France has shut down nine secret Chinese “police stations” allegedly used by Beijing to spy on dissidents and pressure them to return home.
French counter-intelligence dismantled the clandestine operations earlier this year after a year-long investigation into China’s growing reach on French soil.
Three Chinese nationals accused of running the shadow stations faced expulsion, according to the interior ministry, with two already removed from France.
A third case was heard before the Council of State, France’s highest administrative court, this month.
The undeclared outposts allegedly operated under China’s ministry of public security and some were hidden inside Chinese community or cultural associations, particularly those in Paris.
They stand accused of spying on France’s 600,000-strong Chinese diaspora, identifying regime opponents, gathering intelligence and recruiting informants.
There is growing alarm in France and other Western countries about Chinese espionage.
In a separate case in February, four Chinese men aged 27-45 were arrested by the DGSI, France’s domestic spy agency, after allegedly setting up a two-metre satellite dish at an Airbnb in Camblanes-et-Meynac, near Bordeaux.
Prosecutors said the equipment was intended to intercept satellite data, including from Starlink and “entities of vital importance”, notably military ones.
Two suspects were remanded in custody and two placed under judicial supervision.
“It’s like something out of a James Bond film,” one villager told Sud Ouest.
One alleged station chief, Ni Chaowen, 57, was said by the French authorities to have run a clandestine police outpost behind the front of a Fujian business association.
Police reportedly found a photograph of members posing before a sign reading “Fuzhou Police Overseas Service Station”.
In March 2024, Chinese agents allegedly tried to force Ling Huazhan, a 26-year-old dissident, onto a flight to China at Charles de Gaulle airport.
Mr Ling had fled China after being accused of “offending” Xi Jinping with anti-regime graffiti and social media posts.
He was allegedly targeted by members of a clandestine station near his Paris home but French police intervened before he could be put on the plane.
Beijing has denied that the sites are illegal police stations, describing them instead as simple “overseas service centres” designed to help expatriates with administrative tasks.
Similar concerns have been raised in Britain, where four suspected Chinese police service stations were investigated in Croydon, Hendon, Glasgow and Belfast in 2023.
Police found no evidence of illegal activity by the Chinese state at the sites, but Tom Tugendhat, then security minister, said any such foreign policing would be “unacceptable”. China later said the sites had closed permanently.
British police arrested three men in March under the National Security Act in a China-linked foreign interference investigation targeting British democracy.
On Thursday, two men became the first people sentenced in Britain of spying for China under the same Act.
Bill Yuen, 66, was jailed for eight years at the Old Bailey for a charge of assisting a foreign intelligence service in the UK under the 2023 act.
Peter Wai, 41, was jailed for 10 years for the same charge and an additional charge of misconduct in a public office while working as a UK Border Force officer.
The US has also taken a tough stance. In 2023, the FBI arrested two New York residents accused of running an undeclared Chinese police station in Lower Manhattan on behalf of Beijing.
One later pleaded guilty to conspiring to act as an illegal agent of the Chinese government.
