New York man Chen Jinping pleads guilty in Chinese ‘secret police station’ case

A New York resident who prosecutors say operated a “secret police station” in the Chinatown district of Manhattan to aid Beijing’s targeting of dissidents, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to conspiring to act as an unregistered foreign agent.

Chen Jinping, 61, entered the plea at a hearing in Brooklyn Federal Court before US District Judge Nina Morrison. He faces up to five years in prison when he is sentenced on May 30.

In court, Chen admitted to removing an online article about the alleged police station on behalf of China’s government in September 2022. He said he was not registered with the US Justice Department as a foreign agent at the time, as US law requires of people acting for other countries.

Chen and a New York-based co-defendant, Lu Jianwang, were initially arrested on April 17, 2023. Lu has pleaded not guilty to the same charge, as well as to obstruction of justice.

The arrests followed a 2022 investigation published by Spain-based advocacy group Safeguard Defenders that reported China had set up overseas “service stations”, including in New York, that illegally worked with Chinese police to pressure fugitives to return to China.

The Department of Justice has been ramping up probes into what it calls “transnational repression” by US adversaries such as China and Iran to intimidate political opponents living in the United States.