The latest paper was presented at a conference hosted by the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), a gathering of 52 cross-party lawmakers from 30 countries that campaigns for a more coordinated response to the Chinese Communist Party. Policymakers raised numerous concerns at the event in The Hague earlier this month — about what they considered security threats of critical infrastructure, trade dependencies and potential risks from a future conflict between China and Taiwan that would disrupt shipping.
The Chinese foreign ministry and state media have previously called IPAC an “anti-China” group and accused it of spreading disinformation and interfering in China’s internal affairs, particularly over Taiwan.
China’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs and its European Union mission didn’t respond to requests for comment on the report. China has previously denied running overseas police stations and says it doesn’t interfere in other countries’ internal affairs and that it respects international law.
In 2023, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson rejected the term “police stations,” saying the “institutions helped overseas Chinese who could not return to China due to the pandemic, renew their driving licence and perform physical examination.”
Tip of the iceberg
These 1,250 offices were “the tip of the iceberg,” according to the NGO, which said it was conservative in how it mapped and linked them to China’s policing system. To be counted, they had to be officially connected to China’s police or prosecutors and have open-source evidence of overseas activities, report author Laura Harth said. This meant broader influence or interference operations were excluded.
“All of them serve to control and instill fear in diaspora communities … all of them represent a standing national security risk,” she said.