• Asia: Tik Tok app leaves Hong Kong for new Chinese National Security Law
  • China.The voices fleeing Hong Kong due to the new Security Law: "We want to set up a parliament in exile"

Five months had not passed since Operation Fox Hunt was launched when the Chinese Police announced that they had already captured 288 fugitives hiding abroad. It was November 2014, and the Asian giant was proud of the brutal anti-corruption campaign, both inside and outside its borders, that President Xi Jinping had launched.

Three years earlier, a report by the People's Bank of China revealed that some 18,000 corrupt Chinese officials and senior executives of state - owned companies had fled with more than $ 130 billion stolen from public coffers. Its main refuges were the United States, Canada and Australia, countries that do not have an extradition treaty with China. Especially the first one was the favorite destination. Chinese media pointed out that more than a thousand corrupt officials had taken refuge around the city of Los Angeles.

In August 2015, a month before the Chinese president's first official visit to the United States, from Beijing they charged the US authorities for their "failure to cooperate in detaining their fugitives." To which Washington responded by accusing the Asian giant of deploying "undercover agents." The then Barack Obama government sent a warning to Beijing to stop sending these agents on business or tourist visas under Operation Fox Hunt. Especially after US officials denounced the intimidation tactics and threats used by the Chinese to bring the fugitives home.

From China they defended that all this was a fantasy orchestrated by the FBI because its officers trod the United States by legal means. Those were the public darts that were thrown from one puddle to another. The other reality that was brewing was that Washinton officials were convinced that many of Beijing's alleged corrupt targets were dissidents of the regime . Critics who had fled because they were to be detained for their ideas and statements, not because of Xi Jinping's war on corruption that had already dragged more than a million officials at all levels in his country.

Last night, FBI Director Christopher Wray spoke at the Hudson Institute in Washington about Operation Fox Hunt and its current purpose. According to him: there is a plot by Beijing to force his critics to return to China. Wray said the main objective of the operation was now to suppress dissent among the diaspora. "China describes Fox Hunt as a kind of international campaign against corruption. It is not. It is a radical bid by Xi to attack Chinese citizens whom he sees as threats and who live outside of China . We are talking about political rivals, dissidents and critics seeking to expose extensive human rights violations, "said Wray, a criminal defense attorney and former senior justice department official, who was elected by Trump in 2017 as director of the FBI.

Wray detailed some of the tactics that Chinese agents use to bring his own back. "For example, when they were unable to locate a target, the Chinese government sent an emissary to visit his family in the United States. The message the emissary gave was that the target had two options: to return to China immediately or to commit suicide." .

China the biggest threat to the US

The director also noted that Fox Hunt operations - led by China's Ministry of Public Security - are underway in many other countries and that the FBI has been cooperating with its partners to thwart Chinese intimidation efforts.

His statements are framed in a speech on the security threat posed by China. Wray insisted that "Beijing's counterintelligence work was the greatest long-term threat to the information and intellectual property of the United States." The director indicated that almost half of the 5,000 ongoing FBI counterintelligence cases were related to China. "We are opening one of these cases every 10 hours," he said.

In addition, Wray noted that China was using "pressure and persuasion through intermediaries with federal, state and local officials, as well as with US corporations and media, to gain support for their foreign policy positions in China." Especially during the coronavirus pandemic. Finally, he pointed out that the FBI was investigating - with more than a thousand open cases - the role of the Asian country in cases of mass piracy and espionage in the United States.

In these pandemic months, tensions between the two world powers have continued to grow. Accusations and insults are fired daily from both sides. President Donald Trump continues to refer to the "Chinese virus" when he speaks or writes about the coronavirus on Twitter. That infuriates Beijing, which uses its propaganda media to respond by calling it "an insane old man who is letting his people die by failing to act firmly against the pandemic."

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • China
  • Xi Jinping
  • Australia

PandemicCovid-19 in China: From the fear of the positive of a delivery man in Beijing to confine 400,000 people

The Correspondent's Look The hair on his extensions may come from the Uighur Forced Camps in China

Pandemic A WHO team returns to China to investigate the origin of the coronavirus

See links of interest

  • News
  • Programming
  • Translator
  • Calendar
  • Horoscope
  • Classification
  • League calendar
  • Films
  • Themes
  • Crystal Palace - Chelsea
  • Watford - Norwich City
  • Valencia CF - Real Valladolid
  • Mirandés - Elche
  • Celta de Vigo - Atlético de Madrid