"In the last year, we have convinced 210,000 compatriots to return," said Vice Minister of Public Security of China Du Hangwei on April 14, 2022. Seen this way, it seems that there are so many benefits of Xi Jinping's regime, that those citizens who decided to leave China return by their will when in reality they were brought by force.
An estimated 540 million surveillance cameras are installed in China. This is equivalent to one for every three or four citizens. A Big Brother of colossal dimensions.
Its controlling eye extends beyond its borders, however. According to the international organization Safeguard Defenders, China operates more than 100 secret police stations spread across 53 countries to monitor its citizens in exile.
In South America, dependencies were surveyed in Quito, Guayaquil, Viña del Mar, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Buenos Aires.
As is traditional, the Chinese government emphatically denied its existence, contradicting the statement of the Qingtian police authority, which said it was "proud of the work of the foreign police, which ranges from helping compatriots with paperwork to gathering intelligence."
To get the exiles to return to China, they are threatened with the abolition of subsidies to their relatives, the prohibition of their children from schools and even attempts were made to force the inner circle to vacate their homes to be auctioned or demolished. Other warnings include controls, restrictions and freezing of the bank accounts of their relatives, and even the identification with aerosol of their homes with the inscription "House of Fraud".
A resounding case is that of Wang Jingyu, a Chinese political dissident exiled in the Netherlands. "They told me to go to the overseas police station in Rotterdam to turn myself in and to think about my parents who live in China. I didn't think it was real, how could there be a Chinese police station here?" said Wang to CNN.
Since 2019, China has been passing legislation with extraterritorial application. On September 2, 2022, it enacted the Law against Internet and Telecommunications Fraud, applicable in the country and abroad.
This rule is a reinforcement of the so-called "Fox Hunt", the name of the campaign promoted by Xi Jinping to return dissidents around the world to the country, with the excuse that they face a judicial process for their crimes.
Beijing also established nine countries that it identifies as related to fraud and where Chinese citizens cannot stay "without a reason that justifies it" or travel freely. Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Laos, Cambodia, the Philippines and Indonesia are the nations singled out and victims, too, of these pressures by the Chinese regime.
Canada was the first country to formally initiate investigations into clandestine police stations in its territory. The investigations are directed to the possible existence of three units in Toronto and for that purpose, they asked the public to provide information about it along with any type of threat or intimidation related to the activities in these centers. "It is an outrageous and brazen intrusion, especially since Beijing admitted that these police stations exist and confirmed their location," said Canadian MP Michael Chong.
It is to be hoped that the Argentine government will also take action on the matter in the face of these violations of sovereignty and human rights.
