A national security expert warned that there are more Chinese-run police stations operating in the United States than we think, Fox News reported on Monday.
"I suspect that number of six is actually low, that all these community centers have been dual-use because the Communist Party ethnically targets its own citizens and friends and family," America First Policy Institute senior fellow Steve Yates said on "Mornings with Maria" Monday.
Last week, the FBI arrested two men in New York City who were running a covert secret police station on behalf of the Chinese government. The men, identified as Lu Juanwang, 61—also known as Harry Lu—and Chen Jinping, were charged with conspiring to act as agents of the Chinese government and obstructing justice.
The police outpost is one of the hundreds operating around the world that China uses to spy and intimidate its citizens living abroad, as well as to get information on opponents of the Chinese Communist Party.
The police stations are a way for China to gain foreign policy advantage in another country, Yates added.
The arrest was the first time that criminal charges have been brought in connection to a covert police station related to China, said the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn.
"More troubling, though, is the fact that the secret police station appears to have had a more sinister use on at least one occasion," U.S. attorney Breon Peace said. "An official with the Chinese National Police directed one of the defendants – a U.S. citizen who worked at the secret police station – to help locate a pro-democracy activist of Chinese descent living in California. In other words, the Chinese national police appear to have been using the station to track a U.S. resident on U.S. soil."
Authorities believe there are more than 100 Chinese-run police stations in at least 53 countries, including the Netherlands, the UK, and Canada. China has denied that the outposts are police stations. Instead, Beijing claims that the offices exist to provide citizens services, such as acquiring driver’s licenses.
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