How China extended its repression into an American city

Chinese diplomats and pro-China diaspora groups based in the United States organized demonstrations in San Francisco that harassed and silenced protesters opposed to Beijing’s policies, including through violence, during Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s visit to the city in November, a six-month investigation by The Washington Post shows.

The events in San Francisco illustrate how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is willing to extend its intolerance of any dissent into the United States and target people exercising their First Amendment rights in an American city. It is part of a broader global pattern of China attempting to reach beyond its borders and suppress parts of its diaspora advocating against the CCP and ongoing rights abuses in Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong and mainland China, the U.S. government and human rights groups say.

A number of diaspora group leaders have long-standing links to Beijing, according to Chinese state media, photos of high-level events and interviews, including with Chinese activists, former FBI officials and researchers. These include ties to the United Front Work Department, an arm of the Communist Party which uses non-state actors to further China’s political goals overseas, blurring the line between civilians and state officials.

This investigation into Xi’s visit to San Francisco during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit is based on an analysis of more than 2,000 photos and videos from Students for a Free Tibet, the Hong Kong Democracy Council, the China Democracy Party, observers, social media and live streams; as well as interviews with more than 35 witnesses, U.S. officials and analysts; text messages from American security guards working with Chinese diplomats, messages shared in Chinese diaspora WeChat groups, medical reports and police reports obtained by The Post.

The Post also used facial recognition software to search more than 21 hours of footage to identify the actions of pro-CCP diaspora group leaders and Chinese officials. Several people were identified through leads from a separate facial recognition search engine, which were then independently verified by cross-referencing against news clips, interviews and publicly available information. Some of the most violent figures were wearing face masks, sunglasses and hats that obscured their faces and could not be identified.

The Post investigation found:

Students for a Free Tibet and the Hong Kong Democracy Council in late July published a joint report on the events at APEC, which The Post also referenced. Additionally, The Post worked with Audrye Wong, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and an assistant professor of political science and international relations at the University of Southern California, who has extensively researched China’s foreign influence efforts.

The Post contacted 14 individuals who directly represent or are affiliated with the pro-Beijing diaspora groups at APEC through emails, social media messages, phone calls or visits to their residences or offices. Most did not respond to The Post’s inquiries; two declined to comment.

In response to extensive questions from The Post, Liu Pengyu, spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, and spokespeople from the Chinese consulates in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles sent identical emailed statements, stating that members of Chinese communities traveled to San Francisco voluntarily to welcome Xi and were instead the ones subject to “multiple incidents of provocations and violence.”

“A few U.S. organizations and agencies have been piecing together fabricated ‘evidence’ to make defamatory assumptions and groundless ‘investigations’ about the voluntary welcoming groups, as well as smearing allusions to Chinese diplomats and consulates in the U.S.,” the emailed statements said. “Such narratives are sheer political maneuvering, which China strongly opposes. The Chinese side urges the U.S. side to immediately stop the erroneous practices of hyping up falsehoods.”

The statements also condemned what they said were “violent attacks” against “Chinese welcoming crowds,” adding that the Chinese Embassy has asked American authorities to investigate the violence.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing did not respond to inquiries.

Beijing billed Xi’s visit as the start of a new, friendlier chapter in U.S.-China relations, his first to the United States in six years. But U.S. officials described the events in San Francisco as an example of Beijing’s “transnational repression” — its efforts to intimidate and silence critics, including through violence, outside its borders.

“We are aware that some pro-PRC counter protesters clashed violently with groups peacefully demonstrating” at the APEC summit, State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told The Post. “The PRC’s efforts to harass and threaten individuals … and undermine their enjoyment of freedoms of expression and assembly are unacceptable.”

State Department officials raised concerns about the violence and intimidation directly with the Chinese government, according to a department official, who, like others in this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.

The FBI, separately, is investigating the violence at the APEC summit, according to two officials familiar with the matter. Several victims and an alleged perpetrator told The Post that they have been interviewed by the FBI since the summit.

A spokeswoman for the bureau said it could not confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation, citing department policy.

The goal in San Francisco, analysts and officials say, was to present a view of the Chinese diaspora as being overwhelmingly pro-CCP and loyal to Xi, erasing dissenting voices who have fled to the United States in significant numbers because of domestic repression.

Beijing “wants to show the people [back] in China how American people welcome Xi,” said Gao Guangjun, a New York-based lawyer who escaped China following the Tiananmen Square massacre and is familiar with the Chinese diaspora in the United States.

“It’s propaganda,” he added, “that’s the reason they spend a lot of money on it.”

Of the more than a dozen attacks against activists that The Post tallied over the four days that Xi was in San Francisco, among the most severe was an assault on Zhang Kaiyu, a 51-year-old Chinese man, and his two friends, Chau Kaihung, 73, and Li Delong, 40, all immigrants from mainland China and Hong Kong.

On Nov. 17, the three men were walking away from a protest site when they passed a group of nine young men, some wearing red scarves used to signify support for the CCP during Xi’s visit.

The Post could not identify the men directly involved in the physical assault.

The South San Francisco Police Department, which initially investigated the case, forwarded the case file on Zhang to the FBI, according to people familiar with the matter.

“Everywhere we went … we were outnumbered and overwhelmed by the pro-CCP people,” Zhang said in an interview.

The arrival of pro-Beijing groups in San Francisco was orchestrated by the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles and state-linked community leaders. The result was a contingent of hundreds of people decked out in coordinated uniforms, hats, banners and flags distributed to participants by pro-Beijing diaspora groups.

The Post identified 32 Chinese diaspora leaders who helped organize these contingents, many with ties to the Chinese state, according to a review of Chinese state-linked media, official Chinese government websites and social media pages, diaspora leaders’ social media pages, as well as photos and videos.

Among them was Los Angeles-based business owner Lu Qiang, a co-founder or founder of several pro-CCP organizations. In an interview with the World Journal, one of the largest Chinese-language newspapers in the United States, Lu said he had organized 20 buses, booked 400 hotel rooms and coordinated 800 people arriving to welcome Xi at APEC.

Lu did not respond to multiple emailed requests for comment and told a Post reporter who visited his office in Los Angeles to leave the premises.

On the website for the alliance of Chinese restaurant owners in the United States, which Lu is on the advisory board of, he describes himself in a short bio as the “backbone” of the Chinese Consulate’s overseas consular assistance volunteers program. The program is run by China’s Foreign Ministry and recruits high-profile Chinese diaspora leaders overseas to help consulates and embassies with administrative and other tasks.

Researchers from Safeguard Defenders, a nongovernmental organization that investigates China’s targeting of critics outside its borders, say the program is undeclared in most host countries. It can be used to help Beijing keep tabs on the diaspora.

The Chinese American Federation, which Lu helped found, appeared to have one of the biggest contingents at APEC, with at least seven members of its leadership in attendance, according to interviews and The Post’s analysis of available footage.

The group posted about its participation online, with members discussing how they “defended the five-star red flag” of China against “harassment and disruption.”

The Post contacted five leaders of the Chinese American Federation, including Pang Fei, its general director, through phone calls or visits to their offices or homes. Pang declined to comment. None of the other leaders contacted by The Post responded.

Other leaders traveled from farther afield, such as New York-based John Chan, also known by his Chinese name, Chen Shanzhuang. Chan chairs the American Chinese Commerce Association, is affiliated with several other groups, and has helped offer consular services to the diaspora. His work with the consulate in New York was listed under a section of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ website showcasing the contributions of state-linked and “Chinese-funded” overseas institutions.

Chan told a Chinese-language radio journalist at APEC that he was an organizer of the show of support for Xi, but that the crowd around him were “volunteers.”

Chan and Lu attended an invitation-only banquet dinner for Xi during APEC, according to photos of the event. Both men have been in the United States for more than three decades, according to their public profiles. According to photos and Chinese state-linked media, Chan and Lu have also attended the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference — a political advisory body that puts forward proposals to Beijing. Neither was seen being violent in available footage.

Wong, the USC assistant professor and AEI fellow, said for overseas Chinese like Chan and Lu, supporting CCP goals can provide political connections that further their business opportunities in China, and within their community in the United States.

“There is often a mix of self-interest and self-preservation reasons, beyond pure ideological belief, in driving public and private displays of loyalty to China,” Wong said, dynamics that help the CCP “cement [its] influence in ethnic Chinese diaspora communities.”

From the moment Xi arrived in San Francisco and over the course of the four-day summit, there was a concerted effort to block or obscure Hong Kong, Tibetan and Chinese dissidents. Pro-CCP demonstrators tore down anti-CCP protesters’ banners and replaced them with Chinese flags, especially where Xi might have seen them from his motorcade.

A core group of individuals were at the forefront of efforts to physically remove signage and grab protesters on Nov. 15, including Chen Heng, chairman of the Fukien American Association; Chen Wu, the organization’s secretary general, both New York-based; and Yang Baohai, a San Francisco-based businessman, who chairs an organization called FJ by the Bay and is a youth team leader at the Western Fukien Benevolent Association.

Each of their organizations represent members of the Fujian community, also spelled Fukien, who come from a coastal region in China known for outward migration. The Fukien American Association is an 82-year-old organization that works closely with the Chinese Consulate in New York, whose diplomats have publicly spoken at and supported its events, according to photos from events and Chinese-language news reports.

Yang Baohai publicly supports core pro-CCP policies through his organization, including the unification of Taiwan and China, and also protested now-Taiwanese president Lai Ching-te’s 2023 visit to the United States. Yang wrote in 2022 that Chinese people in America “firmly believe” that the “motherland must be reunified and will be reunified,” and would contribute his “own strength in this great journey.”

All three men tried to intervene when Tsela Zoksang, a 20-year-old Tibetan student activist, climbed up a light pole outside the Hyatt Regency in downtown San Francisco on Nov. 15. The hotel was where Xi was dining at the time with American business leaders including Elon Musk and Tim Cook. Executives paid $2,000 a head to be there.

Zoksang’s sign read: “Xi Jinping, your time is up.”

A few hours later, four Tibetan activists unfurled a banner with the same message from a parking lot across the street. They and witnesses said a group of people on a lower floor of the garage tugged forcefully on the banner and ripped it down, nearly pulling one of the Tibetans over the concrete ledge. His hands and arms burned with lacerations.

The Tibetans rushed downstairs and found a group of men, most of their faces masked, holding the banner and running toward the elevators. The activists confronted the men and tried to film them.

Chen Wu did not respond to WeChat message requests and requests for comment sent through the Fukien American Association. Yang did not respond to emailed questions. John Chan did not respond to questions sent via email or text message.

Chen Heng, chairman of the Fukien American Association, denied any involvement in violent incidents but told The Post that “conflicts” between anti-CCP protesters and Beijing supporters are common at similar events.

“Some of the newcomers from these groups may be dissatisfied with the welcome [effort] … I think the extent of the fights are, at most, for example, they put something up, we take it down and so on, but there are no [violent] conflicts,” he said of the videos that showed him present.

He said he heard of violent incidents during the summit but did not witness them.

“China-U.S. relations are getting better and better, it would be best if there is nothing wrong, right?” said Chen Heng, who is a U.S. citizen. He said his group came to San Francisco to support warming ties between Washington and Beijing.

But some analysts said the events in San Francisco were an extension of Chinese state policy to repress groups such as the Tibetans, Uyghurs and Hong Kongers, and silence them, even outside China.

“From Australia to Europe and across North America … [the CCP] mobilizes surrogates to ostracize, intimidate, surround and silence the activists,” said Glenn Tiffert, a distinguished research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a historian of modern China. “The tactics differ, the goal is the same: to isolate, bury and extinguish so that it alone monopolizes the field.”

Also on Nov. 15, a Chinese activist named Wang Wei wearing a “free China” armband got into an argument with a group of CCP supporters, identifiable by the red scarves draped around their necks. Video shows that as the argument escalated to a fight, the CCP supporters used Chinese flags to try to obscure cameras from capturing the violence. Wang was jabbed with a flagpole and kicked in the head, he said in an interview.

Passersby called for an ambulance. Wang said he received a CT scan and was cleared by doctors but suffered bruises on his head and finger.

By the end of that day, the pro-CCP contingent including Yang became more aggressive, stalking protesters and using gloves with metal knuckles, metal rods and flagpoles in scuffles, videos show.

The next day, one area where Chinese diplomats passed through on their way to the summit became particularly tense — one pro-CCP protester smashed a glass bottle over a man’s head; another deployed chemical spray against anti-CCP protesters.

Chen Chuangchuang, an activist and former Chinese human rights lawyer, was left reeling from the spray while others were bleeding, video and interviews showed.

“I didn’t expect it,” Chen Chuangchuang said. “Before we went to San Francisco we did anticipate there would be some arguments and conflict, but not at this level.”

The Post identified at least four Chinese diplomats at the protests. Two were from the consulate in Los Angeles: Li Chunlin, the deputy consul general, and Meng Shiwei, a consular official. The two others, Wang Kun and Yang Bo, are at the consulate in San Francisco; Wang is the deputy director of the consular section and Yang is part of the overseas Chinese affairs office. All enjoy diplomatic immunity, which would protect them from FBI questioning about their alleged role. A fifth consular official identified himself as Guo Ning in a group text message to a group of security guards hired by the consulate in Los Angeles. Public records suggest he lives in New York.

Four security guards interviewed by The Post said another official introduced herself to them at a briefing as “Councilwoman Lin.” While she did not provide her full name to the guards, she was seen on multiple videos speaking with Chinese consular officials, coordinating the security guards hired by the consulate and pro-CCP protesters who wore security-style earpieces. The Post could not identify her by her proper name.

Among those frequently coordinating with the Chinese consular officials were Jennifer Cheung and Chen Zhaojin, who were also seen wearing security-style ear pieces in videos.

Chen Zhaojin serves as the vice president of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the Committee to Promote the Reunification of China, which supports Beijing’s absorption of self-governing Taiwan. He is also part of the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, a state organization, and was hosted by party and state officials on a trip back to China last year, according to Chinese state media.

Jennifer Cheung co-chairs or is on the board of five different pro-CCP organizations based in the Bay Area, including the Rape of Nanking Redress Coalition, which marks Japan’s war crimes against China during World War II, and the same pro-unification group that Chen Zhaojin is also vice president of, according to Chinese-language media, Chinese state-backed media and the San Francisco consulate’s website.

Chen Zhaojin did not respond to emailed requests for comment. Jennifer Cheung did not respond to questions emailed to her organization or multiple phone calls.

Days before the APEC summit, dozens of private security guards in the Bay Area were alerted to a potential job that paid up to $70 an hour. With the long days, some could earn over those four days what they did in a month, they said in interviews.

The guards were contracted by at least two San Francisco-based companies. The executive director of Precision Security Solutions, Shaqib Shaikh, told The Post in a phone interview that his company, National Protective Services, was hired by the Chinese Consulate and provided about 20 guards to secure the event. Dennis Timmons, the chief executive of the second company, Critical Synthesis Security, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Its founder Hanley Chan, who still consults with the company, said in an interview that the company provided around 40 guards, a number consistent with other interviews.

At least three guards described witnessing aggression and overt violence from the pro-CCP contingent. Two of those three additionally said the Chinese officials wanted them to physically intervene in altercations.

Chinese officials said “the job is to protect ‘our’ friends,” one of the hired guards, who wanted to be referred to only by his first name, Nikolai, told The Post. “They wanted us to jump in there, multiple times. We heard it.”

The use of violence “was always insinuated,” another guard said. He ended up leaving the job early because he said he was uncomfortable with the situation.

Shaikh said he did not recall specific consular directives regarding guards’ interventions in the crowd.

For the most part, security guards for both companies stood aside and watched fights between the two groups of protesters, video shows.

But on one occasion in the afternoon on Nov. 16, five security guards from Critical Synthesis Security moved in to break up the opposing groups. They pushed, pulled and tackled anti-CCP protesters, videos show.

Moments later, officers from the San Francisco Police Department moved in to clear the area of demonstrators.

Ahead of Xi’s departure, more than a hundred supporters lined the road to the airport and blocked access across a narrow pedestrian bridge connecting different parts of the airport. All four consular officers were within the crowd of Chinese diaspora groups, videos show.

Tensions escalated between the two sides. At one point, Chemi Lhamo, a Tibetan activist, was pressed against the railing of a bridge, unable to extract herself from a scrum of CCP supporters, including Jennifer Cheung and Chen Zhaojin, as she tried to hang on to her Tibetan flag, according to videos and interviews. Two Chinese consular officials — Li Chunlin and Wang Kun — circulated amid the crowd of Chinese supporters. Lhamo eventually gave up the flag to protect herself, she said.

“It was just layers and layers [of people] where in the epicenter is myself, being squished,” Lhamo said in an interview. She tried to record the faces around her, but someone in the crowd grabbed her phone and threw it into the water below. “They [were] piercing their elbows into my boob, using their kneecaps to pierce into the back of my knees.”

Two young Tibetans, both aged 19, arrived late to the day’s protest, across the bridge from the other Tibetans.

As they rounded a corner, they saw the faces of Xi supporters they encountered before: Chen Zhaojin, then Yang Baohai. Jennifer Cheung, Lin and one of the security guards stood directly in front them. Cheung appeared to recognize them from the previous days’ protests.

The two teenagers, who were filming as they walked, were attacked by at least eight men, video shows. They estimated 25 people or so were grabbing, punching and hitting each of them, including with metal rods and wooden sticks, they said in the joint report by Students for a Free Tibet and the Hong Kong Democracy Council. The two declined to be interviewed by The Post.

When the young men made it out, they were bloodied and bruised, photos show.

By the end of the day, some in the same group of young assailants would beat Zhang Kaiyu and his friends.

In the initial weeks following the APEC summit, China-focused groups on Capitol Hill including the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) and the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, asked for a Justice Department investigation into the violence.

They also asked for a briefing to ascertain if the violence was provoked by “elements of the Chinese Communist Party or Chinese diplomats in the United States.” The Justice Department said in a reply to the CECC chairs in January that the FBI takes the allegations “very seriously.”

FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, in a statement to The Post and speaking generally about Beijing’s overseas operations, said the CCP is “encroaching on our national sovereignty by exporting their repression and human rights abuses onto our shores.”

Requests for public arrest records linked to the APEC summit were repeatedly deferred by the San Francisco Police Department, which cited a backlog. In response to questions from The Post, Evan Sernoffsky, a spokesman for the SFPD, added that the department was “fully deployed,” did an “excellent job” balancing public safety and the protesters’ constitutional rights, and coordinated with local, state and federal partners.

Activists who protested Xi said in interviews that they feel disappointed by the lack of repercussions for the aggressors.

The violence in San Francisco appears not to have affected the standing of some of those involved.

In February, John Chan, for instance, hosted a delegation of state officials in charge of foreign affairs from Fujian province when they visited New York. The next month, Chan visited China after 22 years, according to a U.S.-based Chinese language outlet. He was welcomed by local party leaders in his hometown, and attended the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in Beijing.

Chan’s organization also arranged for a group of Republican state representatives from New York to travel to China in December, a month after the summit.

Zhang, in an interview, said he has been struggling with depression and insomnia since the attacks. His longtime friends cut ties with him after he spoke publicly at a CECC news conference about his beating, fearing he’s now being watched by Chinese agents.

“It was a huge blow,” he said.