A Manhattan resident has pleaded guilty to helping establish a secret police station in New York City on behalf of the Chinese government.
Chen Jinping (陳金平), 60, in Brooklyn Federal Court on Wednesday pleaded guilty on a single count of conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government.
US Department of Justice Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen said Chen admitted in court to his role in “audaciously establishing an undeclared police station” in Manhattan and attempting to conceal the effort when approached by the FBI.
Photo: AFP / US District Court Eastern District New York / HANDOUT
“This illegal police station was not opened in the interest of public safety, but to further the nefarious and repressive aims of the [People’s Republic of China] PRC in direct violation of American sovereignty,” he said in statement.
Prosecutors said Chen and his codefendant, Lu Jianwang (盧建旺), opened and operated a local branch of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security in Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood starting in early 2022.
The office, which occupied an entire floor of the building, performed basic services, such as helping Chinese citizens renew their Chinese driver’s licenses, but also identified pro-democracy activists living in the US, federal authorities said.
The clandestine Chinese police operation was shuttered in the fall of 2022 amid an FBI investigation. However, in an apparent effort to obstruct the federal probe, Chen and Lu deleted from their phones communications with a Chinese government official they reported to, prosecutors said.
China is believed to be operating such secretive police outposts in North America, Europe and other places where there are Chinese communities. However, Beijing has denied that they are police stations, saying that they exist mainly to provide citizen services such as renewing driver’s licenses.
The arrest of Chen and Lu in April last year was part of a series of US Department of Justice prosecutions aimed at cracking down on “transnational repression,” in which foreign governments such as China work to identify, intimidate and silence dissidents in the US.
Lawyers for Chen and Lu declined to comment on Wednesday. Chen faces up to five years in prison at his sentencing on May 30.
Lu, who is due back in court in February, had a longstanding relationship with Chinese law enforcement officials, prosecutors said.
Over the years, Lu helped harass and threaten a Chinese fugitive living in the US and worked to locate a pro-democracy activist in California on behalf of the Chinese government, they said.
Japan has deployed long-range missiles in a southwestern region near China, the Japanese defense minister said yesterday, at a time when ties with Beijing are at their lowest in recent years. The missiles were installed in Kumamoto in the southern region of Kyushu, as Japan is attempting to shore up its military capacity as China steps up naval activity in the East China Sea. “Standoff defense capabilities enable us to counter the threat of enemy forces attempting to invade our country ... while ensuring the safety of our personnel,” Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. “This is an extremely important initiative for
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) today accepted an invitation from Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to lead a delegation to China next month, saying she hopes to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations and bring stability to the Taiwan Strait. “I am grateful and happy to accept this invitation,” Cheng said in a statement from the KMT chairperson’s office. Cheng said she hopes both sides can work together to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations, enhance exchange and cooperation, bring stability to the Taiwan Strait and improve people’s livelihoods. At today's news conference, Cheng said any efforts to
MORE POPULAR: Taiwan Pass sales increased by 59 percent during the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said The Tourism Administration yesterday said that it has streamlined the Taiwan Pass, with two versions available for purchase beginning today. The tourism agency has made the pass available to international tourists since 2024, allowing them to access the high-speed rail, Taiwan Railway Corp services, four MRT systems and four Taiwan Tourist Shuttles. Previously, five types of Taiwan Pass were available, but some tourists have said that the offerings were too complicated. The agency said only two types of Taiwan Pass would be available, starting from a three-day pass with the high-speed rail and a three-day pass with Taiwan Railway Corp. The former costs NT$2,800
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
RSS