to return” methods. See forexample a CCDI report in 2021, according towhich between January and November 2021,
operation Sky Net (of which Fox Hunt is partsince 2015) recovered a total of 1,114 “fugitives”,
in which only 13 requests for international law
enforcement cooperation and criminal justiceassistance were made. Similarly, data for 2018shows that only 17 persons where returned via
extraditions, out of a total of 1,335.

Southern Weekend, 21 August 2021.

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As a Shanghai Foreign Affairs official statedto Spanish newspaper El Correo in response
to our September investigation: “The bilateraltreaties are very cumbersome and Europe isreluctant to extradite to China. I don't see whatis wrong with pressuring criminals to facejustice…” Further statements and numbers
provided in this 2021 Southern Weekend
interview with Professor Ren Jianming echothat sentiment. Previous research by Safeguard
Defenders on available statistics shows that
only about 1% of “successful fugitive returns”
are the fruit of formal extradition proceedings.
The vast majority use one of the illegal
methods in below graphic, severely infringing
on other countries’ territorial and judicial
sovereignty, as well as universal human rights.
Local jurisdictions play an important role inpersuasion to return operations, as evidenced
by China Court in 2016:“Since the 18th National Congress of theCommunist Party of China, the Central
Committee has stepped up international
efforts to pursue fugitives, and deployed
and strengthened the prevention andcontrol of escape. […] The Central Office for
Pursuit and Fugitives, whose full name is
the Central Anti-Corruption Coordination
Group, includes the International Fugitive
Repatriation and Asset Recovery Office,established in 2014. It includes eight
member units, including the Central
Commission for Discipline Inspection, theSupreme Court, the Supreme People's
Procuratorate, the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, the Ministry of Public Security,
the Ministry of Security, the Ministry ofJustice, and the People's Bank of China.
Correspondingly, 31 provinces, autonomous
regions and cities have establishedprovincial offices for the pursuit offugitives.”
For more insight into the methodology of“persuasion to return” operations, operations
Sky Net and Fox Hunt, as well as the rolesof the Central Commission for Disciplinary
Inspection (or its state-front, the National
Commission of Supervision) and the Ministry
for Public Security, see Safeguard Defenders’
Involuntary Returns.

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The original investigation, 110 Overseas, exposed
China's massive campaign to "persuade" thoseaccused of fraud- and related crimes to return toChina, claiming to have returned some 230,000
people over 2021/2022, as well as the establishmentof a network of clandestine overseas Chinese police
service stations across five continents, run by selectlocal police forces in China. [A revised edition released
October 29 corrected an error, altered some text forcorrection, identified courtesy of Jeremy Daum, andadded further sources.]

The first comprehensive report on China’s Fox Huntand Sky Net operations, run by China’s Communist
Party’s anti-corruption watchdog CCDI and Chinese
Ministry of Public Security, aimed at forcing highvalue targets to return to China. At the time ofwriting, the Fox Hunt operation claims over 11,000
successful returns of purported “fugitives” from over
120 countries. As numbers show, most of them arerepatriated through “involuntary” return operations,
ranging from threats to - or detention of - family backin China, sending covert agents abroad to harass
targets in host countries, and direct kidnappings.

The first extensive report on China’s use of extradition
requests and how such extradition cooperation
violates international treaties and undermines the ruleof law commitments in the countries that cooperatewith them. It also maps how the PRC abuses
INTERPOL as part of its extradition-based manhunts
and how attempts at extradition often serve political
purposes. It also stands as a how-to manual on
effective ways to stop extraditions to the PRC for legal
practitioners.

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