Liu Jianchao - caught by his own investigators

Liu Jianchao currently heads the International Liaison Department under the Central Committee. It is the main party organ in charge of exchanges with foreign elites outside state-to-state diplomacy. The ILD’s main targets are foreign politicians and political parties, think tanks and academics, and NGOs. The public aspect of these contacts allows the CCP to build an image as a legitimate partner of democratic political life. Less visibly, ILD dedicated units also work to build relationships with key foreign individuals and entities that may help align discourse and policy-making with CCP goals, as well being tasked with finding ways to divide potential critics.[1]

He previously served as head of the International Fugitive Recovery Office of the Central Anti-Corruption Coordination Group and Director of the International Cooperation Bureau of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (August 2015 to April 2017); as Secretary of the Zhejiang Commission for Discipline Inspection (July 2017 to May 2018); as Member of the 19^th Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (2017 to 2022); and as a member of the 20^th Central Committee (2022 – ongoing).

It is submitted that in these roles he bore direct command and/or oversight responsibility for the following violations on individual human rights as sanctioned by the laws of the United Kingdom, the European Convention on Human Rights, and relevant UN human rights conventions and treaties. Furthermore, activities carried out under his direct command have severely violated the territorial and judicial sovereignty of third countries, including the United Kingdom.

He bears responsibility for the forceful return to China of thousands of individuals through illegal methods – notably persuasion to return operations, which account for the vast majority of “successful fugitive returns” – that flaunted those individuals’ (as well as their families’) rights to a legal defense, the right to a fair trial and the prohibition of non-refoulement under the UN Convention Against Torture and the UN Convention on the Protection of Refugees.

According to public records from the PRC, at least two such cases took place within the United Kingdom, leading to the clandestine and forceful repatriation of two individuals during the time of Liu Jianchao’s tenure at the head of these operations.

In this respect, it is important to highlight the recent Liu v. Poland sentence of the European Court of Human Rights (entry into force: January 30, 2023), which instated a de facto erga omnes prohibition of extradition to the People’s Republic of China as the conditions of its judicial and penitentiary system would pose any individual facing such a return at an irreparable risk of torture or other inhuman and degrading treatment, constituting a violation of the principle of non-refoulement (Article 3 ECHR).

The methods employed further institute a wanton climate of fear within overseas diaspora communities, aimed at silencing dissent and accounts of gross human rights violations inside the PRC. Such a climate gravely impacts target communities’ enjoyment of fundamental freedoms, such as the freedom of expression and opinion, right of assembly and freedom of movement.

As head of the International Fugitive Recovery Office from August 2015 to April 2017, Liu Jianchao had ultimate command and oversight responsibility for thousands of international fugitive recovery operations and irregular methods employed.

As Director of the CCDI’s International Cooperation Bureau, Liu Jianchao had direct command and responsibility for thousands of international fugitive recovery operations and irregular methods employed.

As Secretary of the Zhejiang Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, Liu Jianchao had direct command responsibility for thousands of international fugitive recovery operations carried out by provincial bodies and irregular methods employed.

As a member of the 19^th Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, Liu Jianchao had oversight responsibility for the policy articulation and deployment of irregular methods to retrieve fugitives abroad.

He has furthermore played a leading role in the domestic reforms leading to the adoption of the National Supervision Law in 2018, accompanied by a legal written interpretation by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection that explicitly inscribes the use of such irregular fugitive recovery methods (including persuasion to return and kidnapping) and promotes these methods among all relevant national and local-level bodies.

That same reform also saw the formal adoption of the special investigative mechanism of liuzhi, a system of incommunicado detention firmly outside the bounds of any judicial overview, that institutionalizes enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention and torture for investigative purposes by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. The measure has been frequently denounced by UN human rights procedures. Used on a systematic and widespread scale, its conditions meet the threshold of crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute.

Liu Jianchao was not a mere executer of such policies, but co-authored the 2018 reform. His tenure as Secretary of the Zhejiang Central Commission for Discipline Inspection coincided with a 2017 pilot run of reforms in three provinces, including Zhejiang. Official data shows Zhejiang heading the charts for the use of liuzhi. While little public record exists on the conditions meeting “fugitives” following their forceful return -  except for the fact that conviction rates within the PRC are routinely above and beyond 99%[2] -, given the economic nature of the alleged crimes of many of those forcefully returned to the PRC for prosecution, it must be assumed at least part of them will have been met by liuzhi.

As Secretary of the Zhejiang CCDI, Liu Jianchao had command responsibility over the use of the liuzhi system in Zhejiang province between 2017 and 2018. As a member of the 19th Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and a Member of the 20th CCP Central Committee, he continues to bear oversight responsibility for the implementation of the measure nationwide. 

[1]https://sinopsis.cz/en/it/.

[2]https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/blog/china-s-criminal-justice-system-age-covid. 

“No matter where the corrupt elements escape, they must be arrested and brought to justice.”

General Secretary Xi Jinping report to the 19^th National Congress of the CCP[1]

“Our principle is thus: whether or not there is an agreement in place, as long as there is information that there is a criminal suspect, we will chase them over there, we will take our work to them, anywhere.”

Former Operation Fox Hunt Director Liu Dong (刘冬)[2]

“A fugitive is like a kite. Even though he is abroad, the string is held in China. He can always be found through his family.”

Shanghai police officer Li Gongjing (李公敬)[3]

Background

In his very first speech as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CCP), Xi Jinping emphasized the importance of cracking down on graft and corruption[4], laying the groundworks for what would become a relentless domestic and overseas campaign overseen by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI). Failing to tackle said corruption, as Xi highlighted in a subsequent speech, would “inevitably lead to the downfall of the party and the state”.[5]

While corruption does indeed appear endemic in the People’s Republic of China, from the very beginning expert observers noted how this campaign seemed at least equally geared towards “a party-building campaign for amassing political power amidst China’s fragmented power structure rather than a systemic remedy to cure endemic corruption. […] A closer look at the campaign indicates that it relies heavily on the opaque Party disciplinary mechanism rather than on the legal system to investigate and punish officials. In addition, the campaign catalyses the concentration of power among Party agencies affiliated with Xi in the name of anti-corruption as opposed to installing genuine checks and balances. Consequently, the campaign might reinforce the authoritarian system that has engendered widespread graft in the first place, and could sow seeds of future corruption.”[6]

In 2022, the Financial Times reiterated: “Xi came to power in 2012. From the outset, his targeting of “tigers and flies”, or high- and low-ranking government officials, had a clear dual purpose: eliminate corruption and eviscerate political rivals.”[7]

The clearest admission of this dual role comes from the CCP itself. As the South China Morning Post summarized on June 7, 2023: “China’s top anti-corruption watchdog has signalled there will be no let up in its campaign as it vowed to crack down on political conspiracies. “We must resolutely prevent the wrong expectation of changing our direction or loosening our grip,” the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection wrote in an article for the party mouthpiece People’s Daily. […] 

The Tuesday article was among a series of similar pieces published by various top party and government bodies as part of a campaign by the party’s leadership to promote President Xi Jinping’s political ideology. The campaign began in March after Xi secured a norm-breaking third presidential term and tightened his grip on the party last autumn by placing close associates in key leadership positions. The commission also pledged to “strengthen political supervision and promote the unity of thought, will and action of the entire party”. It added that the anti-graft body will continue to fight against “political conspiracies” and “political cliques”, so that it can “eliminate political hazards that endanger the party’s unity”.”[8]

In 2014, the international arm of Xi Jinping’s domestic anti-corruption drive was launched across a range of agencies and special “fugitive recovery” operations (see 1.A. above).

Since launch of these operations, international awareness and criticism of its methods has increasingly picked up. In January 2022, U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation Bureau Christopher Wray “sounded an alarm in a speech in late January. Fox Hunt, he said, was launched to stamp out corruption, but in reality, China “targets, captures, and repatriates former Chinese citizens living overseas whom it sees as a political or financial threat. The Chinese government is increasingly targeting people inside the US for personal and political retribution — undercutting the freedoms that our constitution and laws promise. Currently, there are hundreds of people on US soil who are on the Chinese government’s official [target] list and a whole lot more that are not on the official list.”[9]

While announcing charges against eight people, including six Chinese citizens, over a three-year plot to intimidate a U.S. resident into returning to China to face criminal charges in a case believed to be part of operation Fox Hunt,  U.S. Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers stated in October 2020: “Without coordination with our government, China’s repatriation squads enter the United States, surveil and locate the alleged fugitives, and deploy intimidation and other tactics to force them back into China where they would face certain imprisonment or worse following illegitimate trials.”[10]

Several criminal indictments over alleged crimes related to the PRC’s Fox Hunt operations are currently underway in U.S. jurisdictions.

David Vigneault, Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service: “...they [these campaigns, including Fox Hunt] are designed to undermine democratic processes and threaten Canadians in secret and clandestine ways.”[11]

Following release of Safeguard Defenders’ reports on the establishment and operations of so-called “Chinese overseas police service centers” by PRC public security authorities in cooperation with the United Front Work Department, a growing series of countries has expressed severe concern over the clandestine “fugitive recovery” operations carried out by or at the behest of PRC authorities and launched investigations.

Methods

While official PRC statements - including by Liu Jianchao in his former role as head of the International Fugitive Recovery Office – often tout the PRC’s “strict adherence to the rule of law in the international pursuit of fugitives”, such “legality” must be understood in terms of the laws and legal interpretations set out by those same authorities. It is evident such laws and practices are not compliant with international legal norms on the territorial and judicial sovereignty of other States, fundamental rights and freedoms set out in the UN Declaration on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and specific human rights instruments such as the UN Convention Against Torture.

The best description of the PRC’s methodological framework for the international recovery of fugitives is provided by a legal written interpretation of Article 52 of the National Supervision Law from the Central Commission of Discipline Inspection (NCS/CCDI) in 2018[12], with an aim to “clarify” the methods of “anti-corruption international pursuit":

1. Extradition refers to the transfer of suspected criminals to the country for prosecution and punishment in accordance with bilateral treaties, multilateral treaties or on the basis of reciprocity to the country where the fugitive is located. Extradition has strict conditions. The current main principles are: the principle of non-extradition of political prisoners; the principle of non-extradition of the death penalty; the principle of non-extradition of citizens; the principle of double crime; and pre-treaty.

2. Repatriation, also known as immigration law repatriation, […] so that the country where [the fugitive] is located deprives them of their residence status and forcibly repatriates [them] to China or a third country in accordance with immigration laws and regulations.

3. Off-site prosecution means that when China is unable to exercise jurisdiction, it will convict and sentence our fugitives by ceded jurisdiction to the country where the fugitive is located, and support the country where the fugitive is located in accordance with local laws and the evidence provided by us. After being convicted and sentenced, fugitives are often forcibly repatriated. At that time, they can be deported back to China for legal sanctions.

4. Persuasion to return, which refers to the persuasion and education of fugitives so that they can take the initiative to return to China and accept prosecution, trial or execution of punishment. Persuasion is an ideological and political work. The main means is to persuade and educate criminal suspects, make them see reason, move with emotion, understand the law, and promise to deal with the conditions lightly, so as to promote a fundamental psychological change.

5. An unconventional measure. There are two kinds of common ones, (1) kidnapping, using the means of kidnapping to arrest the fugitives and return to China; (2) trapping, lure the suspect to the territory, the international high seas, the international airspace or a third country with an extradition treaty, and then [move for their] arrest or extradition. The unauthorized investigation activities without the approval of the sovereign state will violate the criminal laws of the country where they are located, constitute the crime of illegal detention or kidnapping, and cause diplomatic disputes. Therefore, in practice, kidnapping or trapping methods are rarely used.

While known cases of kidnappings are indeed rare, they do exist. A notable case is that of Swedish citizen Gui Minhai, kidnapped in Thailand in 2015.[13] It until months later that his family would finally have sad certainty over what happened to him, as a forced televised confession was aired globally by Party outlet CGTN. Following a brief stint under house arrest in China in 2017, he was arrested again in January 2018 and has been in prison since. Notable cases of entrapment include the above-mentioned cases of Uyghurs in Morocco and Saudi Arabia. More cases are described in Safeguard Defenders’ January 2022 report Involuntary Returns[14].

In recent times, due to the incompatibility of its judicial and penitentiary system with international human rights treaties, Beijing has met increasing difficulty at obtaining extraditions, notably within the Council of Europe Member States. The landmark Liu v. Poland sentence of the European Court of Human Rights from October 2022 (entry into force January 30, 2023….) made the de facto erga omnes assessment that the forced return of an individual to China would constitute an irreparable risk of violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (prohibition of non-refoulement).

The sentence followed and reinforced a trend within the Council of Europe Member States of judicial decisions against extraditions to the PRC.[15]

At the same time, also its other attempts at abusing legal international cooperation mechanisms have been met with increasing resistance of international human rights bodies. Notable cases include the blatant abuse of the Interpol Red Notice mechanism for Uyghur human rights defender Idris Hasan, who has been detained in Morocco for close to two years now but remains protected from extradition following interim measures issued by the UN Committee Against Torture in December 2021. Interpol, who had failed to review the Red Notice request from 2017 according to its internal procedure, was forced to review it after news of his arrest in July 2021 broke and ruled that it was in clear violation of its Statute that prohibits requests of persecution on political, ethnic or religious grounds.[16] Similarly, an ongoing attempt at the repatriation of two Uyghur men in Saudi Arabia – who have been held in the country without charges since November 2020 – has been met with firm resistance from UN Special Procedures. In March 2022, relatives of one of the men – a woman and her then 13-year-old daughter – got caught up in the crossfire and were detained by the Saudi authorities as well. They have similarly been held without charges since then and remain at risk of deportation.[17] The August 2022 report of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights pointedly states: “At the same time, and in light of the overall assessment of the human rights situation in XUAR [Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region], countries hosting Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities from XUAR should refrain from forcibly returning them, in any circumstance of real risks of breach of the principle of non-refoulement.”[18]

PRC authorities often cite third countries’ “reluctance” to extradite or deport as an excuse for the deployment of irregular methods, especially persuasion to return. In response to Safeguard Defenders’ reports on “Chinese overseas police service centers”, a Shanghai Foreign Affairs official pointedly stated to Spanish newspaper El Correo that "The bilateral treaties are very cumbersome and Europe is reluctant to extradite to China. I don't see what is wrong with pressuring criminals to face justice…”[19]

It also frequently blames the absence of bilateral extradition treaties – such as with the United Kingdom – for its resorting to such methods.  Not only does the absence of such a bilateral instrument not preclude extradition requests under multilateral instruments, notably the UN Convention Against Corruption, official data shows that irregular methods are used to an equal degree across jurisdictions, irrespective of the presence of such bilateral treaties (which mainly serve the purpose of inciting fear within the target communities and legitimizing the PRC’s judicial system). Often also a mixed-methods approach is used, where targets whose return is sought through an official international cooperation mechanism are dissuaded from fully using all legal defense instruments at their disposal under international and bilateral treaties – as well as the governing laws of the country from where their return is sought – by using a variety of persuasion to return methods (see for example a case recently concluded in Cyprus[20]).

Official public statistics (also see further below in C. Data) during the relevant timeframe of Liu Jianchao’s leadership of the International Fugitive Recovery Office and the International Cooperation Bureau of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection show how the method most “successfully” employed is persuasion to return often described as so-called “voluntary return”.

See for example the distribution of successful returns in the rare provision of a detailed data set for Sky Net / Fox Hunt operations in 2018[21]:

The persuasion to return or voluntary return methods have been amply described in Safeguard Defenders’ January 2022 report Involuntary Returns[22], where they are categorized along two strands:

1. The tracking down of the target’s family in China in order to coerce them through means of intimidation, harassment, detention or imprisonment into persuading their family members to return “voluntarily”;

2. Direct approach of the target through online means or the deployment of – often undercover - agents and/or proxies abroad to threaten and harass the target into returning “voluntarily”.

As stated before, these methods allow the CCP and their security organs to circumvent normal bilateral mechanisms of police and judicial cooperation, thereby severely undermining the international rule of law and territorial integrity of the third countries involved. In eschewing regular cooperation mechanisms, the CCP manages to avoid the growing scrutiny of its human rights record and the ensuing difficulties faced in obtaining the return of “fugitives” through legal proceedings such as formal extradition requests. It leaves legal Chinese residents abroad fully exposed to extra-legal targeting by the Chinese police, with little to none of the protection theoretically ensured under both national and international law.

The use of these methods is not limited to Fox Hunt or Sky Net, but wantonly used across special operations. A recent example on which the Ministry of Public Security released official statistics regards the so-called anti-telecom fraud campaign described in Safeguard Defenders’ September 2023 report 110 Overseas[23]. On 14 April 2022, Vice-Minister of Public Security Du Hangwei revealed last year’s nationwide achievements of crackdown on telecom fraud in a press conference, stating: “We persuaded 210,000 people to return in the last year [2021]...”[24] Additionally, on 17 August 2022, the Ministry of Public Security announced that the total tally of those persuaded to return between April 2021 and July 2022 - under this campaign alone - stood at 230,000 individuals: “The number of cross-border telecom fraud cases targeting Chinese residents has been significantly decreased in China, with 230,000 telecom fraud suspects being educated and persuaded to return to China from overseas to confess crimes from April 2021 to July 2022 [...]”[25]

It must be highlighted that these methods were well in use before the issuance of the legal interpretation in 2018 as data below and routine official statements to that effect - such as in a press conference by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate of January 19, 2015,[26] occasional CCDI or other PRC authorities involved in the overseas pursuit of fugitives on individual cases - and plenty of PRC state/party media reporting demonstrate.

Data

Official data on the overall recovery of international fugitives is only released sporadically and only for a limited number of special operations. The only regular statistic released regards the annual success rates in operations Fox Hunt / Sky Net, which are reported in the CCDI’s annual work reports (latest October 2022) and usually only differentiate between the number of legal international cooperation returns (e.g. extraditions and repatriations on grounds of immigration law) and other methods (suspected irregular returns). They provide the best approach to insight on the distribution of use of legal vs. illegal instruments for the forceful repatriation of individuals for prosecution.

Safeguard Defenders summarizes them as follows:

Based on these official statistics, the following calculation can be made for the number of period under Liu Jianchao’s direct command and/or oversight between August 2015 and September 2022, making him responsible for the forceful and irregular return of thousands of individuals (and the related coercive measures employed on their relatives):

More up to date information on Fox Hunt / Sky Net, released by Safeguard Defenders’ 4 March, 2025 article Sky Net 2024: China’s Global Manhunt Continues Unabated can be read here, and in our 16 April 2024 major report Chasing Fox Hunt, available here.

[1] Xi Jinping’s speech at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Beijing (2017, 18 October). “Secure a Decisive Victory in Building a Moderately Prosperous Society in All Respects and Strive for the Great Success of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.” Available at: www.xinhuanet.com/english/download/Xi_Jinping’s_report_at_19th_CPC_National_Congress.pdf.

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1002760/australia-net-overseas-migration-from-china/.

[3] Mazzetti, M., & Levin, D. (2015, 17 December). Obama Administration Warns Beijing About Covert Agents Operating in U.S. The New York Times. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com/2015/08/17/us/politics/obama-administration-warns-beijing-about-agents-operating-in-us.html.

[4]“Xi Jinping meets press,” Sina News, 15 November 2012, available at http://english.sina.com/video/2 .

[5]“China’s Xi Amassing Most Power Since Deng Raises Reform Risk,” Bloomberg News, 31 December 2013.

[6] Samson Yuen, “Disciplining the Party - Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign and its limits”, in China Perspectives, pp. 41-47, March 2014, available at: https://doi.org/10.4000/chinaperspectives.6542.

[7] https://www.ft.com/content/ae4d37bd-0440-491b-a4b7-25ab6158e6ad.

[8] Yuanyue Dang, “Chinese anti-corruption watchdog says crackdown will continue”, in South China Morning Post, 7 June 2023, available at: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3223164/chinese-anti-corruption-watchdog-says-crackdown-will-continue.

[9] https://www.ft.com/content/ae4d37bd-0440-491b-a4b7-25ab6158e6ad.

[10]https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/29/asia/us-china-fox-hunt-arrest-intl-hnk/index.html. 

[11] Dorfman, Z. (2018, 29 March). The Disappeared. Foreign Policy. Retrieved from https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/29/the-disappeared-china- renditions-kidnapping/.

[12] National Supervisory Commission of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, Interpretation of the Supervision Law of the People's Republic of China: Chapter VI Anti-Corruption International Cooperation Article 52, 4 July 2018, available at: https://www.ccdi.gov.cn/djfg/fgsy/201807/t20180704_175037.html.

[13]https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/blog/gui-minhai-s-last-days-thailand.

[14]https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/blog/involuntary-returns-report-exposes-long-arm-policing-overseas.

[15]https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/blog/cyprus-strikes-again-chinas-extradition-woes-across-europe-deepen.

[16]https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/blog/un-committee-against-torture-requests-morocco-halt-extradition-idris-hasan.

[17]https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/blog/saudi-arabia-uyghur-girl-13-among-four-facing-deportation-china.

[18]https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/countries/2022-08-31/22-08-31-final-assesment.pdf, par. 142.

[19]https://www.elcorreo.com/internacional/asia/operaciones-secretas-policia-20221009175227-ntrc.html.

[20]https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/blog/cyprus-microcosm-china-s-transnational-repression-crystalizes.

[21]http://www.xinhuanet.com/legal/2019-01/23/c_1124027691.htm.

[22]https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/blog/involuntary-returns-report-exposes-long-arm-policing-overseas.

[23]https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/110-overseas.

[24]https://www.sohu.com/a/537850569_119038.

[25] https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202208/1273266.shtml.

[26] https://www.spp.gov.cn/spp/c107848/xwfblist.shtml.

[27]http://m.thepaper.cn/kuaibao_detail.jsp?contid=1292442&from=kuaibao.

[28]https://www.ccdi.gov.cn/gzdt/gjhz/201605/t20160505_153555.html.

[29]http://www.xinhuanet.com//legal/2017-03/26/c_1120697402.htm.

[30]https://www.jfdaily.com/wx/detail.do?id=384465.

[31]http://www.xinhuanet.com/legal/2019-01/23/c_1124027691.htm.

[32]http://www.ccdi.gov.cn/toutiao/202002/t20200224_212150.html.

[33]http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2021-02/22/c_1127122649.htm.

[34]http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2022-02/24/content_5675490.htm.

[35]http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2022-10/27/content_5722233.htm.