Hui for National Review: The Long Arm of the CCP Attacks Protesters in the U.S.

At this month’s APEC summit, the Chinese government organized goon squads to harass pro-democracy activists who were protesting Xi Jinping

“They are everywhere, beating people up who do not wave their flag, and the local police are not enforcing the law at all. All of this feels so at home, as if we are back in China.”

This was what my friend told me moments after her group was assaulted by pro-Beijing protesters in San Francisco, where world leaders gathered for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit earlier this month.

It all started when Xi Jinping arrived at the San Francisco International Airport. As Xi made his first visit to the U.S. in seven years, he was greeted by party supporters and pro-democracy protesters who accompanied him throughout his trip. Wherever the Chinese leader went, thousands of flag-waving patriotic Chinese people rallied around him, brandishing big banners to welcome him. But that’s not the only reason they were there — they were also on a mission to harass and assault democracy activists from Hong Kong, Tibet, East Turkestan, and mainland China, many of whom had fled the Chinese Communist Party’s repression in hopes of finding freedom in the U.S., not knowing the length of the CCP’s reach.

In anticipation of Xi’s visit, activists from the democracy movement organized a chain of actions to protest his trip to the U.S. Meanwhile, the Chinese consulate mobilized more than a thousand overseas Chinese from California, New York, and other parts of the U.S. to the city to greet the Chinese leader, offering the equivalent of bribes in the form of money, food, and hotels to members of Chinese organizations and students to demonstrate their avid support for the dictator and combat any dissidents.  

This is not the first time that the Chinese consulate and the CCP’s United Front paid members of the Chinese diaspora to protest in favor of the party on U.S. soil. Earlier this year, China coordinated a thousand overseas Chinese, offering $400 to each, to “effectively disrupt” the meeting between Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen and then–House speaker Kevin McCarthy in New York.

This time, in San Francisco, the pro-CCP crowds were violent, going so far as to hit and stab dissidents with steel tubes and umbrellas, grab hair, and brawl. Some journalists and activists who recorded the assaults had their phones seized by the attackers and thrown into the water. Many protesters were injured and some even hospitalized. The mob used Chinese flags to shield the scenes from view.

Prior to these protests, known U.S.-based dissidents received death threats from the CCP, warning them about what would happen if they showed up to protest. Anna Kwok, the executive director of the Hong Kong Democracy Council and a Hong Kong overseas activist who has a $128,000 bounty placed on her by the Hong Kong government, received online death threats a few days prior to the protests, saying they would drop her unconscious body at the Chinese consulate. Despite prior warnings and threats, the San Francisco authorities did close to nothing to protect the communities who were peacefully protesting and exercising their rights to free speech. The lack of capacity and will to intervene and arrest the perpetrators enabled more assaults and set a horrible example of how a free democratic country should handle totalitarian oppression.

I have seen the frightening extent of the CCP’s reach on U.S. soil before. Back in 2019, I received death threats for organizing solidarity rallies in Boston to support the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement. My personal information and photos were shared widely around the Chinese community. Some threatened to protest my activities in front of my church and my home. At a rally I organized in August of that year, the Chinese consulate mobilized hundreds of Chinese people to show up. They exchanged messages about bringing firearms to the rally and threatening to shoot me.

The intense standoff between the two sides later turned physical when a man tried to start a fight with members of our community. He then followed me to my dorm in an attempt to intimidate me. Local police came and escorted him away, but he faced no repercussions. I spent the rest of my senior year of college living in constant fear of being watched and followed.

Four years later, although one of the operatives involved in spying on my activities was indicted by the Department of Justice for acting as a Chinese agent in the U.S., many others have not faced any consequences. It’s chilling to imagine that some of these people continue to walk around freely and harass dissidents in broad daylight on American soil.

Despite the increased attention on China’s transnational repression in recent years, the U.S. has done very little to keep our dissident communities safe from the perpetrators. While the genocide of Uyghurs and Tibetans is ongoing in China, and more than a thousand Hong Kongers are imprisoned for standing in defiance of the Chinese regime, these human-rights issues were sidelined when President Biden met Xi on November 15. What happened to our community at the protests earlier this month has shown us the lengths the Chinese government will go to threaten freedom and human rights abroad, but its brutality towards dissidents inside China is orders of magnitude worse.

Transnational repression has become an increasing concern for the international community. New bicameral legislation was introduced in Congress last month to address this concern. But it doesn’t have to become law for individual perpetrators to be held accountable. All guilty parties on U.S. soil — including those responsible for physically attacking and harassing activists this month — should be pursued and charged to the fullest extent of the law.

Published in the National Review on November 30th, 2023.

FRANCES HUI is the policy and advocacy coordinator of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, a dissident speaker of the Dissident Project, and the director of We The Hongkongers.