In a recent report, the human rights group Safeguard Defenders, based in Madrid, revealed the existence of a second Chinese police station in New York City, in addition to the one that was previously mentioned, which was located above a noodle shop in Manhattan’s Chinatown.
The report also revealed that there was a branch in Los Angeles. The same organisation released a report the previous year that listed 100 covert Chinese police stations that were active across the world.
San Francisco, Houston, Nebraska, and Minnesota are among the other American cities that Safeguard Defenders has identified as having Chinese “overseas service stations” in addition to New York and Los Angeles. These stations are secretly operated by the Chinese Communist Party and are in charge of spying on Chinese nationals all around the world.
“We found at least four listed in the US by PRC (People’s Republic of China) public security authorities, plus flagged an additional four overseas Chinese service centres in the US set up by the UFWD networks responsible for manning the stations,” a spokeswoman for Safeguard Defenders told The Post on Tuesday.
A Chinese government agency called the United Front Work Department (UFWD) is in charge of handling racial and religious matters outside of Chinese territory. According to Safeguard Defenders’ findings, these police stations often act as non-profit organisations and community groups while their operatives allegedly perform espionage on dissidents and other people.
According to an article from The Post in October, the America ChangLe Association NY Inc., which owns the property at 107 East Broadway, served as the police station’s administrative body in Chinatown. According to records, the non-profit organisation, which defines itself as a “social gathering place for Fujianese people,” paid $1.3 million in 2016 to acquire the suite of offices at the East Broadway property where the Fuzhou Police Overseas Chinese Affairs branch was housed.
The nonprofit organisation hosted a gala dinner last year with Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City, as the special guest. On the mayor’s official agenda, this event was not made publicly known. The FBI detained two people on Monday, Harry Lu Jianwang, 61, of the Bronx, and Chen Jinping, 59, of Manhattan, for allegedly setting up the East Broadway station-based Fuzhou section of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security.
The two men, Harry Lu Jianwang and Chen Jinping, reportedly shut down the Fuzhou branch of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, which is located at the East Broadway station, last year after learning of a federal investigation into their actions, according to a statement from the US Department of Justice.
Lu and Chen “helped open and operate the clandestine police station while acting under the direction and control of an MPS (China’s Ministry of Public Security) Official,” according to the DOJ statement. “None of the scheme’s participants disclosed to the US government that they were assisting the PRC government in covertly establishing and running an MPS police station on US soil.”
