Wang Jingyu was in Istanbul when he used his Weibo account to ask the Chinese government why it had taken eight months to acknowledge the deaths of four Chinese soldiers in a border clash with Indian troops.
Within half an hour, Chinese police arrested his parents in Chongqing, China, and searched their home, taking his parents’ iPad and computer. His parents were held until midnight and released, only to be summoned the next day when they were detained all day again. Chinese agents told Wang’s parents to call him and ask him to come back to China and surrender. When Voice of America published Wang’s story, his parents completely disappeared.
Wang then fled Istanbul for New York, worrying that Turkish authorities would turn him over to the Chinese. But it was the United Arab Emirates that nabbed him in Dubai, where he was scheduled to catch a connecting flight to New York. While in UAE custody, Chinese officials met with Wang and tried to get him to sign a paper saying he agreed to go back to China. He refused. And after pressure from the United States, the UAE eventually released Wang, who is now applying for asylum in the Netherlands.
Not every Chinese national living in another country is so lucky. According to the Spanish nonprofit organization Safeguard Defenders, nearly 10,000 dissidents have been brought back to China through a program code-named “Operation Sky Net” since 2014.
Applying pressure to family members still in China is just one tactic Chinese authorities use to force wanted Chinese nationals to return home. China has been known to send officials overseas to harass Chinese nationals, or sometimes the Chinese government just hires local muscle to do the job for it. Former export agent Qiu Gengmin, for example, was evicted from two apartments in the U.S. after his landlords were threatened by thugs hired by China. The harassment only ended after Qiu sought help from U.S. authorities. But such threats often work.
Pressuring compliant authoritarian governments to detain Chinese nationals until they agree to come back to China, just as the UAE did to Wang, is another popular tactic deployed by China to reach beyond its borders.
Sometimes, but rarely, China has even been known to kidnap its own citizens. In 2005, Lan Meng, the son of a former mayor accused of corruption, was allegedly drugged while in Australia, placed on a fishing boat, and then picked up by a Chinese cargo vessel in international waters.
“With involuntary returns, the CCP’s message is that nowhere is safe; fleeing overseas will not save you, there is no escape,” a report from Safeguard Defenders explained.
As long as the U.S. remains strong, Chinese nationals will be relatively safe here. This is why it is so important for the U.S. to maintain its global dominance.
