A group of protesters concerned about foreign interference on Jan. 27 gathered outside a B.C. organization that according to reports was recently visited by RCMP national security officers.
The Wenzhou Friendship Society (WFS), which often takes positions aligned with Beijing, was on Dec. 10 subject to a visit by the RCMP, according to multiplereports. The RCMP hasn’t directly confirmed the operation, but when asked for comments on it, has cited its ongoing effort to investigate unofficial Chinese overseas police stations, according to CBC and Global News.
Wenzhou is a city in China’s southeastern province of Zhejiang. According to the WFS website, the society is a hometown association for Chinese people from Wenzhou and refers to itself as the Canada Wenzhou Friendship Society. It is a charity registered in Canada under the name Wen Zhou Friendship Society.
The Jan. 27 protest, held outside the WFS building in Richmond, B.C., a city just south of Vancouver, was organized by the HK Defense Initiative, which described the event as “a protest against the secret Chinese police stations found across Canada in recent news events.”
“Agents of foreign governments have been exposed enforcing the laws of their own jurisdictions upon residents of Canada. This is often in direct conflict with the laws enacted by elected representatives of the Canadian people, and with constitutional rights such as freedom of speech,” the group wrote in a Facebook notice of the protest.
“Most notable among the offenders is the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which sets up illegal ‘overseas police service stations’ to conduct operations against overseas Chinese people. They also target minorities of ethnicities living within CCP territory.”
The headquarters of the Wen Zhou Friendship Society in Richmond, B.C., is seen on Jan. 27, 2023. A group of local residents concerned about the organization's alleged ties to Beijing gathered outside the building in protest that day. (Screenshot/Melodie Von)
Some protesters were seen waving Canadian flags and chanting in Cantonese “Heaven will destroy the CCP.”
While the protesters said they don’t have evidence showing that the WFS is one of the alleged secret Chinese police outposts, some said they have seen media reports about the organization taking positions aligned with Beijing, and that it raises concerns of CCP interference.
Reports of dozens of these so-called police service stations, also known as “110 Overseas,” named after the emergency police phone line, 110, in China, emerged after a study was published last September by Spain-based NGO Safeguard Defenders. The study examined what the NGO described as the communist regime’s transnational repression and long-arm policing around the world.
Based on open-source information including reports by various local state-run media outlets in China, the NGO identified 54 outposts being operated in dozens of countries by two local-level police bureaus in China, Qingtian County in Zhejiang Province and Fuzhou City in Fujian Province, both southeastern Chinese coastal provinces. Three outposts listed under the Fuzhou police bureau’s jurisdiction are in the Greater Toronto Area.
An update report published December 2022 further identified Wenzhou, Zhejiang, alongside Nantong City in Jiangsu Province, as two other local-level police jurisdictions in southeastern China also operating overseas police stations. This brings the total of such stations to 102 reportedly operating in 53 countries. The Safeguard Defenders report said one of those newly identified stations is believed to be in Vancouver, B.C., but didn’t provide any other details.
According to the NGO, some of the stations have reportedly engaged in intimidating and coercing overseas Chinese who are suspected of crime to return to China, but they have also targeted dissidents. The Chinese authorities have denied that the stations are involved in police activities, saying that they are used to provide administrative services to overseas Chinese, such as renewing driver’s licences.
The Epoch Times reached out to the Wen Zhou Friendship Society for comment but the group didn’t respond.
RCMP Investigations
RCMP national security officers visited the WFS building at 4266 Hazelbridge Way in Richmond in December, according to Global News. Integrated National Security Enforcement Team members, who work to track, investigate, and prevent any potential national security criminal threats to Canada, conducted interviews at the society as well as in the surrounding neighbourhood, the news outlet reported.
Hua Wei Su, identified as a director of the WFS, confirmed at the time that the police were at the group’s “clubhouse” but said he didn’t know why, Global News reported. He also told the outlet that the society was not affiliated with the so-called “overseas Chinese police service stations” operating in Canada.
Andrew Wagner of the HK Defense Initiative said he finds the WFS “suspicious” and the RCMP investigation unsurprising.
“All the people I know in the Hong Kong community, ... they always suspected this building,” he told NTD, a sister media of The Epoch Times. “They are always [saying] ‘This is a shady building. There’s something happening in there.’ And so when it suddenly got raided again by RCMP, everyone was like, ‘We knew it.’”
Wagner noted that the WFS has voiced support for Beijing and the ruling CCP.
A May 2021 article posted on the society’s website, whose Chinese-language headline reads, “The Party calls, overseas Chinese respond,” describes one of its executive vice-presidents attending an event in China marking the centenary of the founding of the CCP.
The friendship society had also previously been investigated by police for an alleged vote-buying scheme during the 2018 municipal elections, according to the Breaker News. This occurred after the Richmond RCMP became aware that the group had reportedly sent out messages via the WeChat social media platform offering a $20 “transportation subsidy” to Chinese-Canadians as incentive for voting for certain political candidates of Chinese descent.
Wagner said the alleged overseas Chinese police stations, if the reports are proven to be true, are operating in a “grey area” under Canadian law.
“Canadian authorities have released statements lately claiming that they feel they lack legal tools [and] they don’t know what kind of crime this is like. If I go and say, ‘Hey, you shouldn’t say that or something might happen to your family back home [in China],’ ... is that a threat? How do they interpret that, legally speaking? They don’t really know how,” Wagner said.
Fear of Retribution
Wagner, an entrepreneur in the cryptocurrency industry whose colleagues include people from Hong Kong, said some of those individuals did not participate in the protest for fear that it would cost them their jobs or cause problems for their businesses.
Wagner said one of them declined to attend the protest due to having a business partner in Shenzhen, a major city in China’s southeastern Guangdong Province located immediately north of Hong Kong.
“I got the feeling that a lot of people were nervous to host an event here. ... It seems like people were nervous to protest here,” he said. “There shouldn’t be a specific place that’s off limits to freedom of assembly or speech in Canada, regardless of who, what that place allegedly does, or who allegedly operates that place.”
David Chen, one of the attendees at the protest, said Canadian officials such as those at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service have previously warned about foreign influence operations in Canada by countries like China.
“[In a] sovereign Canadian country, why shouldn’t we prevent the communist Chinese from interfering with all of our politics?” he said.
“People come here to become free. They came here to be safe. They came here to be educated and to actually have the chance to make it. And to have an extension of what we know is a very brutal Chinese Communist Party to reach out here, that’s a bit of a problem.”
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