OUT OF SIGHT,
NOT OUT OF REACH
The Global Scale and Scope
of Transnational Repression
Chinese or Hong Kong government made anywhere in the
world, including speech by foreign nationals.115 Among those
who received the first round of arrest warrants under the new
law was Samuel Chu, an American citizen, who was charged
for his work to gain US government support for the cause of
freedom in Hong Kong.116 Chu and others like him now must
not only avoid traveling to Hong Kong, but also to any country
with an extradition treaty with Hong Kong or China.
Reflecting the CCP’s expansive idea of who belongs within its
purview, in line with the state’s “One China” policy, the PRC
considers citizens of Taiwan as its own despite lacking any
actual control over Taiwan’s government affairs, law or law
enforcement, or its military. In April 2016, eight Taiwanese
citizens were extradited to China from Kenya after being
acquitted of telecommunications fraud, despite stringent
protests from the Taiwanese government.117
In 2018, Chinese state media claimed
that 3,000 people had “returned or
been repatriated” from 90 countries.
China’s aggressive extraterritorial policies extend even in some
cases to people of Chinese origin with other nationalities. One
of the most prominent recent cases was that of Gui Minhai,
a Chinese-origin bookseller who was a Swedish—and not
Chinese—citizen. After Gui angered Xi Jinping with sales of
books in Hong Kong containing salacious rumors about the
general secretary, he was forced to flee to Thailand. In October
2015, he was kidnapped and taken to China. There he appealed
in what looked by all accounts to be a forced confession to be
treated as a Chinese citizen, and for Swedish authorities not to
be involved in his case. In 2019, Minhai’s daughter Angela Gui
was warned by two China-linked businessmen to stop publicly
advocating on her father’s case if she ever wanted to see him
again. This threat was made during a meeting in Stockholm
arranged by the Swedish ambassador to China, Anna Lindstedt,
who lost her job as ambassador as a result of the meeting.118
As Yuan Yang, the deputy bureau chief of the Financial Times
wrote, Minhai’s case “makes us wonder whether the state sees
itself as the governor of ethnic Chinese people wherever they
may be, rather than a state constrained by international law and
diplomatic protocol.”119
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@FreedomHouse
“Anticorruption”: Fox Hunt and Skynet
The final area of focus for China in transnational repression
is its global “anticorruption” campaign. The party’s Central
Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) oversees
this campaign, focusing on members of the CCP who are
accused of corruption and may be fugitives within China,
but also those who have fled abroad. The campaign has
escalated since 2014, when the CCP announced a global
anticorruption drive under the banner of “Fox Hunt.”120 The
campaign expanded further in 2015 with the announcement
of “Operation Skynet.”121 The scale of the anticorruption
drive is difficult to evaluate through public sources, but in
2018, Chinese state media claimed that 3,000 people had
“returned or been repatriated” from 90 countries.122 In public
remarks in August 2020, US FBI director Christopher Wray
said that there were “hundreds” of targets of Fox Hunt in the
United States.123
On the official level, the anticorruption campaign is a legal
effort to hold accountable Chinese elites who have embezzled
money, frequently from state enterprises, and fled abroad.
The CCP makes a point of emphasizing the supposed legality
and legitimacy of Fox Hunt. The campaign was announced
alongside the dissemination of a list of 100 individuals China
said were sought through Interpol “Red Notices.” Like other
countries, China uses Interpol notices to imply international
endorsement of its pursuit, even though Interpol notices are
not subject to any judicial review. In January 2019, Beijing’s
state broadcaster, China Central Television (CCTV), aired a
program titled “Red Arrest Notice” documenting 14 cases
of individuals arrested and returned to China, and one
found hiding in China. The show emphasized the legality of
the process of repatriation from abroad, including through
lengthy legal proceedings in other countries. In line with the
CCP’s communications, the overall message of the show
was that China’s anticorruption campaign is a fully legal
effort accepted by other states as a matter of international
cooperation.
The actual tactics underpinning the CCP’s anticorruption
campaign are much more unsavory. These include at
a minimum surveillance, physical threats, and family
intimidation in order to force exiles to return “voluntarily”
to China. In October 2020, the US Department of Justice
accused eight individuals of acting as illegal agents of China
in a multiyear campaign of harassment and stalking in order
to coerce an unnamed Chinese individual to return to
face trial.124 In 2018, US intelligence officials alleged off the
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