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AROUND THE WORLD
GLOBAL POLICE STATE — According to a recent report from the not-for-profit watchdog Safeguard Defenders, the Chinese government is conducting surveillance on protesters even beyond the country’s borders. The Madrid-based organization, which has published many reports on human rights abuses in China, says that Beijing runs “overseas police stations” in more than 100 cities worldwide, including New York and Los Angeles.
As protests have sprung up across China over continued zero-Covid measures, Chinese citizens living abroad have also voiced their frustration with the CCP, attending rallies or posting on social media about the situation in China.
POLITICO’s Minho Kim spoke with four Chinese expats who have attended protests or posted on their social media accounts about zero-Covid measures in China. Jinrey Zhang and Yiruo Zhang are law school students at Georgetown University; Dayan Li is Yiruo Zhang’s husband; Bella Kong attends a liberal arts college in the South and runs a pro-democracy channel called “What’s Up Beijing” on Instagram. All of them expressed fear of the CCP’s surveillance state, despite being thousands of miles away. Some of those interviewed are using pseudonyms for fear of retribution from the Chinese government.
Bella Kong: I wasn’t too surprised, but it got me very scared. I knew that there were secret agents here, but I didn’t know they could be so public. At first, I thought it might be some conspiracy theory on China, but there are public reports on this. I found their official accounts on the Chinese Internet talking about their achievements.
Dayan Li: Such surveillance teams were always here. A few years ago, an NYPD officer was charged with espionage for collecting information on Tibetans. All major American universities have CSSA, Chinese Student and Scholars’ Association, whose members host events for newcomers but also collect information and report to the Chinese embassy.
Jinrey Zhang: CSSA students behave like Chinese bureaucrats. They get money from the embassy and curry favor with the officials. They are encouraged to report the identities of those who attend anti-government protests. Last Monday, while distributing flyers, I was rebuked by a pro-CCP student on Georgetown’s campus. He called me “the scum of the Earth” and “a traitor” and asked me how much money I am taking from the U.S. government, which is none. He was on a video call and tried to broadcast my face to his friends in China.
Yiruo Zhang: They are everyday students sitting next to you in class, but you never know who’s going to report your information. This uncertainty creates fear. Even in America, you know for certain that there are people watching you.
Li: It’s like the panopticon. You know the cameras are always there.
What do you fear the most, living in the U.S. as a Chinese national?
J. Zhang: I fear that they are going to arrest me once I’m back home, even before customs. The Chinese government runs a database of your photos on national IDs, and the face-recognition technology can now detect those with face masks. I protested twice this year, in front of the Chinese embassy. The sheer number of cameras there made me absolutely terrified. So I put on my jacket hood and face mask, and then tried to lower my hair to not let the cameras catch [who I am].
Kong: If my identity is revealed, my parents would be under surveillance. Their social circle will be notified, isolating them and making them feel very unsafe. I know my father’s work would be jeopardized, since he works with those at state-owned enterprises. If they are renting, their landlords might expel them. If they are in desperate need of a job, they might not find one. Imagine your closest ones being threatened of their livelihood. Their passports might be suspended, too, and I might not see them again.
J. Zhang: The Chinese government also checks Twitter, Facebook and Instagram all the time. Last year, a Chinese student studying in Minnesota was arrested after he got home, because he posted on Twitter a photo of him wearing this t-shirt that reads “Xi Jinping is an idiot.” God knows what happens in Chinese prison, because there’s no due process. There’s a lot of torture. That is the ultimate fear of us all.
Li: I know friends who posted things on Twitter and had their family contacted by National Security officers. What they usually do is to show the muscle, instead of beating you in the face. They like to remind you that you’re a Chinese citizen and need to abide by the laws back home, no matter where you go.
