Chinese police stations in the USA are a hot topic in the news these days, with two arrests made in New York and six stations claimed in Texas. These, we’re told, were the “illegal” stations. Simultaneously, it’s being reported that there is a “growing number of Chinese migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border seeking asylum.”
But we Deplorables should be sensitive to the scent of weasel words. These stories are always about “illegal” Chinese police stations in the USA, which are characterized as “secret” or “unauthorized.” This language leaves the impression that there may be Chinese police stations in the USA that are legal.
We should care about this weaseling because the key point is that none are legal given their goals. There is a statute of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), called the “National Intelligence Law” (NIL), which mandates that every Chinese national on planet Earth, wherever he may be, is obliged, under penalty of law, to obey any intelligence-gathering request of the PRC. That is, the NIL makes a statutory spy out of every Chinese national.
So, consider “Professor Xia,” your revered and mild-mannered physics professor. When he declines the request from the local Chinese police station for the data from certain physics experiments, he will receive a 3 a.m. visit from a local operative, who will make no overt threats but only warmly inquire, “Do your grandparents still reside in Apartment 2109 of the Cloud Nine Apartments in Beijing?”
And should the good professor attempt to disappear, the local Chinese police station will organize a “foxhunt,” which is a hunt in which the police (the foxhounds) seek the professor (the fox). It usually concludes with the fox captured and permanently “disappeared” or shipped back to the PRC.
Simultaneously we also see reports that vast numbers of mainland Chinese are attempting to flee the workers’ paradise for various destinations around the globe, including the USA. These escapees are not disloyal: They are only acting to implement the command of the Chinese National Anthem, the “March of the Volunteers,” which opens with the phrase: “Arise! Ye Who Refuse to be Slaves!”
And arise the Chinese have more than once attempted! In recent times vast multitudes of Chinese arose both in 1989 at Tiananmen Square and in the 2014 Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong, complete with their own anthem, “Glory to Hong Kong.”
The dismaying fact that American forces and Chinese forces might be destined to duke it out over Taiwan does not obscure the fact that vast throngs of Chinese long for political liberty just as we do but are held captive in a web spun by their elites just as we are. And when Democrats delicately imply that some of those Chinese police stations are legal, they are implicitly condemning freedom-seeking Chinese people to return to totalitarian slavery.
May we Americans and our Chinese brothers and sisters someday be colleagues and allies.