Nicola Sturgeon in police talks over 'secret Chinese base'
The first minister has held talks with Police Scotland over reports that a Glasgow restaurant is being used as a base for Chinese secret police.
Human rights body Safeguard Defenders has released a report claiming dozens of outposts have been set up globally to coerce Chinese dissidents back home. The report claims one base is on Sauchiehall Street at the same address as a restaurant.
It comes as the Irish government ordered a Chinese "police station" in Dublin's city centre to close. The Chinese authorities said the station offered a service to Chinese citizens in Ireland including the renewal of driving licences. The Chinese government has been accused of establishing similar facilities across Europe, including two in London and in the Netherlands.
Dutch media found evidence that the "overseas service stations", which promise to provide diplomatic services, are being used to try to silence Chinese dissidents in Europe. A spokeswoman for the Dutch foreign ministry said the existence of the unofficial police outposts was illegal, but the Chinese foreign ministry rejected the allegations.
It's not been that long since Chinese diplomats were caught attacking protesters in Manchester and it sounds like our universities are turning a blind eye to questionable goings on because they're so reliant on the money from Chinese students.
Do we need to be more vigilant about the yellow peril?
Well, firstly, I know you're being glib but using the phrase "yellow peril" is very annoying, not least because this stuff is overwhelmingly more of a risk factor for other Chinese and Taiwanese people. Secondly, I've not heard about this stuff with universities? What's the deal there? It wouldn't suprise me, as unis love money more than I love binge eating until I can't think.
I don't really know what you can do about this kind of thing. We've got a pretty anti-dissent government too and one that probably wants to sell, I don't know, Cornish pasties to China and only sell off all our ports to them in return, so the UK's unlikely to care much. The cost of doing business and all that.
I'd heard about similar things in the past and I thought it was common knowledge that China had operatives in other countries keeping tabs on their ex-pats, I think all this report really adds that we didnt know is the specific locations of the bases.
Closing them down is only a temporary disruption as they can easily open new offices posing as shell companies if it comes to it.
Weird that that massive monitoring network we have permanently snooping on everyone's WhatsApp messages and shit doesn't alert our security services to things like this. Or that our security services don't seem to be quite as bothered as you would think that stuff like this is going on.
Back in the old days spies had to go undercover, nowadays they are basically just businessmen.
I take it as a tacit acknowledgement that we live under a shadowy illuminati one world government already, and geopolitical drama is just pantomime to keep us all in the dark. Putin isn't invading Ukraine to prop up his regime or fight back against nato encroachment or any of that, what it really is Os that global capital wanted the ground ploughed up fresh so they could go in and plant the seeds of investment and Putin is the heel. Just look at him, he plays the baddie all too gleefully.
This has been an issue in Canada as well. But this neoliberal age isn't like the 1950s anymore, and our governments will turn a blind eye to it because... money.
>Or that our security services don't seem to be quite as bothered as you would think that stuff like this is going on.
The job of the security services is to know what's going on. What to do with that knowledge is a political matter. Historically, our position has been to avoid messing with China because they make nearly all of our stuff; trying to start a fight with China is almost literally biting the hand that feeds you. We've tolerated China's authoritarian tendencies because we didn't see what we could do about it and we didn't want to jeopardise the flow of stuff.
That position has changed over the last few years, at least in terms of rhetoric. That's possibly because Western governments are worried about the rise of Xi Jinping and China's increasing willingness to project their power beyond their borders. It's also possibly because our governments don't actually care whether we've got any stuff.
