China’s relentless pursuit of perceived state enemies knows no borders, and so neither did China Targets, a new investigation of the Chinese government’s global crackdown on dissent by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and 42 media partners.

Drawing on interviews of 105 targets in 23 countries, the probe shed new light on the Chinese government’s terrifying tactics and exposed the feckless response of the democratic governments and international institutions tasked with protecting victims of transnational repression. Among the examples:

The cross-border investigation, based on the victims’ testimonies along with previously unseen Chinese government documents spanning two decades, secret recordings of police interrogations and other evidence, sparked a swift response from some officials and institutions around the world.

“No regime may harass or threaten people in our country,” wrote German parliamentarian Boris Mijatovic in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “That would be a violation of sovereignty.”

ICIJ media partners in Germany found that Uyghur activists had been subjected to repeated online threats, surveillance and intimidation for raising awareness about Beijing’s oppressive policies against the mostly-Muslim Turkic ethnic minority — actions Mijatovic called “not acceptable.”

In Belgium, ICIJ’s media partners Knack, Le Soir and De Tijd, found that the country’s intelligence service had twice warned a small town politician about his ties to Chinese officials, and the risks of interference or even espionage. The Belgian outlets also revealed that in 2022 the Chinese Embassy in Brussels demanded, and later obtained, the removal of a Taiwanese flag displayed at the Taipei Representative Office — the de facto embassy — and, in 2023, put pressure on the organizers of a Brussels book fair to refrain from spotlighting Taiwanese literature.

Following the revelations, Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned such efforts by the Chinese government to restrict Taiwan’s presence in foreign countries.

In response to Danish newspaper Politiken’s questions about China’s transnational repression campaign, a member of Taiwan’s parliament, Puma Shen, said during a conference in Taipei on Thursday that the Taiwanese government should place “some sanctions on people who are doing this, including Chinese officials.”

Responding to a question about China Targets during a press conference in Beijing, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Guo Jiakun, told reporters that the government “oppose[s] groundless accusation, vilification and smears by some ill-intentioned forces on China’s normal law enforcement and judicial cooperation.”

The investigation found that Chinese authorities have also used Interpol, the world’s largest police organization, as a tool in their transnational repression playbook.

ICIJ and its partners interviewed eight people who were the subject of Interpol red notices, global police alerts, and examined about 50 cases involving business people, Uyghur advocates and others who were targeted by the Chinese government through Interpol.

Chinese authorities also used unethical practices to pursue the red notice targets, ICIJ and its partners found, including arresting family members in China, allegedly forcing confessions out of alleged accomplices, and even strong-arming powerful friends such as the billionaire co-founder of Alibaba, Jack Ma.

Even so, China is not among countries currently subject to Interpol corrective measures for alleged misuse of the organization’s alert system, ICIJ’s partner Oštro reported.

While some countries have stopped extraditing red notice targets and other suspected criminals to China for fear they could be tortured or subject to unfair trials, in Europe, Spain continues to comply with China’s extradition requests, El País found.

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‘All possible methods’

ICIJ’s China Targets also documented how authorities in several democratic nations failed to protect dissidents who have sought refuge in their countries.

In France, Le Monde and Radio France revealed how prosecutors in a small town south of Paris reopened a case against a Uyghur teacher shortly before Chinese President Xi Jinping’s official visit to France last year. The activist had been accused by the Chinese Embassy in Paris of damaging a stand at a local fair with red paint but the case against her was dismissed in 2023. It was later reopened in March 2024, the media outlets reported. While the case is ongoing, the teacher’s lawyer, William Bourdon, told Le Monde and Radio France it has had a chilling effect. Bourdon said Beijing was sending a message to dissidents: “We are capable of exporting, using the rule of law that we otherwise despise, all possible methods of tracking you, intimidating you, gagging you and even persecuting you, including using the French justice system.”

In the Netherlands, daily NRC revealed that during a recent visit by Chinese vice-premiere Ding Xuexiang to The Hague, the municipality granted an organization affiliated with the Chinese government a prominent spot in front of the venue where Ding was to meet Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof, while counter-protesters were assigned a spot 1,300 feet away, far from the Chinese politician’s view. The findings appear to be part of a pattern identified by ICIJ that shows how authorities in foreign countries often shield Chinese officials from protests.

Dissidents living in Turkey and South Korea told reporters that they don’t feel safe from China’s reach. “While the presence of Chinese agents in Turkey may come as a surprise to ordinary citizens, for the Muslim Uyghur community, who have resorted to fleeing abroad due to serious human rights violations in their country, being found by Chinese intelligence officers and forced to report to senior officials of the ruling Chinese Communist Party is a part of their lives,” DW Turkey reported.

According to Newstapa, a Seoul-based media outlet, Chinese political asylum seekers do not consider South Korea safe for political exiles, so many Chinese dissidents migrate there temporarily before seeking asylum in Western countries such as the United States or Canada.

ICIJ and its media partners also found that China uses CCP supporters and nongovernmental organizations aligned with the government and party to intimidate activists at the United Nations in Geneva. In one incident documented by the reporting team, Hungarian media outlet Direkt36 found the president of a Budapest-based Chinese cultural association allegedly intimidated and photographed a Tibetan political activist inside the U.N. compound in breach of the U.N.’s rules. Most recently, Swiss media outlet Tamedia also reported how businessman Erbakit Otarbay received an unusual phone call from his sister in China while he was testifying at a March event about being tortured by Chinese officials. When he called back, she told him that police had delivered a message to their mother: Erbakit must stop “spreading lies,” the police reportedly said.

The U.N. Human Rights Office told ICIJ in a statement that it works to secure space for independent organizations but that it cannot start differentiating between “authentic” and “non-authentic” NGOs and that such a distinction was unworkable and potentially open to abuse.

Since Xi took power in 2012, Beijing’s repression against dissidents and members of oppressed minorities, including those abroad, has intensified, experts said.

“These overseas dissident groups might seem like peripheral-ish figures to us. ‘What harm can they cause?’ But the CCP doesn’t see it like that,” Edward Schwarck, who researches China’s security apparatus at Oxford University, told ICIJ.

“It’s ensuring that a lot of these activists overseas don’t have the capacity to threaten China,” Schwarck said.

Other China Targets stories from ICIJ partners include: