China is operating more than 40 surveillance outposts in the United States as part of a global network used to police and control the Chinese diaspora, according to a rights organization.
Spain-based Safeguard Defenders identified in 2022 more than 100 overseas Chinese police stations in at least 50 countries. Its new findings highlight how Beijing has secretly expanded its global policing network even as it publicly claimed to have closed down these clandestine stations.
“What happened following the exposure in 2022 can best be described as a rebranding exercise: the packaging was changed—the ‘police’ nameplates were removed, but the system was left standing,” the organization said in its recent report.
Titled “A Formula for Repression: China’s Global Grid for Community Control,” the report documents 1,247 global “liaison points”—covert monitoring hubs embedded in diaspora groups—used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to surveil overseas Chinese communities, collect intelligence, and suppress dissent.
More than 10 police forces from five Chinese provinces are engaged in a global network of CCP operatives, the report said. These forces operate through the liaison points in at least 91 countries, coordinating with China-based prosecutors, courts, and justice bureaus.
New York has the most outposts, with at least 10, followed by San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston, according to the report. Other cities named in the report included Pittsburgh; Washington; Salt Lake City; Omaha; St. Louis; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Charlotte, North Carolina.
Chinese police and other political-legal authorities instead “plug into” the existing infrastructure of the Overseas Chinese Federation, a united front organization, according to the report. The same arrangements, with the same police involved, now operate under the Federation’s banners of “legal service” and “protecting the diaspora’s rights according to law.”
China’s United Front Work Department, which reports to the Central Committee under Chinese leader Xi Jinping, coordinates thousands of groups that conduct foreign political influence operations, suppress dissent, gather intelligence, and facilitate technology transfer to China.
The Washington-based Jamestown Foundation counted at least 967 united front groups in the United States in a February report.
Monitoring Hubs
In the United States, about 5.5 million people identified as Chinese in 2023, according to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data.
The report notes that the CCP maintains tens of thousands of affiliated associations abroad, each a potential liaison point. As a result, the more than 1,000 outposts identified represent only a fraction of the broader network, since any of these groups can be activated as a hub—with or without an official nameplate.
While outposts have simple jobs such as helping resolve disputes, the report says they have also undertaken tasks that amount to breaching sovereignty and transnational repression.
For example, according to the report, the head of a hub in Brussels was assigned to build information files on key overseas Chinese figures.
In another example, the Overseas Chinese Federation from Wuxi in China’s Jiangsu Province was tasked with ensuring that overseas Chinese nationals listen to and follow the CCP, the report says.
On violations of national sovereignty, the report notes France’s 2025 decision to expel the de facto president of a Paris-based Chinese business association that housed a Fuzhou Police Overseas Service Station.
In June, France’s top administrative court ruled that the clandestine police station functioned as an on-the-ground conduit for Chinese Communist Party diaspora-control bodies and Beijing’s Ministry of Public Security.
In the United States, a Fuzhou Police Overseas Service Station located inside a New York City-based Chinese association was closed in 2022 after an FBI raid. Two men running the police station were charged with acting as an illegal Chinese agent. One pleaded guilty in 2024, and the other was convicted in May.
In 2023, during Xi’s visit to San Francisco for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, street violence broke out as pro-CCP protesters allegedly assaulted peaceful pro-democracy protesters. According to a 2024 report, numerous Chinese community associations helped mobilize and transport CCP supporters to San Francisco, and 12 leaders of United Front groups allegedly took part in attacks against protesters.
Grid Management
These outposts operate as the international extension of the CCP’s so-called grid management system, a structure that partitions every city, town, and village into smaller zones overseen by managers tasked with surveillance and control.
Chinese cities, including Shanghai, began adopting the approach in the early 2000s. Human rights organizations have accused Beijing of using the system to persecute dissidents and religious groups.
Report author Laura Harth urges governments to treat the United Front as the “root of the problem” and protect targeted communities. She recommends using United Front ties to trigger foreign-agent and foreign-influence registration requirements.
She added that governments should pull back from CCP-designated affiliates and engage directly with the individuals the Party attempts to isolate and silence, sending a public message that the surveillance grid does not apply there.
In response to the report, 54 lawmakers from 26 countries across the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China issued a joint statement on Nov. 6, calling on democratic governments to implement six measures to combat foreign interference, including strengthening foreign-agent registration laws with clear criminal penalties, requiring disclosure of any ties to the United Front Work Department and its affiliates—such as the Overseas Chinese Federation—and establishing reporting channels for diaspora communities.
“The era of willful blindness and overly tolerant acquiescence in the face of authoritarian encroachment must come to an immediate and decisive end,” the lawmakers stated.
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