ICIJ Investigation Highlights Scope of Chinese Government’s Transnational Repression

This week, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published “China Targets,” a 10-month, cross-border investigation with dozens of media partners around the world on the topic of Beijing’s transnational repression. The resulting series of articles describe how Chinese authorities have instrumentalized Interpol “red notices” to track down overseas dissidents and how CCP-aligned NGOs have blunted criticism of China at the U.N. Scilla Alecci and the ICIJ team provided an overview of their investigation into “China’s machinery of repression—and how it crushes dissent around the world”:

As part of the investigation, ICIJ coordinated reporters across five continents to interview targets and analyze their cases. ICIJ also reviewed a 2004 Chinese police textbook and confidential guidelines for domestic security officers dating to 2013. The reporters then compared the tactics described in the internal documents with the experiences of the 105 targets, as well as with secretly recorded police interrogations, and phone calls and text messages between 11 security officers in China and nine targets overseas. The comparison shows the tactics recently deployed against the subjects mirrored the guidelines on how to control individuals labeled as domestic security threats.

Half of the targets interviewed by ICIJ and its media partners said the harassment extended to family members back home, who suffered intimidation and were interrogated by police or state security officials one or more times. Several victims told ICIJ that their family members in China or Hong Kong were harassed by police shortly after they had participated in protests or public events overseas. Sixty said they believed they had been followed or were targets of surveillance or spying by Chinese officials or their proxies; 27 said they were victims of an online smear campaign, and 19 said they had received suspicious messages or experienced hacking attempts, including by state actors. Some said their bank accounts in China and Hong Kong had been frozen. Officers from both the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of State Security — two of the Chinese agencies with intelligence capacity — were responsible for intimidating some of the targets and their families, the testimonies show. Twenty-two people said they received physical threats or had been assaulted by civilian CCP supporters.

Most of those interviewed by ICIJ and its partners said they had not reported state-sponsored threats to the authorities in their adopted countries, explaining that they feared retaliation from China or didn’t have faith in authorities’ ability to help. Of those who had filed a report, several said police did not follow up on their case or told them that they couldn’t do anything because there was no evidence of a crime. [Source]

The ICIJ investigation described the phenomenon of Beijing-backed “GONGOs” (government-organized non-governmental organizations) that monitor and intimidate human rights activists critical of the Chinese government. During China’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) session at the U.N. Human Rights Council last year, CDT reported that the number of China-based “civil society” organizations listed in China’s UPR summary report nearly tripled over the course of two UPR cycles from 2013 to 2024, which may have dampened criticism of China’s human rights record. At The Washington Post, reporting in partnership with ICIJ, Greg Miller, Jelena Ćosić, and Tamsin Lee-Smith described the scale of Chinese NGOs at the U.N. that have hidden ties to the CCP:

The ICIJ investigation identified 106 NGOs that have received U.N. accreditation and are registered in or affiliated with China. At least 59 appear to violate U.N. rules meant to ensure that NGOs testifying in Geneva aren’t doing so under government influence or pressure.

More than 50 of the 106 NGOs included language in charter documents pledging loyalty to the CCP, with some acknowledging that they defer to the party on decisions of hiring and funding, the investigation found. Forty-six listed directors or others in leadership roles who simultaneously held positions in Chinese state agencies or the CCP. Records show that at least 10 received the bulk of their funding from Chinese government sources.

[...] The number of Chinese organizations with U.N. credentials has nearly doubled since 2018, the year of the initial U.N. report on Xinjiang. Many of these organizations were formed at least a decade ago but only sought NGO accreditation after 2018. The surge reflects an effort that has been backed by Chinese President Xi Jinping and involves nearly every level of government in China.

[...] Last year, 33 Chinese NGOs made nearly 300 appearances at Human Rights Council sessions, according to data gathered by the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR), an independent nonprofit group. An examination of their statements and testimony found not a single instance in which any had uttered words that could be construed as critical of China. [Source]

Ethnic minority groups are often targets of Beijing’s transnational repression, as the ICIJ highlighted. Alongside the investigation is a report by Citizen Lab detailing how Uyghur-language software was hijacked to deliver malware that was extremely well customized to reach the target population of Uyghurs in exile. The report states that the cyberattack replicates a pattern of Chinese-government-aligned threat actors digitally targeting marginalized communities. Earlier this month, CDT documented other reports on the expansion of China’s digital repression of Tibetans, including those in diaspora, via a Chinese state-owned digital forensics firm that provides offensive cyber-operations training for Lhasa’s Tibet Police College. The Guardian, another ICIJ partner, recently uncovered an online campaign of transnational repression against Hongkongers in the U.K. The campaign included 29 accounts that published over 150 posts last August doxxing Hongkongers and exhibiting similarities to other online influence operations by a Chinese security agency. ICIJ partners provided other local case studies, as well.

Another focus of the ICIJ investigation was the Chinese Party-state’s attempts to instrumentalize Interpol. The Chinese government has increasingly used Interpol red notices to target a wide range of its citizens abroad, and China “does not appear to be among the countries currently subject to Interpol corrected measures for alleged misuse of the organization’s system,” the ICIJ wrote. Along with other ICIJ partners, Simon Leplâtre at Le Monde described how Interpol is used as a tool in China’s arsenal of transnational repression, using the story of Huang Youlong (referred to as “H.”), a close confidant of Jack Ma:

Like H., hundreds of individuals whom China considers to be persons of interest have been targeted by abusive red notices. In collaboration with 42 media outlets and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), Le Monde investigated several cases that illustrate China’s use of Interpol and the lack of safeguards within the institution. Despite attempts to reform it, Interpol, based in the French city of Lyon, still lacks transparency in its procedures and never publicly holds countries that abuse it accountable – a boon for authoritarian regimes.

Our investigation shows that Interpol is one of the components of China’s arsenal of repressive measures used against its targets abroad, whether they are political dissidents, members of minorities that are oppressed in China – such as Uyghurs or Tibetans – businesspeople and political leaders, either corrupt or the victims of purges.

[...] Ted Bromund, a researcher and expert witness in legal cases involving Interpol procedures, explained that “Interpol is a tool. So is sending text messages to people. So is stalking them physically. So is revoking their passports. (…) By itself, it’s not generally particularly effective with China. But the way I like to put it with the Chinese is that Interpol is like a pin through a butterfly in an insect collection. It holds someone down, locks them in place so they can’t get away. And then it’s much easier to apply all of these other tools because you’ve got someone located.” [Source]

Responding to the ICIJ investigation on Bluesky, Jeremy Daum at China Law Translate shared a thread urging caution with the terminology and framing of the term “transnational repression” when contemplating appropriate responses to the phenomenon:

🧵Happy to see continued attention on the ways that China harasses and surveils abroad– hard to find the bandwidth today, but it remains a real issue that impacts people’s lives.

A few thoughts that I’ve raised elsewhere on how best to think about it and address it:

www.icij.org/investigatio…

[image or embed]

— China Law Translate / Jeremy Daum (@chinalawtranslate.bsky.social) April 29, 2025 at 8:53 AM