The data footprints of China’s transnational repression

When the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists began approaching dissidents who were being targeted by Chinese authorities, reporters understood that source protection would be their biggest priority — and also their biggest challenge.

One after another, the targets of the state repression told ICIJ that they wanted to share their stories but they did not want to be identified publicly because they feared authorities would harass them — or worse, their family in China and Hong Kong could be threatened or even jailed.

So, ICIJ used secret audio and video recordings of police interrogations, security officers’ messages, screenshots of notifications about hacking attempts and other evidence provided by the interviewees to corroborate their testimonies while keeping them anonymous. This exclusive information, in addition with confidential government records spanning two decades, became part of China Targets, an exposé of China’s transnational repression campaign against its critics around the world.

The investigation, in collaboration with 42 media partners, showed how China seeks to crush dissent abroad and how governments and institutions’ often lackluster response fails to adequately protect those who are targeted. ICIJ’s data analysis helped reveal China’s transnational repression tactics at the United Nations, through Interpol, and elsewhere.

ICIJ and its media partners in North America, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand heard from 105 people living in 23 different countries — political dissidents from mainland China and Hong Kong; Tibetan, Taiwanese and Inner Mongolian independence and rights advocates; practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual movement; and Uyghurs, a mostly-Muslim Turkic ethnic group.

The reporters drew inspiration from techniques used by human rights violations investigators, looking for specific patterns of abuse that are hallmarks of transnational repression.

ICIJ’s data team reviewed their accounts and listed on a spreadsheet the main repression tactics that reporters had identified through the first interviews and in confidential Chinese government records. The team then checked documentation provided as evidence by the interviewees to ensure the consistency and accuracy of the results.

The data analysis, which ICIJ shared with its media partners, showed that China’s tactics include surveillance, threats, online smear campaigns, and putting pressure on victims’ families through repeated interrogation and detention. Due to fear of threats and monitoring of their activities, some of the dissidents also spoke of the distrust they feel toward their own community. As there is no universal definition of what constitutes transnational repression, the interviewees’ personal accounts of how they had been targeted — sometimes for years — provided a searing portrait of this complex issue.

Deep dive into GONGOs

ICIJ reporters and media partners in Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere, spent months investigating more than 100 Chinese non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, with consultative status at the U.N. That process started with ICIJ gathering the list of organizations with access to the U.N. compound in Geneva to attend meetings organized by the Human Rights Council. Among those NGOs — numbering in the thousands — 106 are headquartered in China, Taiwan, Macau and Hong Kong. All of those are listed under “China” in the U.N.’s database of NGOs. ICIJ retrieved all data related to the organizations, which are registered with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.

Reporters learned through interviews with human rights advocates that in recent years China had flooded Geneva with dozens of “fake” NGOs — so-called “GONGOs,” short for “government-organized nongovernmental organizations.” While NGOs are expected to be independent, GONGOs instead hold close ties to governments or political parties. Many of the GONGOs identified by ICIJ parroted the Chinese state’s positions during U.N. sessions.

GONGOs often seek to occupy as many speaking slots as possible, blocking the opportunities for representatives of other NGOs to speak. GONGOs also surveilled and intimidated human rights activists, many of whom have given up attending U.N. sessions, ICIJ and its partners learned. Our investigation sought to quantify the scale of the issue and the growing number of Chinese GONGOs at the U.N.

ICIJ designed its methodology to classify GONGOs based on discussions with experts and its own research. The GONGOs that ICIJ identified fall into at least one of the following categories: the majority of their funding came from the Chinese government; a current government or party official held an organizational leadership role, such as secretary or director; or they made pro-China statements at the U.N. ICIJ identified 59 Chinese GONGOs at the U.N. using these criteria; 28 of those matched at least two criteria.

Data journalists and reporters also researched the background of the organizations. Together with media partners, some of whom spoke Chinese, they checked the organizations’ websites in both English and Chinese. Sometimes they discovered that the Chinese version of a website told a different story than the English one — revealing how closely connected the organizations are to the Chinese party state. The reporters used the Wayback Machine to find archived versions of websites that would show information no longer available on the live versions. They used a VPN to access some of the websites, and sometimes needed to use several different browsers — and a lot of patience — to find relevant information. They used the popular Chinese search engine Baidu instead of Google and searched the names of the organizations in Chinese.

To uncover people holding simultaneous roles in both NGOs and in government, reporters checked the backgrounds of those organizations’ higher-ups as well as their biographies on the organizations’ websites, in media reports, on websites published by the Chinese Communist Party and from other sources. ICIJ and media partners also reviewed the NGOs’ financial statements and annual reports, and only included in its count of GONGOs organizations that received more than half of their yearly funding from state or national government sources — after they had been awarded U.N. consultative status.

To decide which of the Chinese NGOs’ statements were pro-China, ICIJ reviewed hundreds of statements and classified them into categories: pro-China; neutral; criticizing China; and criticizing the U.N., U.S. or other countries. ICIJ found that none of the Chinese NGOs’ statements fell into the “criticizing China” category. This analysis was based on data gathered by the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR), a nongovernmental organization that has attended U.N. sessions for many years and noticed the growing presence of Chinese GONGOs at the Human Rights Council. The ISHR data contained the names of NGOs that had attended hundreds of sessions over seven years (2018–2024). The analysis showed that the number of Chinese NGOs listed as speakers at Human Rights Council sessions rose more than twentyfold over that period; one of those NGOs even appeared more than 300 times. ICIJ’s data analysis and research showed that the NGOs not only aren’t independent from government interference, but they are showing, in ever-increasing numbers, at the U.N. that they can surveil and intimidate human rights defenders.

Exposing the abuse of red notices

As part of China Targets, ICIJ and its partners also investigated how China has been abusing red notices — alerts circulated by Interpol, the global police organization, to law enforcement in its 196 member countries. Red notices are requests to provisionally arrest people pending legal action.

Interpol is a notoriously secretive organization, and it only publishes a small fraction of red notices on its website. Reporters reviewed human rights organizations’ reports; court records; Interpol reports; and confidential decisions by the Commission for the Control of Interpol’s Files (CCF), an independent body that ensures that the data processed through the organization’s system complies with its rules. ICIJ also talked to former Interpol officers, lawyers representing red notice targets, and several people who were wanted by Chinese authorities through Interpol.

The data team organized the information to only include cases in which people had still been pursued by the red notices after 2016 — when Interpol created a task force meant to screen red notice requests by Interpol’s member countries to prevent them from abusing its system for political reasons.

ICIJ examined nearly 50 cases involving red notice targets, including businesspeople, Uyghurs, pro-democracy activists and Falun Gong practitioners. Our analysis identified a range of flaws common to Chinese-requested red notices, including discrepancies between arrest warrants and other documents and thin evidence to substantiate the allegations, as well as unethical tactics such as arrest of family members to pressure the targets.

However, Interpol’s lack of transparency made it difficult to go beyond court documents and interviews. In several cases, ICIJ was able to confirm whether a red notice was still active, but Interpol didn’t provide historic information, which made it hard to know whether a person had potentially been targeted by a notice in the past.

According to its charter, Interpol can impose corrective measures on member countries responsible for abusing its system, including enhanced scrutiny of red notice requests as well as a temporary suspension or long-term exclusion from Interpol’s network. Despite the abuses, China does not appear to be among countries currently subject to Interpol corrective measures for alleged misuse of the organization’s system, ICIJ found.

By blending reporting techniques, data analysis and a collaborative mindset, China Targets shed light on underreported issues and brought the stories of the targets of China’s transnational repression to life across the world.