Summary
A New York man, Chen Jinping, pleaded guilty to operating an undeclared Chinese police station in Manhattan for China’s Ministry of Public Security.
The station, part of a transnational repression scheme, aided Beijing in locating and suppressing pro-democracy activists in the U.S., violating American sovereignty.
Authorities say the station also served routine functions like renewing Chinese driving licenses but had a more sinister role, including tracking a California-based activist.
Chen faces up to five years in prison, while a co-defendant has pleaded not guilty and awaits trial.
That’s the kinda logic used to defend the upper class. “What did he really do?” Hyper focusing on specifics, rather than the actual act.
Acting as a foreign agent, directly operating under the orders of a foreign government under the jurisdiction of a sovereign country is a bit of a no go. No matter if it’s China or not. We here in Europe have similar events with American spies every dozen years (and Russian and Chinese too ofc).
The stuff you mention about handing out valid Chinese IDs is mostly irrelevant flavor text. It’s iffy maily because it was an unofficial station in the eyes of the US. Official embassies fulfill such roles too without issue.
I’m not being faecitious, but what was the “actual act”? If I was on holiday abroad and heard a fellow Brit, now a naturalised citizen of wherever, boasting about tax evasion and I snitched on them to the tax authorities in Britain, have I now done the same thing as an agent of the British government on foreign soil? Ive done an ostensibly legal act (made a phone call abroad) about something I legally came across as a private citizen, but if one wanted to, could that be cast as “colluding against a citizen on behalf of a foreign government”?
The difference in this case is this person was apparently being paid by the Chinese government. But I’m wondering what specifically about their actions was illegal? Surely if you go about your business doing legal things it doesn’t matter whether you’re on the payroll of a foreign government or not?
The US has no extradition treaty with China (or similar). So that would likely fall under spying and the “coercing a New Jersey man wanted by Beijing into returning to China” part is very much a major step over the line.
Edit: Also jeez people, he’s just asking relatively reasonable questions form ignorance, stop tearing him a new one! Being wrong shouldn’t immediately be cause for such backslash.
Thank you. Sadly people seem increasingly unable to cope with the fact that someone they disagree with is not a troll just a regular person trying to figure things out. I blame twitter… reddit too… all of them actually. It’s worse by an order of magnitude than 10 / 15 years ago.
when it comes to China, there are a lot of state paid shills trying to barrage people with misinformation. Maybe it’s genuine, but I’m disinclined to believe anyone actually believes we should allow foreign entities to have parallel authorities infringing on nations sovereignity.
I don’t think there should be! At all. Also, fuck the Chinese government.
I’m just pedantically interested in exactly how the law works in that area.
For example, you characterise it as “infringing on a nations sovereignty”. But as far as I know nothing this guy was doing was affecting the rights of American citizens. That might just be the shortcomings of the article, which is why I said I assume there was more to it. I assume he was up to bad stuff. And acting like a gangster on behalf of another government is plainly wrong. It’s just that the article says he wasn’t physically intimidating anyone. Nor does it mention he’s sharing state secrets or personal info (from, say, a government job). Apparently he was passing publicly available information to the Chinese government and I was just surprised that that crossed a line.
Legally speaking there would have to be some ill intent (and perhaps that’s what all his communications show) because sending public info abroad in itself doesn’t strike me as illegal. (If someone were, say, sending info to the British government it doesn’t seem it would be automatically illegal. I assume there was some evidence that he was planning for harm to come from what he was doing)
No, you are being facetious.
Being facetious is being not serious about something, or just to being trivial. I’m doing the opposite, trying to specifically understand how the law works. I was surprised that communicating public information elsewhere could be illegal. No-one’s cited the law so far on specifically how this guy passing information was illegal. Like I said, if he was going around bullying and intimidating like a mobster it would be perfectly understandable. I was just surprised that this is apparently a limit on the first amendment because it didn’t seem clear exactly where the line is.
Now you’re just trying to lie to everyone here. If you can’t have an honest discussion you don’t deserve an opinion 🤷
Your presumption is the death of honest discussion, try and take people at their word. Some, like myself, are here to talk out their ignorance and learn.
I read the entire thread. You had every opportunity to honestly communicate or to stop grandstanding as the threads biggest dingus.
You did neither.
Have a great day 😅
This is an argument akin to “What do you mean I’m accused of fraud? All I really did was write my name on a piece of paper!”
It requires deliberate ignorance of the context, and that’s why people are unwilling to waste time explaining it to you in detail.