White House Condemns Chinese Regime’s Harassment, Threats Against US Citizens

The White House criticized the Chinese regime on Tuesday for running a secret police station in Manhattan’s Chinatown, warning that the U.S. government will not tolerate the regime’s assault on individuals on American soil.

“The U.S. government has been clear that we will use all available tools to protect American citizens and other U.S. persons from transnational repression and other forms of foreign malign influence,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a press conference on Tuesday.

“We will not tolerate the PRC government or any foreign government harassing or threatening U.S. persons,” she added.

The FBI arrested two men on April 17 on charges of operating a secret police station in the Chinatown district of Manhattan on behalf of the Chinese regime. Prosecutors said the individuals conspired to work as agents of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and follow the regime’s orders to track down and silence Chinese dissidents in the United States.

The secret police station in New York City is believed to be one of the Chinese regime’s more than 100 police outposts around the world.

The Department of Justice announced arrests and charges as a “significant national security matter.”

U.S. District Attorney Breon Peace stated that the arrests uncovered a massive violation of U.S. sovereignty by the CCP as well as a flagrant violation of international law.

“This prosecution reveals the Chinese government’s flagrant violation of our nation’s sovereignty by establishing a secret police station in the middle of New York City,” Peace said at a press conference on April 17 in Brooklyn. “Just imagine the NYPD opening an undeclared secret police station in Beijing.”

Peace added that the two defendants worked closely with China’s Ministry of Public Security to carry out transnational repression schemes in the United States.

China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Wang Wenbin, denied U.S. claims of a Chinese secret police station in New York City on Tuesday. Wang stated during a press conference that these alleged police stations do not exist and that China adheres to a policy of non-interference in other countries.

However, according to court documents, one of the defendants, Lu Jianwang, has been working for the CCP in the United States since at least 2015.

During Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s visit to the United States in 2015, Lu was instructed to organize counterprotests to the demonstrations from the spiritual group Falun Gong, which has been heavily persecuted in China since 1999.

The Chinese consulate in New York asked Lu to publish materials criticizing Falun Gong in newspapers, which he claimed he did not do. However, Lu stated that he assisted in transporting members of his organization to Washington on buses.

“Each association member would receive $60 from the consulate. Each bus would have a point of contact that would pay in cash from the Consulate,” he told the investigators, the complaint said. “People would not just travel from New York but also from Philadelphia. Several hundred people would go every time.”

Andrew Thornebrooke and Eva Fu contributed to this report.