CHINA

China’s radar: No one is safe

“Our family nightmare began on June 3”, Sylvia Zin recalls before a congressional hearing in Washington. “The call came from a Chinese number. The person on the line told me that my husband, Min Zin, was in custody and the Ministry of State Security in Yunnan was conducting an investigation. When I tried to clarify what that meant, the line went dead.”

Today, more than 100 days later, Min Zin, a Burmese American scholar, remains detained in China. He had traveled to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province in Southwestern China, where he had been invited to join an academic conference. His previous first visit to China was not at all a problem according to his wife. Regardless, his detention has become one of two cases that the United States government has designated as wrongful detentions of American citizens in China. The other involves Youlin Chen, a Chinese American seismologist who has studied North Korea’s nuclear program.

Min Zin is a founder and the Executive Director of Institute for Strategy and Policy – Myanmar (ISP-Myanmar), an independent think tank with a dedicated China Studies Desk. His institution conducts open-source research and data on the relationships between China and Myanmar, including detailed analyses on Beijing’s influence on Myanmar politics and, most recently, rare-earth mining linked to exports to China.

Chinese authorities said, “Min Zin is suspected of spying and endangering Chinese national security.”  His family and colleagues rejected this allegation. ISP-Myanmar condemned what it described a groundless accusation and said that Min Zin traveled to China for the sole purpose of attending an academic workshop. The United States government also rejected Beijing’s account and called Min Zin’s imprisonment a case of wrongful detention.

There is no public evidence establishing that his invitation to China was designed as a trap. But the case exposes an uncomfortable reality. When a foreign researcher whose work involves critical assessment on China will face significant risks when entering the mainland, where Beijing draws an increasingly blurred and intolerant line between academic inquiry, political analysis and national security, particularly when dealing with its critics.

Beijing’s transnational repression

Over the past decade, the People’s Republic of China has drastically taken action against its critics abroad. According to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), China has committed highest number of transnational repression cases globally: 319 since 2014. These cases are based on publicly documented incidents with a verifiable record. The actual scale may be bigger.

Beijing has orchestrated an extensive system of intimidation abroad, blending official state organs with a network of quasi-state associations and diaspora groups according to a 2015 study of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom. China´s quasi-state associations range from cultural and educational networks to more opaque entities, sometimes referred to as “overseas police stations”. Together, the network exerts pressure on dissidents, human rights advocates and pro-democracy activists often through subtle coercion, sometimes through direct threats or kidnapping. In the most severe cases, the families of activists face warnings or retaliation inside China, a powerful form of leverage in communities where family ties remain deeply rooted.

A 2022 investigation by the nonprofit Safeguard Defenders identified over 100 covert Chinese police overseas police stations operating in more than 50 countries. The findings drew international attention because they raised questions about whether Beijing was carrying out law-enforcement activities on foreign soil. Governments have subsequently investigated or taken action against overseas Chinese police stations. In June 2026, French counterintelligence services reported shutting down Chinese overseas police stations, which had operated under the guise of community and business associations. They were found monitoring members of the Chinese diaspora to gather intelligence and exert pressures on dissidents residing abroad.

The controversy surrounding these stations highlights an important feature of China’s transnational repression. Repression does not always arrive in the form of an obvious intelligence operation. It can appear to be a community organization, a cultural association, a business network, a family member making a phone call or, in Min Zin’s example, an invitation to an academic conference that brings a researcher into China.

Many of these methods have in the past targeted Chinese living abroad when they publicly criticize the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or its policies. “Persuasion to return” has been identified as a key form of method CCP used to pressure dissidents to return to China and face trials. In most severe cases, Chinese authorities have also sought the detention or repatriation of targeted individuals through other countries.

Min Zin’s arrest raises a different question. He is not a Chinese dissident. He is a Burmese American scholar whose work focuses on Myanmar, and part of that work examines China’s political and economic influence in the country. His organization operates openly, and much of its research is based on publicly available information. Yet China’s accusation against him is tied to the country's national-security laws after he has been persuaded to travel to China where authorities can exercise direct control.

A researcher can conduct politically sensitive work while living outside China, where Beijing’s ability to exercise direct legal control is limited. Once that researcher enters China, the relationship between researcher and state changes. The question is no longer simply what the researcher did abroad. It becomes what Chinese authorities can characterize as a violation of Chinese law once the person is within Chinese jurisdiction.

Laws without borders?

China’s Counterespionage Law makes this analysis more realistic. Article 4 of the Counterespionage law, defines “acts of espionage” broadly, covering not only traditional espionage but also obtaining or providing state secrets and intelligence, cooperating with “so-called” espionage organizations, certain cyber activities, assisting hostile forces, and other conduct deemed to threaten China’s national security. Importantly, the law also applies to conduct carried out outside the borders of the People’s Republic of China, including activities conducted abroad by agencies, organizations, individuals or other collaborators when they are considered to endanger China’s national security.

That extraterritorial principle has appeared elsewhere in China's legal system. Article 63 of the recent law on the promotion of ethnic unity and progress, which came into force in July 2026, states that organizations and individuals outside mainland China can face legal responsibility for conduct aimed at China that “undermines ethnic unity and progress” or “creates ethnic division”. The laws does not make every critic of China or Xi Jinping subject to arrest. But its significance lies in the possibility what Chinese officials may seek to regulate, investigate or characterize as unlawful, including conduct that takes place beyond China's territorial borders. Critics of the law therefore worry that its application could create a legal basis through which Chinese authorities seek to pressure people or organizations beyond China's borders.

The interaction between expanding legal frameworks and existing transnational repression practices deepens these worries. Existing pressures have already taken many forms: legal threats, pressure on family members, influence over diaspora networks, restrictions on academic engagement and laws that assert jurisdiction beyond China’s territory. Min Zin’s case shows that the boundaries of Beijing's coercive repression have extended beyond Chinese nationals and diaspora communities to foreign researchers and critics who work on issues Beijing considers sensitive. An invitation to an academic conference is ordinarily an instrument of scholarly exchange. But once a foreign researcher enters the state, an invitation can also become the mechanism by which Beijing acquires physical jurisdiction over that person. This means: could “persuasion to return” evolve into “persuasion to travel”?

The concern is not limited to China itself. A person whom Chinese authorities consider a national-security suspect may also face risks when traveling through countries that cooperate closely with Beijing or have extradition arrangements with China. But such risks vary substantially by country, treaty, immigration law and the specific allegations involved; an extradition agreement does not itself mean that China can automatically obtain someone's transfer.

The broader lesson is therefore less dramatic but more consequential: travel can change the legal environment in which a researcher operates. Min Zin’s story began with a phone call to his wife. The questions raised by Min Zin’s arrest reach across families, universities, borders, governments, international institutions and scholar societies. How far can an authoritarian state extend its reach without physically controlling the people it wants to silence? And at what point does the fear of crossing Beijing's red lines become powerful enough that others begin self-enforcing those boundaries for it?

For Sylvia Zin, the answer is painfully personal. Her husband went to China for an academic event. He never came home.

*Hnin Wint Naing is the regional communication officer of the Asia Office of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom in Bangkok, Thailand.