The glass-paned office building perched above a ramen store in the heart of Manhattan’s Chinatown looked inconspicuous on a busy block of Chinese restaurants, grocery stores and apartments.
In 2022, Lu Jianwang, the 64-year-old president of a Chinese community group, set up shop on one of the floors, creating a space where his attorneys said he planned to help expats renew their driver’s licences and play ping pong on a table in a conference room.
But it was not long before the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the space, and accused Lu of taking orders from the Chinese government to establish the first known overseas police station in the US.
This week, he was found guilty of acting as an unauthorised foreign agent for China, just days after a California politician pleaded guilty to similar offences.
Arcadia Mayor Eileen Wang admitted she posted propaganda on a website targeting the Chinese American community at the behest of the Chinese government.
The two convictions came in the same week that President Donald Trump headed to Beijing for a rare meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, where the two steered clear of topics like espionage and focused on trade.
But experts say the two cases in the US highlight the long-arm of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which has ramped up its attempts to peddle influence around the globe over the past decade, both through its strategic use of “soft power” – funding projects and industries overseas – as well as more covert means.
“It’s part of the same sort of strategic approach, which is to tamp down on dissent and to shape a clear narrative around the PRC, and to do that in bolder ways, as we’re seeing,” said Lauryn Williams, a deputy director with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which has tracked cases of Chinese espionage in the US since 2000.
Mahjong, ping pong and overseas ‘police stations’
Lu, who was supported by dozens of community members during his one-week trial in Brooklyn, could face up to 30 years in prison for the charges linked to the illegal police station.
China has been accused of setting up such stations around the world, with at least 100 reported across 53 countries. Just last week, a UK immigration officer was found guilty of working for Chinese intelligence as part of a “shadow policing operation”.
The Chinese government has at times denied that the stations exist or has described them as places where volunteers help their fellow Chinese citizens with administrative services.
“They are not so-called police stations or police service centres at all,” China’s Ministry of Public Security said in 2023. The BBC has contacted the Chinese Embassy in the US for comment.
A police investigation into “secret Chinese police stations” in London concluded that “no criminal activity” has taken place.
Lu – the 64-year-old president of the American Changle Association, a Chinese community group – argued he was simply trying to help people renew driver’s licenses and facilitate social activities like mahjong and ping pong.
“This isn’t ‘Spy Time’,” his lawyer, John Carman said, according to Courthouse News. “This is license renewal.”
But prosecutors say Lu used the office building for more nefarious purposes – keeping tabs on critics of China.
In one instance, prosecutors said Chinese officials asked Lu to help “verify” that a longtime critic of China, Xu Jie, who fled the country in 2013, was in the US.
Lu’s co-defendant, Chen Jinping, had already pleaded guilty to acting as an unauthorised foreign agent for helping set up the centre.
A ‘volume enterprise’ of espionage
China’s attempts to crack down on opposition is just one part of its overreaching espionage campaign abroad, including hacking, stealing military and technology secrets and other sensitive information, said Douglas London, a Georgetown University professor who worked as a CIA officer for 34 years.
For years, China has sought to exert influence abroad through a “vast bureaucracy and network” of resources, people and funding, said Lyle Morris, a senior fellow with the Asia Society Policy Institute.
China’s campaign of keeping tabs on dissidents around the world is motivated by the belief that criticism threatens the country’s stability, said Claire Chu, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub.
The Chinese government believes that dissent is actively supported by Western governments for the purpose of smearing China’s image, Morris said.
“China sees ulterior motives when Western countries provide platforms for Chinese dissidents who harshly criticize the Chinese government, and doesn’t buy the argument that such voices are part of a healthy democracy based on free speech,” he said.
The country uses a number of harassment and bullying strategies to silence dissidents, Morris added, including tracking people’s cell phones or even recruiting dissidents to spy on their friends. He added that it can be dangerous for those who still have family left in China who are more vulnerable to intimidation from the government.
For decades, Beijing has also sought to cultivate relationships with so-called “talents” across the US government and business community, Chu said.
The Chinese government targeted Wang, the Arcadia mayor, who pleaded guilty this week to taking orders from Chinese officials to publish pro-China content.
Prosecutors say she published an essay arguing that there was no genocide in the Xinjiang province of China and “no such thing as forced labour”. China has faced mounting criticism from around the world over its treatment of the mostly Muslim Uyghur population in the north-western Xinjiang autonomous region, where there is evidence of millions of Uyghurs being held in camps subjected to forced labour. China says the are for “re-education” purposes only.
These types of cases pose a challenge for US prosecutors, because there are so many of them, and they require years of work and resources to prove, espionage experts said.
China views espionage as a “volume enterprise”, London said.
US prosecutors may continue to focus on going after the most egregious cases abroad, but they are unlikely to put a stop to China’s activity, experts said.
“Obviously with these cases just this week, I don’t think we’re seeing a downtick here,” Williams said.