UK Counter Terrorism Police Assessing Chinese Police Outposts in London

Undated photo showing the New Scotland Yard sign outside the Metropolitan Police headquarters in London. (Kirsty O’Connor/PA Media)

Counter-terrorism police officers are looking into a report that revealed unofficial Chinese police outposts in London, the Metropolitan police confirmed on Wednesday.

Experts told The Epoch Times that the specialist division is involved because it’s responsible for dealing with cases in relation to state security and it works closely with the UK’s security services, particularly the MI5.

In an email to The Epoch Times on Wednesday, A Met Police spokesperson said: “We’re aware of a recent report by an NGO alleging the presence of Chinese ‘overseas police service stations’ in various countries, including two here in London. Officers from our Counter Terrorism Command are assessing this matter to establish whether there is any potential unlawful activity that may require further investigation.”

It comes after Police Scotland said their officers were reviewing the matter “in conjunction with local and national partners” regarding one such station in Glasgow.

Tom Tugendhat during the Conservative Party annual conference at the International Convention Centre in Birmingham, England, on Oct. 3, 2022. (Jacob King/PA Media)

Home Office minister Tom Tugendhat also told MPs on Tuesday that both the police and the government are assessing the report.

The Irish and Dutch governments have ordered the closure of the stations. Chinese officials denied the stations in the two countries are police stations, saying they were set up to help Chinese citizens renew documents.

Service Stations

The NGO report, published by Safeguard Defenders on Sept. 13, unveiled dozens of Chinese overseas police “service stations” around the world, including two in London and one in Glasgow.

The phone number for the Glasgow station is coupled with an address belonging to a Chinese restaurant while the London stations shared addresses with a Croydon food delivery place and a Hendon estate agent.

The unofficial “service stations” purport to be providing assistance to Chinese citizens who need to renew their driver’s licenses and report criminality such as fraud by Chinese in China and overseas.

Safeguard Defenders said the pilot programme, operated by a regional Chinese police bureau, was set up after the launch of “a massive nationwide campaign to combat the growing issue of fraud and telecommunication fraud by Chinese nationals living abroad” in 2018.

Authorities of the communist regime claimed that 230,000 Chinese nationals had been “persuaded to return” to face criminal proceedings in China between April 2021 and July 2022.

Safeguard defenders highlighted a case in which an individual was reportedly “persuaded” to return to China from Madrid. A family member in China was present at the video conference “persuading” the suspect who was wanted for investing in a factory that was said to have violated environmental regulations.

It’s unclear whether the service stations in the UK were involved in pressuring alleged criminals to return to China or intimidating dissidents.

MI5 Likely Leading Investigation

David Lowe, former police officer and senior research fellow at Leeds Beckett’s Law School specialising in terrorism, security, policing, and criminal law, told The Epoch Times that the reason why CTC was involved in investigating the unofficial Chinese police outposts is “not so much to counter terrorism,” but because the police branch is responsible when “there could be a threat to state security,” including threats to the safety of UK citizens and foreign citizens in the UK.

He also said the CTC is the suitable department to deal with the case thanks to its relationship with MI5.

“While the security services will investigate reports or intelligence that comes to them, where you then have to look at gathering evidence for arrests and so on, that’s when it then goes to the [police] counterterrorism units,” he said.

A police officer gestures to a journalist not to photograph in Beijing, China, on March 5, 2021. (Nicolas Asfouri/AFP via Getty Images)

Security and counter-terrorism specialist Will Geddes told The Epoch Times that it’s very likely that the security services, in this case, the MI5, are leading the investigation because it’s responsible for determining  “who is actually working for state security from China that hasn’t been declared.”

The CTC, on the other hand, will have the capabilities to support the MI5 in “surveillance operations, intelligence gathering operations,” and so on, he said.

Asked what potential crimes the police may be looking for, Lowe said that countries in which these unofficial outposts are located will need to find out whether the agents had been “abducting citizens into these premises and then they disappear” because “there is that concern: Is this another way of catching Chinese dissidents?”

He said we are in a “weird situation” because while Beijing is saying the outposts are administrative centers, the international normality is that these administrative tasks are carried out by embassies and consulates.

“That’s the big question: Why do you want these premises as well? I think that’s what the big concern is,” he said, adding, “there’s got to be some nefarious activity going on.”

Geddes said his speculation is that the unofficial operations would potentially be caught under foreign espionage laws because regardless of whether pieces of information were gathered on alleged criminalities or dissidents, it’s “an intelligence gathering operation” for sure.

Asked whether it is a violation of British law to persuade individuals to return to China by threatening their family members in China, Lowe said those cases would not be clear-cut.

“There is certainly a great deal of intimidation here,” and the police will need to look at “what other threats are being made by a government to that individual,” Lowe said, adding, “this is a big concern.”

He later added that British police would also have difficulties interviewing suspects/witnesses and obtaining evidence as “information will not be as forthcoming as you'd have in most conventional investigations.”

Online Service Station

A number of countries have launched investigations into the so-called “overseas 110” service stations, named after the Chinese national police emergency phone number.

So far, the Irish and Dutch governments have ordered the Chinese ambassadors to shut the stations.

The Chinese Embassy in Dublin didn’t respond to The Epoch Times’ previous request for comment, but according to The Irish Times, the embassy said in a statement that the station had been set up during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide driving licence renewal services and that the services had moved online.

The online Overseas 110 website, reportedly launched in June, provides access to document renewal as well as reporting alleged crimes by phone, email, and the Chinese social media app WeChat.

Asked whether countries can do anything about information being provided to Chinese police through the online channel, Geddes said there will be some difficulties getting through the network, but there’s a good chance locations can be identified if a conversation occurs using Voice over Internet Protocol, and that nefarious activity may potentially be captured under legislation on the misuse of telecommunications.