Internal Security with a “Global Vision”: China’s Transnational Law Enforcement in Europe

Latvian Institute for International Affairs*, Raina Nelson, Stanford Global Internships intern at the China Studies Centre at Riga Stradins University, August 2024
* Note: The following paper is a shortened version of a longer paper by Raina Nelson that will be published in the December 2024 issue of the Socrates journal of law.

Introduction

In February of this year, following a meeting between China’s Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Interior Minister Sándor Pintér, the two nations signed an agreement to cooperate on judicial and internal security matters — in essence, paving the way for Chinese-Hungarian joint police patrols and law enforcement cooperation on Hungarian soil. While not unprecedented, this agreement appeared worryingly deep and far-reaching, prompting the European Commission to submit an official inquiry on whether to launch an infringement procedure against Hungary. In April, the EU Parliament debated the issue, with all speakers agreeing that this agreement amounted to a form of foreign interference from the Chinese government.

Hungary may be the most recent example of Chinese influence on domestic European security issues, but it is not the only one. China employs various mechanisms to interfere with and influence European internal security, ranging from conducting joint police patrols, to establishing Chinese police stations on European territory, to prosecuting an aggressive anti-corruption campaign on EU soil with suspicious if not outright illegal methods.

China’s use of unilateral transnational repression through the Operation Fox Hunt anti-corruption campaign and police cooperation agreements throughout Europe represents a strategic effort to globalize the Chinese internal security apparatus and reshape the existing liberal international order in favor of an illiberal one to promote and secure the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) regime security in concert with the CCP’s national security strategy.

Part I: A National Security Strategy or a Regime Security Strategy?

China’s national security strategy is fundamentally an internal security strategy. Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime security and political stability are not just prerequisites for national security, they are national security. Consequently, China’s foreign policy largely aims to strengthen regime security and CCP control. Thus, nontraditional national security threats such as dissent and political instability receive heightened attention. In the 2014 Overall National Security Concept, China’s guiding document on national security strategy, Xi Jinping highlighted the centrality of the Party in Chinese national security, directing the government to respect the primacy of political security in national security decision making (政治安全放在首要位置). In line with this emphasis, Xi urged all national security agencies to develop a “global vision,” indicating his intent to globalize China’s national security strategy — in other words, globalize a strategy of regime security.

How therefore, does China conduct its foreign policy? Under Xi Jinping, China has begun to globalize its internal security apparatus to protect state and Party power, including using law enforcement cooperation to expand its influence and power. In other words, unlike the United States, which seeks to be an external security partner through arms sales, formalized mutual defense treaties, or overseas bases, China seeks to become an internal security partner. Through agreements including joint patrols, training agreements, and expansive bilateral extradition treaties, China can effectively enforce its judicial system beyond its border in service to regime security.

Although China claims that their rationale for international law enforcement cooperation lies in a desire for a “shared future for human security (人类安全命运共同体)” and “win-win cooperation (共赢),” the evidence suggests a more cynical, or at least more calculated rationale. China exports its internal security apparatus and seeks law enforcement cooperation to bolster domestic political stability and regime legitimacy. Because this is the basis of their national security and power projection strategy, these principles guide their decision making in public security cooperation.

Part II: Operation Fox Hunt and Transnational Repression

In Europe, China has attempted to globalize CCP regime security through Operation Fox Hunt, an anti-corruption campaign that has evolved into a campaign of transnational repression of dissent and extrajudicial enforcement of Chinese domestic law abroad.

Operation Fox Hunt (猎狐专项行动) is an anti-corruption campaign launched in 2014 by Xi Jinping, ostensibly to root out corruption within the Chinese government and civil society. Initially branded as a campaign to arrest “fugitive economic crime suspects (缉捕逃经济犯罪嫌疑人)” abroad, this often translates to purging and imprisoning political dissidents and individuals deemed a threat to Party rule, making Fox Hunt a quasi-legal unilateral transnational repression campaign.

The scale of the operation is massive, with reports indicating Fox Hunt has led to the capture and arrest of over 12,000 targets. According to PRC documents, the Chinese government employs five methods to conduct Operation Fox Hunt and bring targets back to China, ranging from extradition (引渡) to persuasion (劝返) to kidnapping (绑架). Yes, even “kidnapping” (绑架) is publically laid out as a valid mechanism to prosecute corruption crimes, a strategy that has been used, for instance, in 2016, when Chinese special ops are alleged to have kidnapped a Chinese dissident from Thailand. However, evidence shows that persuasion is the most common strategy used by Chinese officials — a strategy employed frequently in Europe.

There is a certain art to this persuasion. After all, Chinese law enforcement is attempting to effectively persuade targets to abandon their free life in favor of returning to certain prison time.

How does China manage to successfully undertake this persuasion? While there are Chinese government media accounts of these operations, they cannot be trusted to detail persuasion tactics accurately. Nonetheless, both Chinese reports and Western investigative reporting reveal that China often uses the targets’ relatives as coercion tools.

For instance, Zhou x-Hong, wanted in China for alleged embezzlement of public funds, was persuaded to return to China from France by a dedicated persuasion by a Chinese “fugitive pursuit task force (追逃专案组办案).” They convinced Zhou’s son-in-law, and later, Zhou’s daughter, to assist in the persuasion, praising both for their patriotism. Ultimately, the committee resorted to direct threat, telling Zhou that “the Party… has woven a global anti-corruption ‘Skynet’... If you flee, you must be pursued to the end, even if you flee to the ends of the earth (党... 编织了全球反腐'天网'，有逃必追，一追到底，哪怕逃到天涯海角也要追回来).” This story is played out over and over across Europe. Zhou Wen Hai in France, Mao X in Italy, and Zhu Luxin in Italy are just three examples of China using family members to help persuade Chinese citizens to return. In many cases, family members are used illegally as pawns. Family members are often threatened, blocked from leaving the country, or held hostage, all of which explicitly violate international laws and norms.

Beyond the questionable legality of China’s tactics, there are questions about China’s targets. While some targets are Chinese citizens accused of financial crimes, others are political dissidents that the Party seeks to imprison. In other words, Fox Hunt is a regime security campaign masquerading as an anti-corruption campaign. Operation Fox Hunt exemplifies how China projects and globalizes its internal security apparatus and strategy abroad to protect its regime. This is not the only way it achieves this goal.

Part III: Bilateral and Multilateral Global Law Enforcement Cooperation

The second major way that China has begun to globalize its internal security apparatus to strengthen CCP regime security is through joint-police patrols and law enforcement cooperation with European nations. These actions serve many purposes. Crucially, by shifting the international order to reflect a more illiberal Chinese model, China is able to contribute to the globalization of its internal security apparatus and legitimize CCP internal security measures and repression. The following four mechanisms of globalization of law enforcement are used throughout Europe:

1. Joint patrols. Typically, following a bilateral law enforcement agreement between China and a European nation, a small delegation of Chinese police officers will join their European counterparts in patrols of major tourist sites. The stated goal of the program is to help make European tourist destinations more welcoming and safe for Chinese tourists, but questions have been raised as to whether there are ulterior motives. These joint patrols have been seen in many European countries, including Serbia, Croatia, Italy, and Hungary. The Italian joint patrols were recently suspended following reports that Chinese police officers in Italy were assisting in intelligence gathering efforts to target Chinese nationals on Italian soil, in violation of international norms about state sovereignty.

2. Police stations. This campaign by the Chinese government is certainly less of a “cooperation.” In fact, following a bombshell report by Safeguard Defenders in 2022 that found at least 36 Chinese police stations operating on the European continent assisting in quasi-legal transnational repression campaigns, many nations investigated and shut them down. Some stations are used to assist in China’s transnational repression campaigns, including Fox Hunt persuasion tactics, while others are used to harass Chinese dissidents — in other words, bolstering efforts seen as crucial to strengthening Chinese internal security and regime security.

3. Surveillance technology sales. A recent investigation by Radio Free Europe found that two state-owned Chinese surveillance companies, Dahua and Hikvision, are dominating the surveillance markets of Hungary, Serbia, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Bulgaria, and Georgia. These surveillance cameras are being used at sensitive sights, including at Deveselu, the base home to NATO's Aegis Ashore land-based missile-defense system. While not necessarily a direct threat, surveillance cameras can be hacked, and like with any Chinese company, there is concern that surveillance tech companies could be compelled to share data with the Chinese government.

4. Interpol. In 2015, China released a list of 100 Chinese citizens overseas they were targeting to return to China for prosecution, in a move that has been seen as political and an abuse of the Interpol Red Notice system.

These four types of law enforcement globalization are mechanisms by which China seeks to strengthen its internal security, and thus, serve its national security strategy. These four tactics serve this mission in a number of ways. Overall, these tactics amount to a globalization of the CCP regime's security apparatus and an attempt to reshape the international order in China’s illiberal image, a strategy that also serves to strengthen China’s internal security.

China advocates for a reformed international order based not on liberal ideas of rule of law, accountability, respect for human rights, and the supremacy of individual liberty, but instead on state control and political stability. By bolstering transnational repression campaigns such as Fox Hunt and legitimizing domestic repression practices, these four law enforcement globalization tactics strengthen regime security for China. Joint patrols and sales of surveillance technology, for instance, could potentially normalize repressive forms of law enforcement conduct, including extensive surveillance and tight control over public spaces — by operating alongside European police, nations are lending credence to these methods of maintaining order. Similarly, cooperating with European nations increases the CCP’s international legitimacy and prestige. It allows China to portray itself as a responsible global player with effective and desirable internal security measures, which can help it deflect criticism about its human rights record — after all, it becomes harder to criticize a repressive Chinese police state when you cooperate with or rely on that state for internal security. In other words, China builds an illiberal international order precisely because it weakens international criticism of the CCP’s domestic repression and human rights record, meaning the CCP will face fewer challenges to its legitimacy and control.

Conclusion

These transnational repression campaigns and efforts to globalize internal security constitute a departure from liberal Western principles of justice and rule of law. Not only do China’s unilateral transnational policing efforts violate norms and treaties concerning state sovereignty over law enforcement, but even “cooperation” agreements have the potential to promote an illiberal vision of world order that departs from Europe’s values.These tactics are part of a larger playbook by China to globalize its internal security apparatus to protect regime security in line with its greater national security strategy.

And we cannot expect these actions to subside anytime soon. After all, these efforts, which aim to strengthen CCP rule and internal security, are fundamental components of Chinese national security strategy.

With the latest expansion of these efforts in Hungary, the EU Parliament is rightly concerned. It appears unclear how the EU and EU-adjacent nations will respond, but China does not appear eager to end any of its practices. Following the EU debate on China-Hungary law enforcement cooperation, a Chinese online media platform Tao News published an article saying asking:

“The international police cooperation of Chinese police will become more and more extensive… What else can the West… do except feel uncomfortable? (中国警察的国际警务合作会越来越广泛... 美西除了难受，又能怎么样呢?)”

China seems unfazed by the discomfort its practices cause, but Europe should not be unfazed by it too. Perhaps this discomfort can spark a necessary conversation on the future of international security cooperation, a cooperation that ensures peace, security, and liberty for all. 

This article is being published within the LIIA Asia Research Programme.