The start of the operation and the links with Italy
In April 2022, the Chinese police reported the success of containment operations against online fraud committed on their territory and abroad. The numbers were telling: 394,000 cases resolved and 634,000 suspects arrested. A significant increase compared to 2021 in both categories: + 28.5% and + 76.5%. Crimes on the Internet have become an endemic problem in China and, in many cases, also concern residents abroad. Chinese authorities claim that between April 2021 and July 2022 they managed to “convince” 230,000 people to return to their cities and appear before a judge.
The “conviction” operation had been tested on a small scale in 2018, but has now expanded to create real independent police stations operating on all five continents. The name of this Beijing maneuver is “Fox Hunt”, but it is also known as “110 overseas” from the number that these regime apparatuses have to type on telephone keypads all over the world. systematically violating international relations and conventions was revealed by the Spanish NGO Safeguard defenders. In Italy, the operation did not have the relevance it had in Germany, where Scholz is expected to ask Xi Jinping to account for these interferences in next week’s meeting organized between the two. Yet our country, according to the Spanish report, hosts four Chinese transnational police centers. Florence, Prato, Rome and Milan.
Exemplary punishments and examples of punishments
These transnational control centers have a function that, in some cases, can be defined as consular, as they renew expired driving licenses without having to return to China. But, he reports Safeguard defenders, “They also serve a more sinister purpose. Stop any illegal and criminal activity involving Chinese citizens living overseas ”.
The model they are inspired by refers to the embryonic phase of this operation, tested in the first instance on Chinese soil and summarized in five points: 1) destroy all the properties built with the money of online fraud; 2) ban the children of suspects from public schools; 3) suspend the health service and confiscate the passport; 4) forbid the “dishonest” to take the train and the plane; 5) stop all direct subsidies to families of suspects.
This method has not been fully taken abroad and it is not known how the Chinese police stations, also installed in Italy, have worked.
One of the examples of how Xi’s truncheon was dropped on a third country comes from Myanmar. What is also called Burma is part of a group of states, nine to be exact, in which, since November 2021, the government “does not recommend” going due to the high number of scams that are consumed every year. Turkey, Cambodia, United Arab Emirates, Laos, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia are the other 8. Beijing is clear on the question: “It is required that those who do not have an urgent need to go to these states return to China as soon as possible”. The sanctions, if you decide not to return, thus fall on the family members. No more subsidies to families (including health insurance), children banned from public schools, a ban on being hired by one of the companies associated with the Chinese Communist Party and destruction of all property built or bought with money from alleged fraud.
The risk of making mistakes is very high. However, many were subjected to those measures only for having spent too long in those 9 countries without committing any crime.
Another example of successful “fox hunting” was found in Serbia where one accused of online fraud, Xia, had fled to Belgrade. It is explained in an article that appeared in the Qingtian County Public Security Bureau: “Through many investigative efforts, the police found the place where Xia was hiding in Belgrade. After making contact with Xia through the foreign service center, Qingtian police worked together with overseas service staff members to persuade Xia to return to China via WeChat audio and video communications.
The contradictions
This method of controlling its citizens, even when in foreign territory, is the repressive hand of the Communist Party and highlights the contradictions of Chinese foreign policy. If on the one hand we try to make agreements with other nations to reassure internally and externally, on the other hand all international rights and conventions are trampled, such as those of the United Nations against torture and refugees, to send the message that the Party knows everything, sees everything and controls everything.