You tell me? Sinocism has the American story.
As alleged, the officers worked with Beijing’s MPS bureau and are or were assigned to an elite task force called the “912 Special Project Working Group” (the Group). The purpose of the Group is to target Chinese dissidents located throughout the world, including in the United States.
“As alleged, the PRC government deploys its national police and the 912 Special Project Working Group not as an instrument to uphold the law and protect public safety, but rather as a troll farm that attacks persons in our country for exercising free speech in a manner that the PRC government finds disagreeable, and also spreads propaganda whose sole purpose is to sow divisions within the United States,” said U.S. Attorney Breon Peace for the Eastern District of New York. “I commend the investigative team for comprehensively revealing the insidiousness of a state-directed criminal scheme directed at residents of the United States.”
The complaint alleges how members of the Group created thousands of fake online personas on social media sites, including Twitter, to target Chinese dissidents through online harassment and threats. These online personas also disseminated official PRC government propaganda and narratives to counter the pro-democracy speech of the Chinese dissidents. As alleged, for example, Group members created and maintained the fake social media accounts through temporary email addresses, posted official PRC government content, and interacted with other online users to avoid the appearance that the Group accounts were “flooding” a given social media platform. The Group tracks the performances of members in fulfilling their online responsibilities and rewards Group members who successfully operate multiple online personas without detection by the social media companies who host the platforms or by other users of the platforms.
The investigation also uncovered official MPS taskings to Group members to compose articles and videos based on certain themes targeting, for example, the activities of Chinese dissidents located abroad or the policies of the U.S. government.
As alleged, the defendants also attempted to recruit U.S. persons to act as unwitting agents of the PRC government by disseminating propaganda or narratives of the PRC government. On several occasions, the defendants used online personas to contact individuals assessed to be sympathetic and supportive of the PRC government’s narratives and asked these individuals to disseminate Group content.
In addition, Group members took repeated affirmative actions to have Chinese dissidents and their meetings removed from the platform of Company-1 [Bill: This is Zoom; there is a superseding indictment in here from the previous indictment]. For example, Group members disrupted a dissident’s efforts to commemorate the Tiananmen Square Massacre through a videoconference by posting threats against the participants through the platform’s chat function. In another Company-1 videoconference on the topic of countering communism organized by a PRC dissident, Group members flooded the videoconference and drowned out the meeting with loud music and vulgar screams and threats directed at the pro-democracy participants.
The full complaint, in PDF, is quite a read.
F.B.I. Arrests Two on Charges Tied to Chinese Police Outpost in NYC – The New York Times
In 2018 IRS filings, Mr. Lu was listed as the president of a nonprofit organization called the America Changle Association NY, whose offices housed the police outpost. A criminal complaint unsealed on Monday said that the group was formed in 2013 and lists its charitable mission as a “social gathering place” for people from the Chinese city of Fuzhou. The complaint says Mr. Lu serves as the association’s general adviser and Mr. Chen as its secretary general.
Mr. Lu and Mr. Chen were charged with obstruction of justice and accused of destroying text messages between themselves and their handler at China’s Ministry of Public Security, the nation’s intelligence, security and secret police, in October 2022, around the time of the F.B.I. search.
As alleged in the complaint, Lu and Chen are charged with conspiring to act as agents of the PRC government as well as obstructing justice by destroying evidence of their communications with an MPS official. The defendants worked together to establish the first overseas police station in the United States on behalf of the Fuzhou branch of the MPS. The police station – which closed in the fall of 2022 after those operating it became aware of the FBI’s investigation – occupied a floor in an office building in Manhattan’s Chinatown. While acting under the direction and control of an MPS Official, Lu and Chen helped open and operate the clandestine police station. None of the participants in the scheme informed the U.S. government that they were helping the PRC government surreptitiously open and operate an illegal MPS police station on U.S. soil.
“The PRC, through its repressive security apparatus, established a secret physical presence in New York City to monitor and intimidate dissidents and those critical of its government,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. “The PRC’s actions go far beyond the bounds of acceptable nation-state conduct. We will resolutely defend the freedoms of all those living in our country from the threat of authoritarian repression.”
“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,” said U.S. Attorney Breon Peace for the Eastern District of New York. “As alleged, the defendants and their co-conspirators were tasked with doing the PRC’s bidding, including helping locate a Chinese dissident living in the United States, and obstructed our investigation by deleting their communications. Such a police station has no place here in New York City – or any American community.”
In Australia, we do their dirty work for them.
These activities are very likely underway in Australia to keep the Chinese diaspora voting for China favourable policy. From Bang Xiao at the ABC.
A few acquaintances of mine decided to give up their Chinese citizenship before last year’s federal election after living on permanent visas for more than a decade.
Their purpose was simple — it meant they could vote.
…almost all of them voted for the Labor in recent federal and state elections, in New South Wales and Victoria’s by-election.
…Aston has one of the biggest Chinese-Australian communities in Victoria, with more than 22,500 Chinese residents, or about 14 per cent of the electorate’s population.
…It came a week after Labor won the state election in NSW, with Premier Chris Minns’s electorate Kogarah witnessing a massive 18.4 per cent swing to the Labor party.
Kogarah has around 29,000 residents with a Chinese background, and it is the location of one of the biggest Chinese-Australian communities in the country.
The top 10 electorates in NSW in terms of Chinese ancestry all saw big swings to Labor.
…Many Chinese-Australians migrated here for democracy and freedom, but they are often lumped into binary stereotypes — either brainwashed supporters of the CCP or anti-Beijing activists.
…voting in Australia is a silent ballot — and they used their votes to ask for a change.
Note that no pollie in Canberra is openly hawkish on China anymore. They are all busy courting this vote.
But is it coerced, as appears to be the case in the US?
If so, then the Chinese police are now running Canberra…
