MIDLAND, Texas(National times)- Retired Chinese official Li Chuanliang was recuperating from cancer on a Korean resort island when he got an urgent call: Don\u2019t return to China, a friend warned. You\u2019re now a fugitive. Days later, a stranger snapped a photo of Li in a cafe. Terrified South Korea would send him back, Li fled, flew to the U.S. on a tourist visa and applied for asylum. But even there \u2014 in New York, in California, deep in the Texas desert \u2014 the Chinese government continued to hunt him down with the help of surveillance technology. Li\u2019s communications were monitored, his assets seized and his movements followed in police databases. More than 40 friends and relatives \u2014 including his pregnant daughter \u2014 were identified and detained, even by tracking down their cab drivers through facial recognition software. Three former associates died in detention, and for months shadowy men Li believed to be Chinese operatives stalked him across continents, interviews and documents seen by The Associated Press show. \u201cThey track you 24 hours a day. All your electronics, your phone \u2014 they\u2019ll use every method to find you, your relatives, your friends, where you live,\u201d Li said. \u201cNo matter where you are, you\u2019re under their control.\u201d The Chinese government is using an increasingly powerful tool to cement its power at home and vastly amplify it abroad: Surveillance technology, much of it originating in the U.S., an AP investigation has found. Within China, this technology helped identify and punish almost 900,000 officials last year alone, nearly five times more than in 2012, according to state numbers. Beijing says it is cracking down on corruption, but critics charge that such technology is used in China and elsewhere to stifle dissent and exact retribution on perceived enemies.
Outside China, the same technology is being used to threaten wayward officials, along with dissidents and alleged criminals, under what authorities call Operatio ns \u201cFox Hunt\u201d and \u201cSky Net.\u201d The U.S. has criticized these overseas operations as a \u201cthreat\u201d and an \u201caffront to national sovereignty.\u201d More than 14,000 people, including some 3,000 officials, have been brought back to China from more than 120 countries through coercion, arrests and pressure on relatives, according to state information. \u201cThey\u2019re actively pursuing those people who fled China. \u2026 as a way to demonstrate power, to show there\u2019s no way you can escape,\u201d said Yaqiu Wang, a fellow at the University of Chicago. \u201cThe chilling effect is enormously effective.\u201d The technology used to control officials at home and abroad over the past decade came from Silicon Valley companies such as IBM, Oracle and Microsoft, according to a review of hundreds of leaked emails, government procurements, and internal corporate presentations obtained exclusively by AP. This technology mines texts, payments, flights, calls, and other data to identify the friends and family of officials and their assets. Exiled former Chinese official Li Chuanliang describes how his mother and business associates have been targeted by the Chinese government in an effort to put pressure on him to return back to China. (AP video Serginho Roosblad) Among the agencies pursuing Li and his family is China\u2019s economic crimes police, which hunts corruption suspects domestically and abroad. IBM said in internal slides that it sold the i2 surveillance software program to this Economic Crime Investigation Bureau, and procurement records show Oracle and Microsoft software was sold to that same division. Leaked emails show i2 software was copied by a former IBM partner, Landasoft, and sold to China\u2019s disciplinary commissions, which investigate officials. None of the sales violated U.S. sanctions. IBM said in a statement that it sold its division making the i2 program in 2022, and has \u201crobust processes\u201d to ensure its technology is used responsibly. Oracle declined comment, and Microsoft did not respond. China\u2019s State Council, Ministry of Public Security, National Supervision Commission, and Supreme People\u2019s Court and Prosecutorate did not respond to faxed requests for comment. China\u2019s foreign ministry told AP that Chinese authorities protect the rights of suspects, handle cases lawfully and respect foreign sovereignty. \u201cWe urge relevant countries to drop double standards and avoid becoming a safe haven for corrupt officials and their assets,\u201d it said. Li\u2019s story is a rare firsthand account from a former Chinese official. Beijing has accused Li of corruption totaling around $435 million, but Li says he\u2019s being targeted for openly criticizing the Chinese government and denies criminal charges of taking bribes and embezzling state funds. A review of thousands of pages of legal, property, and corporate records, interrogation transcripts, and Li\u2019s medical and travel files obtained exclusively by AP, as well as interviews with nine lawyers, support key parts of his story, showing distorted charges, blocked access to evidence, coercive confessions, and altered legal records. Li drew ire because as a former official, he knew well and exposed the inner workings of local politics, including naming names. While in the U.S., he also started what he called the Chinese Tyrannical Officials Whistleblower Center. \u201cChina places enormous emphasis on the political discipline of even former officials and (Communist) Party members,\u201d said Jeremy Daum, Senior Fellow at Yale Law School\u2019s Paul Tsai China Center. \u201cSo when one becomes a vocal critic of the country\u2019s leadership, it doesn\u2019t go over well.\u201d At a pro-democracy gathering in California in 2020, Li said, he was tailed and questioned by a stranger who knew his identity. That November, an activist secretly working for Beijing asked Li to a meeting and added him to a dissident group chat monitored by China\u2019s police, a 2025 FBI indictment later revealed. In June, an FBI letter identified Li as the possible victim of a crime involving an unregistered Chinese agent. Both the FBI and the White House did not comment on Li\u2019s specific case. But the White House said it pursues any violations of U.S. law, and the FBI told AP it considers China\u2019s efforts to retaliate against people in the U.S. who exercise their rights \u201cunacceptable.\u201d Li\u2019s future in the U.S. is unclear. The Trump administration has paused all asylum applications. If he doesn\u2019t return, he could face trial in absentia; if convicted and deported, he could face life in prison. \u201cElectronic surveillance is the arteries for China to project power into the world … each step that every one of your relatives takes is being monitored and analyzed with big data,\u201d Li said. \u201cIt\u2019s absolutely terrifying.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MIDLAND, Texas(National times)- Retired Chinese official Li Chuanliang was recuperating from cancer on a Korean resort island when he got an urgent call: Don\u2019t return to China, a friend warned. You\u2019re now a fugitive. Days later, a stranger snapped a photo of Li in a cafe. Terrified South Korea would send him back, Li fled, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117494,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","entry"],"yoast_head":"\n