24 Apr 2023
Congressmen
Tom Tiffany (R-WI) and Lance Gooden (R-TX) will introduce legislation on
Tuesday tasking leftist President Joe Biden with shutting down the Chinese
Consulate General and Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in New York, a move
meant to counter transnational repression and espionage by Beijing.
The bill, as obtained by
Breitbart News on Monday, is only two pages long and would require Biden to
“take such actions as may be necessary to — (1) provide for the closure of the
Consulate General … and the expulsion of all diplomatic personnel assigned to
that mission by not later than 72 hours after the date of the enactment of this
Act.” Similarly, the bill would require the executive to shut down the Hong
Kong Economic and Trade Office in New York and cancel “the visas or other entry
documentation of all personnel assigned to that Office who are citizens of the
People’s Republic of China.”
The consulate serves as a diplomatic outpost for China. The Hong
Kong office exists to provide certain trade privileges to the port city as a
result of the “One Country, Two Systems” policy, which — between 1997 and 2020
— allowed Hong Kong to govern itself as a free, capitalist society autonomous
from Beijing.
The Chinese
National People’s Congress (NPC) effectively ended the policy in 2020 by passing a “National Security
Law” — which, under “One Country, Two Systems,” should not have any legal
weight in Hong Kong — that essentially criminalized any dissent from the
Communist Party. China later appointed a Party loyalist as the city’s chief
executive and has forced nearly all prominent dissidents into prison or exile,
shutting down a pro-democracy protest movement that flourished in 2019 and
ending Hong Kong’s autonomy.
Reps. Tiffany and Gooden
described the bill as a response to last week’s revelations that multiple law
enforcement actions had taken place in New York to shut down an illegal police
station that China had established to persecute dissidents on U.S. soil.
“The Chinese Communist Party’s brazen and provocative behavior
has once again crossed a line,” Rep. Tiffany said in a statement. “The Biden
administration must respond forcefully to Beijing’s outrageous attempts to
monitor and intimidate dissidents on American soil — and that starts with
telling their local ‘diplomats’ to pack their bags and get out.”
“American cities cannot become hunting grounds for Chinese
secret police,” Rep. Gooden said. “The Biden Administration’s supposedly
blissful ignorance of foreign enforcers operating on home soil is disturbing.
The American people demand answers, and the Republican Majority will deliver
them.”
The
Department of Justice (DOJ) revealed last week the arrests
of two alleged Chinese Communist Party agents, “Harry” Lu Jianwang and
Chen Jinping, on charges of what U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New
York Breon Peace described as “repeatedly and flagrantly violat[ing] our
nation’s sovereignty by opening and operating a police station in the middle of
New York City.”
The DOJ also announced charges against dozens of individuals
outside the country, most in China or Indonesia, accused of running “troll
farm” operations to circulate Chinese propaganda and intimidate or silence
anti-communist dissidents in the United States.
American
officials said the New York illegal police station did not pursue criminal
cases but rather persecuted, intimidated, and silenced anti-Chinese regime
officials in the area. The indicted were also accused of infiltrating an
unnamed American “telecommunications company” to prevent dissidents from
organizing virtual events that offended the Communist Party, such as a memorial
for the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
The human
rights organization Safeguard Defenders revealed the existence of this
illegal police station — along with a host of others throughout Europe, South
America, and Africa — in a report last year. The New York City charges are the
first of their kind anywhere in the world against these illicit operations.
According to the NGO, the New York office operated as an offshore unit of
the Fuzhou branch of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security (MPS), a
federal-level agency.
Following the
announcement of the law enforcement actions, Safeguard Defenders told the New York Post that it had reason to
believe the Chinese government was operating “at least four” police stations in
America — including the one shut down in Manhattan — in locations as diverse as
California, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Texas.
Like New
York, the Chinese government maintained a consulate in Houston, Texas, through
2020, but the administration of former President Donald Trump shut it down on the grounds that
it operated as “a hub of spying and
intellectual property theft,” according to then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Houston is among the cities Safeguard Defenders listed as
hosting an illegal Chinese police station.
Little public information
exists on the geographic scope of operations of the alleged illegal Chinese
police station in Manhattan, which is surrounded by some of the country’s
largest Chinese and Asian-American communities.
When asked if he is concerned that, in addition to the other
operations identified by Safeguard Defenders, Rep. Tiffany’s own constituents
in Wisconsin could be under the threat of transnational repression, the
lawmaker replied that he believed Beijing’s operations could be much larger
than currently understood.
“While no local reports have emerged as of yet, it’s important
to remember that China’s security apparatus never takes a day off,” Rep.
Tiffany told Breitbart News. “Whether it’s through Confucius Institutes or
secret police stations, Communist China has a habit of harassment, espionage,
and influence peddling, and I don’t think this will be the last time we hear of
this.”
The Chinese
government has not denied the existence of the illegal police stations
but insists that they are “service
stations” developed during the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic intended to help
Chinese nationals stranded abroad with benign bureaucratic activity such as
renewing their driver’s licenses.
https://tiffany.house.gov/media/editorials-letters-and-articles/exclusive-reps-tom-tiffany-lance-gooden-propose-bill-shutter
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