Over the past decade, those interested in China’s role in the Middle East have investigated its network of infrastructure projects known as the Belt and Road Initiative, its diplomatic overtures to Iran and Saudi Arabia, and its heavy dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Mordechai Chaziza turns his attention to a very different issue: Beijing’s below-the-radar efforts to police its citizens living abroad.

According to the human-rights group Safeguard Defenders, . . . China has 102 overseas police stations in 53 countries spanning five continents. The considerable size of Chinese overseas communities has allowed China to field an extensive global presence through these stations. The Chinese overseas service-stations network is managed by China’s Ministry of Public Security. . . . Their official tasks are to help Chinese citizens overseas with administrative issues, such as renewing their driving licenses.

Nevertheless, there are also reports of the stations being involved in “persuade to return” operations (attempts by the Chinese authorities, either directly or via proxies, to get criminal suspects or dissidents to return home for investigation and/or prosecution). According to China’s Ministry of Public Security, between April 2021 and July 2022, the Chinese authorities arrested 230,000 suspects overseas, mainly from Southeast Asia, primarily relating to cases of suspected telecom fraud.

The role of these stations’ networks in advancing China’s interests and extraditing Chinese citizens has naturally caused concern in the West, although their response was slow. More than a dozen countries have launched probes against the stations in recent months, and other countries have significantly scaled back their cooperation with them. For its part, the Chinese government has consistently denied the existence of overseas police-service stations.

According to Safeguard Defenders’ report, Chinese overseas police-service centers are located only in two countries in the Middle East: one in Israel and two in the UAE.

Yesterday, the beepers used by hundreds of Hizballah operatives were detonated. Noah Rothman puts this ingenious attack in the context of the overall war between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group:

[W]hile the disabling of an untold number of Hizballah operatives is remarkable, it’s also ominous. This week, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war, a dangerous one in which the IDF will face off against an enemy with tens of thousands of fighters and over 150,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israeli cities.

Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, focuses on the specific damage the pager bombings have likely done to Hizballah:

This will put the men in hospital for a period of time. Some of them can go back to serving Hizballah, but they will not have access to one of their hands. These will most likely be their dominant hand, meaning the hand they’d also use to hold the trigger of a rifle or push the button to launch a missile.

Hizballah has already lost around 450 fighters in its eleven-month confrontation with Israel. This is a significant loss for the group. While Hizballah can replace losses, it doesn’t have an endlessly deep [supply of recruits]. This is not only because it has to invest in training and security ahead of recruitment, but also because it draws its recruits from a narrow spectrum of Lebanese society.

The overall challenge for Hizballah is not just replacing wounded and dead fighters. The group will be challenged to . . . roll out some other way to communicate with its men. The use of pagers may seem archaic, but Hizballah apparently chose to use this system because it assumed the network could not be penetrated. . . . It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hizballah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes.