Beijing, May 9 (IANS) The three cases involving Chinese transnational operations in the United States, United Kingdom and Norway reflect the extensive global reach of Beijing’s campaign of repression aimed at monitoring, harassing, and silencing critics abroad, a report said on Saturday.
According to a report in ‘The Diplomat’, this campaign crosses borders, residency status, or the protections associated with democratic citizenship.
“On May 7, in a historic verdict, Peter Wai and Bill Yuen were found guilty of assisting a foreign intelligence service under the UK National Security Act. Their convictions send an unambiguous message: transnational repression by the Chinese Communist Party has no place on British soil. Remarkably, on the same day, the United States and Norway delivered that message too. That three liberal democracies acted against Beijing’s long arm on a single day was not coordinated – but perhaps it should have been,” it detailed.
The report highlighted that democracies are largely fighting the battle against transnational repression alone, each building its own legal tools, enforcement capacity, and political will at different speeds. The UK passed its National Security Act in 2023, while other allies are lagging behind.
Meanwhile, Beijing’s networks operate across borders by design, exploiting the jurisdictional gaps, sharing intelligence through embassies and proxies, and quickly adapting when one route is closed.
Stressing the need to address transnational repression by Beijing, the report said that the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence alliance, NATO, and the Summit for Democracy offer frameworks for information sharing and coordinated responses among like-minded states.
It added that what is required is the political will to use these mechanisms explicitly for this purpose: “to treat transnational repression not as a domestic law enforcement issue in each country, but as a collective security threat requiring a collective answer.”
“Practically, this could mean joint watchlists of known operatives, shared early warning systems when diaspora communities report intimidation, coordinated diplomatic expulsions when shadow policing networks are uncovered, and mutual legal assistance that allows evidence gathered in one country to support prosecutions in another. None of this is radical. It is simply the application of tools democracies already use for counterterrorism and organised crime,” it noted.
Highlighting growing convergence among democracies against transnational repression linked to China, the report said, “For Hong Kongers, Uyghurs, Tibetans, and all those who sought safety in democratic countries, this week offers a measure of reassurance. The countries that took them in are beginning to defend them in earnest. The task now is to make that defence systematic, shared, and permanent.”
–IANS
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