The government's reach is everywhere, even in exile.
In the same week an American president sat across from Xi Jinping in Beijing, two convictions quietly illuminated what diplomatic pleasantries leave unspoken: that China has built a vast and patient architecture for reaching into the lives of its citizens abroad, monitoring dissent, and shaping the stories told about its government. A Manhattan community leader and a California mayor — separated by a continent but bound by the same chain of command — were found to have served Beijing from within American institutions. These cases are not aberrations but windows into a campaign that experts say is not slowing down, but accelerating.
- A jury convicted a 64-year-old Chinatown community figure of running an illegal Chinese police station on American soil, while a sitting California mayor pleaded guilty to publishing state-directed propaganda — both in the same week.
- The two cases cracked open a much larger reality: China has planted at least 100 such covert stations across 53 countries, using them to track dissidents, verify their locations, and suppress criticism of Beijing from thousands of miles away.
- For Chinese diaspora communities, the threat is intimate — family members still living in China are leveraged as pressure points, and informants are seeded into social networks to monitor those who speak out.
- American prosecutors face a near-impossible arithmetic: each case demands years of investigation and enormous resources, while the underlying apparatus operates at a scale and speed that individual convictions cannot match.
- Experts warn that far from being deterred, China's influence operations appear to be expanding with the calculated confidence of an institution that has already weighed the cost of exposure and accepted it.
Above a ramen shop in Manhattan's Chinatown, Lu Jianwang told his community he was opening a service center — a place to renew licenses, play ping pong, stay connected. When the FBI raided it in 2022, they alleged something else entirely: that Lu, president of a Chinese-American community organization, had been operating the first known illegal Chinese police station on American soil. This week, a jury found him guilty of acting as an unauthorized foreign agent, with a potential sentence of thirty years.
Days earlier and across the country, Eileen Wang, the mayor of Arcadia, California, pleaded guilty to publishing pro-China propaganda at the direction of Chinese government officials — essays denying the genocide in Xinjiang and the existence of forced labor camps, claims that contradict extensive documented evidence. The two convictions arrived in the same week President Trump traveled to Beijing for talks with Xi Jinping, a summit that made no mention of espionage.
These cases are not isolated. Researchers have documented at least 100 such overseas police stations operating across 53 countries. Beijing has alternately denied their existence and described them as volunteer administrative centers. Prosecutors say Lu's station was used to monitor critics and help locate a dissident who had fled to the US in 2013. His co-defendant had already admitted to helping establish it.
Former CIA officer Douglas London describes China's espionage network as a 'volume enterprise' — a sprawling bureaucracy operating globally with enormous resources. Claire Chu of the Atlantic Council argues that Beijing views criticism of its government as an existential threat, and has built an infrastructure to neutralize it abroad. That infrastructure includes propaganda, informant networks, phone tracking, and the coercion of family members still living in China — a particularly effective lever against diaspora communities.
For American law enforcement, the scale of the problem outpaces the capacity to address it. Each prosecution requires years of work, and experts say the US will inevitably focus only on the most visible offenses. The deeper campaign, they warn, shows no sign of contracting. If anything, the boldness of these operations suggests an apparatus that has calculated the risk of exposure — and decided it is worth taking.
Above a ramen shop in Manhattan's Chinatown, in a glass-walled office building indistinguishable from the dozens of other storefronts lining the block, Lu Jianwang opened what he said would be a community service center. The 64-year-old president of the American Changle Association, a Chinese community organization, told people he wanted to help expats renew driver's licenses and set up a ping pong table in the conference room. It sounded ordinary. It was not.
When the FBI raided the space in 2022, they alleged Lu had been taking orders from Beijing to establish what would become the first known overseas Chinese police station operating on American soil. This week, a jury found him guilty of acting as an unauthorized foreign agent. His sentence could reach thirty years. Days earlier, across the country in California, Eileen Wang, the mayor of Arcadia, pleaded guilty to her own espionage charge—she had published propaganda on websites targeting Chinese Americans, all at the direction of Chinese government officials. The two convictions arrived in the same week President Trump traveled to Beijing for talks with Xi Jinping, a meeting that notably sidestepped the subject of espionage entirely.
These cases are not anomalies. They are evidence of something far larger: a systematic campaign by China to extend its reach into diaspora communities worldwide, to monitor dissidents, and to shape narratives about the Chinese government across the globe. Experts who track such activity say the past decade has seen Beijing dramatically escalate these efforts, deploying both the soft machinery of influence—funding, cultural projects, strategic partnerships—and the harder tools of coercion and surveillance. According to researchers at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which has documented Chinese espionage cases in the US since 2000, what we are seeing is part of a coherent strategy: suppress dissent, control the narrative, and do it more boldly than before.
The overseas police stations are perhaps the most visible symbol of this reach. China has established at least one hundred such facilities across fifty-three countries, according to available reports. The Chinese government has alternately denied their existence and described them as volunteer-run administrative centers where citizens can handle paperwork. When pressed, Beijing's Ministry of Public Security stated flatly in 2023: "They are not so-called police stations or police service centres at all." Yet the evidence suggests otherwise. Lu's operation, prosecutors argued, was designed to monitor critics of China. In one instance, Chinese officials asked him to help "verify" the location of Xu Jie, a longtime government critic who had fled to the United States in 2013. Lu's co-defendant, Chen Jinping, had already admitted to helping establish the center.
The machinery behind these operations is vast. Douglas London, a former CIA officer who spent thirty-four years in the agency and now teaches at Georgetown University, describes China's espionage apparatus as a "volume enterprise"—a sprawling network of bureaucracies, resources, and personnel deployed across the world. Lyle Morris, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, notes that Beijing has cultivated what amounts to an enormous infrastructure for exerting influence abroad. The motivation, according to Claire Chu of the Atlantic Council's Global China Hub, stems from a fundamental belief: that criticism of the Chinese government threatens the country's stability, and that Western democracies actively support dissidents as part of a campaign to damage China's reputation.
Wang, the Arcadia mayor, became a target because she had access and reach. Prosecutors say she was directed to publish essays denying genocide in Xinjiang and the existence of forced labor there—claims that contradict extensive evidence of mass detention camps holding millions of Uyghurs. The campaign against dissidents extends beyond propaganda. Morris describes a toolkit of harassment: phone tracking, recruitment of informants, intimidation of family members still living in China. For those with relatives back home, the pressure is particularly acute. The Chinese government has learned that threatening vulnerable family members can be an effective way to silence critics abroad.
These prosecutions pose a puzzle for American law enforcement. The sheer volume of cases makes them difficult to pursue. Each requires years of investigation and substantial resources to build. Experts say the US is likely to focus on the most egregious offenses, but this approach will not stop the underlying campaign. As Lauryn Williams of the Center for Strategic and International Studies observed this week, there is no sign of a downturn. If anything, the cases suggest the opposite: that China's apparatus for monitoring, influencing, and controlling its diaspora is not contracting but expanding, operating with the confidence of an institution that has calculated the cost of getting caught and decided the risk is worth taking.
Citações Notáveis
It's part of the same sort of strategic approach, which is to tamp down on dissent and to shape a clear narrative around the PRC, and to do that in bolder ways.— Lauryn Williams, Center for Strategic and International Studies
China sees ulterior motives when Western countries provide platforms for Chinese dissidents who harshly criticize the Chinese government, and doesn't buy the argument that such voices are part of a healthy democracy based on free speech.— Lyle Morris, Asia Society Policy Institute
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why does China care so much about what Chinese people living abroad think or say?
Because Beijing sees dissent as a threat to its legitimacy. If millions of Chinese citizens abroad can speak freely and criticize the government without consequence, it undermines the narrative that the government controls. It also suggests to people still in China that criticism is possible.
But these are people who have already left. They're not in China anymore.
That's exactly the problem, from Beijing's perspective. They're proof that you can live outside the system and survive. They're also often the ones with platforms—journalists, activists, academics—who can reach audiences back home through the internet, through family networks. And they have family still there, which makes them vulnerable.
So the overseas police stations—they're not really about helping people renew licenses?
That's the cover story. The actual function is surveillance and control. They gather intelligence on dissidents, they intimidate people, they create a sense that the government's reach is everywhere. It's psychological as much as practical.
Why hasn't the US government shut this down more aggressively?
Resources, partly. Each case takes years to build. But also, China operates at such scale—what prosecutors call a "volume enterprise"—that even convicting people like Lu doesn't slow the overall operation. It's like arresting one person in a massive organization. The organization keeps functioning.
What happens to people like Xu Jie, the critic Lu was asked to locate?
They live with constant awareness that they're being watched. Their movements are tracked. Their families back home may face pressure. It's a form of control that doesn't require arrest—just the knowledge that you're never truly safe from the reach of the government you fled.