Italy hosts the largest number of unofficial Chinese “police stations” out of more than 100 around the world, a report by a Spanish civil rights group claims.
Two local Chinese public security authorities allegedly used the northern Italian city of Milan as a European testing ground for a police strategy to monitor overseas Chinese residents and force dissidents to return home.
Madrid-based Safeguard Defenders reported in September that 54 such stations were located around the world, prompting police investigations in at least 12 countries, including Canada, Germany and the Netherlands.
in Report Posted Monday, the civil rights group said it has identified 48 additional stations, 11 of which are in Italy. She added that other newly identified stations are in Croatia, Serbia and Romania.
Italian stops are in Rome, Milan, Bolzano, Venice, Florence, Prato – a town near Florence that hosts the largest Chinese community in Italy – and Sicily.
China said the offices are just “service stations” set up to help Chinese citizens with bureaucratic procedures such as renewing a passport or driver’s license.
The Safeguard Defenders investigation was based on publicly available Chinese statements and data, and was limited to stations set up by local Chinese public security authorities in countries with a large Chinese community.
Safeguard Defenders claimed that while the stations were not being run directly by Beijing, “some statements and policies are beginning to show clearer guidance from the central government in encouraging their establishment and policies.”
The civil rights group claims that unofficial police stations are used by China to “harass, threaten, intimidate, and coerce targets into returning to China for persecution.”
The group says it has evidence of intimidation – as opposed to the official channel of extradition – being used to coerce people from Italy back home, including against a factory worker accused of embezzling money who returned to China after 13 years in Italy and disappeared without trace.
“We monitor Chinese data and in April we came across information from the Ministry of Information which showed 210,000 people had been persuaded to return in just one year,” said Laura Harth, campaign director at Safeguard Defenders.
Some of those forced to return home have included targets in Operation Fox Hunt, a campaign launched by China’s president, Xi Jinping, apparently to hunt down corrupt officials who have fled abroad.
Home to 330,000 Chinese citizens, according to 2021 figures from the national statistics agency Istat, Italy is fertile ground for potential Beijing’s influence due to the myriad agreements between the two countries. Among them is a joint police patrol scheme, first signed in 2015, under which Chinese police would patrol Italian cities for temporary periods, ostensibly to help Chinese tourists.
According to the report, the first unofficial Chinese police station in Italy was set up as a “pilot” in Milan by the Public Security Agency in Wenzhou in May 2016, when the Tourist Assistance Squad made its debut in Italy. Wenzhou went on to establish headquarters in Prato and Paris. In 2018, shortly after the police patrol deal was strengthened, Qingtian Public Security also set up a “trial” office in Milan.
“The fact that the Chinese local authorities were able to use these terminals as pilots in Italy is absolutely appalling,” Harth said.
In a statement to Il Foglio in September, Italy’s Interior Ministry, which at the time was under Mario Draghi’s government, said the alleged unofficial Chinese police stations were “not of particular interest”.
Before assuming power in October, Giorgia Meloni, the current Italian prime minister, was staunchly anti-Chinese.
The report notes that “despite the presence of the largest number of settlement contact points on its territory, the Italian government is among the very few European countries that have not yet announced an investigation into Chinese police stations abroad or declared them illegal.”
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