Dutch journalist who writes critically on China targeted in intimidation scheme

https://nltimes.nl/2023/04/08/dutch-journalist-writes-critically-china-targeted-bizarre-intimidation-scheme

by belter • 3 years ago

254 87 3 years ago

nltimes.nl

throwawayinfra• 3 years ago

My company warned all the employees not to make any anti CCP statements. Companies only mind profits, no ethics/morals.

Kelteseth• 3 years ago

If this is your throwaway, you could say the name of your company...

amelius• 3 years ago

Sounds like something Apple could do.

rdtsc• 3 years ago

China has also been accused of illegally operating secret police stations in Amsterdam

I had to read that a few times because it just sounded nonsensical. What where the repercussions for Chinese govt. for that action? It there weren’t any except strong worded “we seek explanation” requests, the Chinese will just double down on attacks. Bullies see weak responses as an invitation for more bullying.

cpach• 3 years ago

According to Safeguard Defenders, China has this kind of operations in many other countries too.

https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/110-overseas

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63395617

icepat• 3 years ago

Canada as well:

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canada-police-probe-a...

rattray• 3 years ago

Wow. The article claims 54 centers across 21 countries in 5 continents.

There's nowhere to hide if you're a Chinese dissident, it seems...

jacquesm10• 3 years ago

It unfortunately is not only nonsensical but also true and it is one of the worst violations of Dutch territorial integrity in a very long time. The whole idea that some far away country would subject its citizens here to their laws makes absolutely no sense and has no doubt interfered with many police cases over the years.

What is really mind blowing is that the Chinese society in NL is so closed off from the rest of the country that word of this did not reach the authorities for many years. And what it says to me is that if this could happen in Amsterdam, 300 meters away from a Dutch police station that it likely can happen anywhere in the world and that I would not be surprised at all if more of these turned up if people actively went looking for them.

BLKNSLVR• 3 years ago

There's one in Sydney, and apparently about 80 in total around the world: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-13/beijing-sets-up-overs...

throwaway4aday• 3 years ago

This was in the news a while back, they're all over the place. https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/04/world/china-overseas-police-s...

jb1991• 3 years ago

It has been happening anywhere in the world, there have been reports from several countries of this. Including close neighbors of the Netherlands, such as Germany.

canadiantim• 3 years ago

They’re in Canada too. Lots.

rkuska• 3 years ago

There were 2 in Czech republic, Prague. https://www.irozhlas.cz/zpravy-domov/cinske-policejni-stanic...

dirtyid6• 3 years ago

far away country would subject its citizens here to their laws

...

word of this did not reach the authorities for many years

The entire PRC "overseas Chinese service stations" are AKTUALLY ILLEGAL POLICE STATIONS VIOLATING TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY/SOVEREIGNTY is new propaganda framing to sell United Front threat. State intelligence in the west has known about United Front activities, from their actual (predominant) legitimate diaspora services to their grayscale tactics to "coerce" Chinese diaspora - some dissidents, most financial criminals - to return to PRC on their own accord for 10+ years. Dissidents have been whining about UF for even longer. Like no one's being illegally renditioned, they're being told of personal and extended consequences in PRC if they don't return and face justice. That kind of conversation is legal statecraft, and TBH a workable arrangement between PRC and the west who has no extradition treaty with (due to politics/optics) while actually shelters a fuckton of PRC criminals who should have the book thrown at them in PRC.

It makes perfect sense that ex/PRC nationals who committed crimes in PRC should be subject to PRC laws. That's why countries have extradition treatises, because it's bad form to shelter criminals across borders and expect smooth diplomatic relations. The funny side effect of PRC capital controls is that virtually every PRC ex-national with a decent amount of assets abroad didn't get it there legally. The West wants PRC diaspora wealth, knows it's misbegotten, and can't survive politics of formal extraditing to PRC, so we have this informal shenanigans.

ethbr0• 3 years ago

"we seek explanation” requests

A big portion of diplomacy is signalling what a country is aware of, how it feels about the transgression, and consequences it claims it'll implement if nothing changes.

The intent of grey actions is that they're arguably legal.

And the intent of response to same is to make whoever runs the program reevaluate the costs of doing so and voluntarily close up the operation.

Ergo, the response is calibrated instead of just dropping the hammer immediately every time.

If nothing happens... then eventually you get police raids.

dghughes• 3 years ago

Canada too has secret Chinese police stations https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/china-secret-police-stations-a...

I'll go out on a limb and bet there are everywhere.

morkalork• 3 years ago

Here, there, everywhere. Maybe even on your local city council: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2023/03/11/accused-of-be...

Also this: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/china-denies-role-in-...

And those are just a couple of stories that blew up. There's countless others being underreported.

ouid• 3 years ago

It's not particularly fair to single out the Nerherlands here. These operations seem to be more or less allowed to continue in the US and Canada as well. The dutch don't have nearly the standing that America has.

olalonde• 3 years ago

It sounds nonsensical because it is: they're not police stations.

lostlogin3• 3 years ago

tjpnz pointed out how poorly the NZ government has done when an academic her was targeting by China. In another parallel, China has reportedly been operating a police station here too.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/report-of-china-run-p...

kstenerud• 3 years ago

Kind of reminds me of Operation Freakout [1]. Every system of government has weak spots that can be exploited by powerful enough adversaries to intimidate and suppress. I suspect that this is only going to get worse as long as authoritarian regimes are allowed to grow unchecked.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Freakout

0dayz• 3 years ago

I'm in a way surprised that the Netherlands still have such open relation with China after the soying and now intimidating journalists.

Will it really take until a politician (not local) in parliament gets spied / threaten until action is taken?

A_D_E_P_T2• 3 years ago

It doesn't necessarily seem as though the Chinese government is behind this.

Look at what actually happened: Somebody called in a bomb threat under her name, and somebody made some fake reservations under that name at a hotel near the location they were "threatening."

...That's the sort of thing a bored teenager on 4Chan or KiwiFarms would do, without even breaking a sweat. There's nothing in the article to suggest that the Chinese government is behind this; their only action was to report the bomb threat as though it was credible. The threat itself probably came from some terminally-online, but patriotic, expat Chinese ne'er-do-well.

robocat• 3 years ago

That's the sort of thing a bored teenager on 4Chan or KiwiFarms would do

Are Chinese operators sophisticated enough to encourage people on 4chan/kiwifarms to do the dirty work for them?

4chan is probably an unreliable gun to trigger, but the random effects when triggered could be useful if you want to cause grief to a target.

throwaway290• 3 years ago

Actually you may be right. There are many instances, like SerpentZA's parents being harassed in their home country (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-i-hung-up-on-warre...) or student from Hong Kong being doxxed and harassed in US (https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2019/05/28/frances-hu...) that are obviously done by people sympathizing with CCP but without an obvious direct participation of Chinese government. Although keep in mind that if they are doing this it is a consequence of their government's policy encouraging this behavior.

dist-epoch• 3 years ago

Russian militias with Russian military hardware shot down a plane which had 192 Netherlands people on board and there was no response from Netherlands, besides a 8 year long "legal action" which issued arrest warrants.

At minimum they should have sent a squad for the commander who ordered the firing and who is a big social media star today on Russian Telegram.

jacquesm10• 3 years ago

Yes, I'm sure starting a war was exactly what was needed at the time. The question really is if we had done that - and there were plenty of voices calling for just that - if the Ukraine situation would have improved or gotten worse. You could make pretty strong arguments either way.

tyfon• 3 years ago

I am really surprised that the western governments still talk about how the free trade will somehow magically turn the CCP into a democratic government with a serious face.

The reality is that they are extremely afraid that the flow of cheap goods from china to the population will stop I think.

Ingaz2• 3 years ago

"Free trade" with China ended many years ago. Just look what they did with Huawei in pretense of security.

If that's free trade - then I'm Santa Klaus

my_city• 3 years ago

[flagged]

zabzonk2• 3 years ago

you mean like EVERY SINGLE western journalist

and why do you think they do that? isn't it possiblee that there are many things very, very wrong with china?

dang• 3 years ago

We've banned this account for using HN exclusively for ideological and nationalistic battle and ignoring our request to stop (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35347522). That's not ok on HN, regardless of what you're battling for or against: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

In case anyone is worried about us "banning $user just because you disagree with their $views" - I've spent countless hours protecting and defending HN commenters who happen to be posting contrary views on China, just as on any other topic. You can see years' worth of this at https://news.ycombinator.com/chinamod, which is a list I made when this worry came up once before.

So yes, it's certainly ok for people with different backgrounds to defend minority views on HN—that's an important principle here. It's not ok, though, to just use HN for destructive flamewar. We have to ban accounts that do the latter regardless of what they're arguing for.

Accounts arguing for contrarian positions are under greater pressure because they get surrounded and pounced on by the majority in ways that can feel very much like being ganged up on. This makes it understandable that they tend to become defensive (i.e. aggressive), resort to snark and fulmination and flamewar, etc. But even though it's understandable, it's not ok, and we don't have a choice but to ban accounts when they are doing this with no regard for HN's rules.

expertentipp• 3 years ago

Interesting how ASML appears in the context. The Chinese want to own electronics of the Western world.

zabzonk2• 3 years ago

China. Russia. Why? How can their citizens put up with this crap?

michelb• 3 years ago

Hostile government. But in reality every country does some level of this.

lawn• 3 years ago

Massive control mechanisms combined with widespread brainwashing and propaganda.

truthsayer123• 3 years ago

Right. The citizens have 0% accountability on the government since aliens raised outside galaxy comes and rule the country.

nailer2• 3 years ago

What happened last time they tried to sort it out:

https://youtu.be/kMKvxJ-Js3A

TheRealPomax• 3 years ago

In the category of "questions that already have the same answer presented a million ways on the web, on youtube, etc. etc. etc."? If you still don't know how, you've intentionally made sure to never actually look that up.

lazylizard• 3 years ago

russia? dunno

china? easy. 1 billion people lifted out of poverty. life is good now unlike 30yrs ago.this is the best government in generations.

tjpnz• 3 years ago

Similar things happened in New Zealand to another writer who was critical of China[0]. The government didn't even want to hear about it. I challenge the Dutch government to do better where it comes to protecting their own citizens.

[0] https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/108649435/professor-annemarie...

michelledepeil2• 3 years ago

Absolutely not gonna happen: the current Dutch govt. ideologically refuses to be the best (often even "good") at anything.

TomJansen• 3 years ago

What is this based on?

specialist• 3 years ago

I just finished The Prince podcast. Pretty good. I learned quite a bit. The later episodes cover how the CCP deals with criticism.

The Prince: Searching for Xi Jinping

"Xi Jinping is the most powerful person in the world. At China’s 20th Communist Party congress in October he secured a third term as party chief, and may rule China for the rest of his life.

But the real story of China’s leader remains a mystery. The Economist’s Sue-Lin Wong finds out how he rose to the top in our eight-part podcast series. The Prince is the epic story of Mr Xi’s turbulent past, how he has changed China and how he is trying to change the world."

https://www.economist.com/theprincepod

This podcast is worthy enough to overcome my distain for The Economist. (I canceled my subscription over their endorsement for the Iraq War.)

It's not quite as over produced as the Radiolab genre. The signal is discernible from the noise without excess effort.

I'm liking the followup Drum Tower podcast so far. But it's too soon to cast judgement.

nubinetwork• 3 years ago

belter• 3 years ago

https://www.volkskrant.nl/kijkverder/v/2023/how-a-volkskrant...

Freak_NL• 3 years ago

(Source article.)

0x445442• 3 years ago

American journalist who writes critically on America targeted in intimidation scheme.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/biden-admin-accused-intimidati...

zeeshanmh215• 3 years ago

why dont these people stay silent?

Dutch journalist who writes critically on China targeted in intimidation scheme

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