At the beginning of August 2025, the FBI opened a new attaché office in New Zealand. This is good news. FBI directors come and go, but the fact that this organisational expansion has taken place represents an important step.
This office was originally set up as a branch of the Australian office. The fact that it is now a fully-fledged office underlines how relevant this region is considered to be. Five Eyes is confronted there with a state that the EU unfortunately has no means of countering. Instead, it bows deeply to this state and gladly allows it to place its uniformed police representatives, and thus also its intelligence agencies, in the middle of the EU. We are talking about China.
When walking through the beautiful but also heavily frequented Croatian Plitvice National Park, it is striking that many Chinese people also find this region beautiful. And why not? But when you suddenly encounter Chinese people in police uniform posing very confidently and, in this particular case, apparently busy resolving a dispute between some Chinese people, you rub your eyes in disbelief.
A Croatian employee at this park prefers not to comment, but his facial expression says it all.
Croatia, which has been a member of the EU since 2013, has effectively placed itself on a par with Serbia, where Chinese police officers have also been present for some time. Serbia would also like to join the EU, but it is not yet ready. And in the meantime, it finds some arrangements with China. But Croatia? Where has the EU actually ended up? What has become of our values? When will we encounter North Korean, Russian and Afghan uniformed personnel, walking around in Berlin, Brussels or Paris?
Incidentally, similar experiments were also conducted in Italy, but these have since been discontinued. This was for political reasons and was also linked to the exposure of the so-called Chinese police stations in the country.
Croatia does not seem to be deterred by this. On 18 July 2025, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security (MPS) proudly reported on what it claimed was the sixth joint police patrol. It was never really noticed that this project with Croatia had been running since 2018. But since then, various incidents have accumulated, and one could conclude that the project should be terminated. The MPS is not just a police force that catches thieves. It is an intelligence agency that operates worldwide. To this day, the MPS continues to threaten and intimidate dissidents on foreign soil. US court documents alone show how aggressively the MPS operates, see for example 2023 40 Officers of China’s National Police Charged in Transnational Repression Schemes Targeting U.S. Residents. I also recommend my article Tigers, Flies and Crocodiles: Hunting Season for Chinese Intelligence. Chinese Anti-Corruption Campaigns in an Aggressive Foreign Policy, in which I described the role of the MPS in the global crackdown on unpopular critics and dissidents back in 2018.
One must simply realise that wherever Chinese police officers in uniform march up and down in the West or the EU, a spy network has been established. Some time ago, there was a lot of excitement about Chinese police stations in Germany, among other places. That has died down somewhat, but the modus operandi of the Chinese security authorities – including the MPS – continues. In Germany, too. If one observes certain events in Germany closely and talk to those affected, it becomes clear that Beijing is present one way or another, even without uniforms. If one talks to people who have fled Hong Kong, for example, the reaction is at least incomprehension, but also fear. Uniformed or plainclothes employees of Chinese intelligence agencies do not convey a sense of security, at least to this group of people seeking protection in the EU.
The fact that an EU member state is allowing employees of a Chinese intelligence agency to operate on EU territory is yet another low point in a series of other events. It shows how little sovereignty the EU has and how little confidence it has in its own security agencies to ensure the safety of Chinese tourists.
Jang Seiul