Between Influence and Coercion: Chinese Interference and Transnational Repression in Europe
Over the past decade, asymmetric and influence operations by authoritarian states have become a significant part of the European informational and political space. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has moved from the periphery of attention into the very core of European security strategies, representing a complex challenge to the democratic stability and sovereignty of member states. This specific model of hybrid interference seamlessly combines covert political influence, Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (FIMI), and extraterritorial coercion below the threshold of open conflict.
This phenomenon manifests with extraordinary intensity through the targeted exploitation of cross-border, community, and digital connections. It is necessary to distinguish the Chinese diaspora as an independent community from the influence or repressive operations organized by the authoritarian party-state apparatus. The Chinese diaspora living in Europe is not the source of the threat, but rather its first target and a vulnerable operational environment. The real security problem lies in the ability of the authoritarian state to exploit cross-border social ties, economic dependencies, and the personal vulnerabilities of exiles to advance its own interests and silence criticism. The legitimate guise of scientific cooperation, community associations, or public diplomacy dangerously blurs in the gray zone with digital surveillance, monitoring, and the quiet intimidation of dissidents, journalists, and students. This weakens overall societal resilience and confronts European institutions with the urgent question of whether they can identify these combined practices in time and effectively countering them.
Transnational Repression and Hybrid Interference
The PRC’s apparatus of extraterritorial control utilizes a wide range of tools that the European Parliament and international research institutions define as transnational repression. This phenomenon occurs when authoritarian regimes actively cross the sovereign borders of other states to silence, intimidate, or control their critics, dissidents, and members of exile minorities. This does not only involve direct physical attacks or kidnappings, which form merely the most visible tip of the iceberg, but also much more subtle methods. These include blackmail through the denial of consular services, mobility restrictions, cyberattacks, and so-called pressure through family members remaining in the home country (coercion-by-proxy).
Despite specific local targets, these operations in the European space share several common features, including challenging the sovereignty of host countries, applying emotionally charged psychological pressure, and seeking to create an atmosphere of permanent fear and silence within communities. The structural background for these operations is provided by a process that analysts describe as the weaponized interdependence of networks. Globalization has created highly centralized hubs in the areas of finance, technology, and data flows, structured into a hub-and-spoke system. An actor that dominates these hubs or enforces jurisdiction over them gains two fundamental strategic effects: the panoptic effect, which allows for the covert monitoring and collection of information passing through the central point, and the chokepoint effect, meaning the ability to selectively cut off an adversary from critical infrastructure or services. China systematically applies this model through domestic legislation, particularly the National Intelligence Law of 2017 and the Cybersecurity Law, which force domestic and foreign entities to share data with state security agencies, even with extraterritorial reach, thereby transforming ordinary technological hubs into surveillance tools.
The European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (Hybrid CoE) defines hybrid interference as coordinated and synchronized activities aimed at exploiting the systemic vulnerabilities of democratic states and institutions, often below the threshold of open conflict, while utilizing ambiguities in actor identification and attribution of responsibility. The interconnection of these concepts shows that modern hybrid interference is not a series of isolated incidents. FIMI campaigns shape the macro-level of public discourse in Europe, while transnational repression at the micro-level ensures that individuals vulnerable through their cross-border, family, or economic ties will not critically challenge this discourse.
Target Groups of Extraterritorial Coercion
Beijing’s power apparatus operates with an extraordinarily broad definition of targets subject to its control. Databases from Freedom House and case studies by European institutions prove that Chinese security organs target a wide spectrum of actors, starting with political dissidents, human rights defenders, and exile groups. Members of ethnic and religious minorities, particularly ethnic Uyghurs and Tibetans, have long faced the harshest pressure, where asymmetric coercion reaches its most brutal forms. Following the adoption of the National Security Law with extraterritorial validity, pro-democracy activists from Hong Kong living in European cities have also come under direct pressure.
However, the pressure also selectively targets groups that are not primarily political but possess influence over the creation of knowledge, information, and discourse, namely independent journalists, academic staff, and students. Chinese students at European universities are under constant surveillance to prevent them from freely organizing protests or establishing independent information channels in a democratic environment. Another significant group consists of entrepreneurs and individuals with family ties to the PRC. These individuals are highly vulnerable to threats of the liquidation of their economic activities in China, freezing of financial accounts, or refusal to issue consular documents, making them ideal targets for the technique of pressure through relatives in the home country. The impact of these operations is reflected in the daily life of communities, leading to enforced silence and the destruction of civic activism. A person in Europe may be physically safe, but psychologically they remain under permanent pressure from a state that can reach their parents, siblings, or property back home, exploiting individual human vulnerabilities for political neutralization.
Technological Innovations of the Chinese Playbook
Chinese activities in the European informational space are characterized by growing assertiveness and technological sophistication, which is described in detail in the influence playbook analyzed by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). Unlike Moscow, Beijing relies to a much greater extent on opaque, mediated, and formally independent networks, which significantly complicates the straightforward attribution of responsibility. The influence playbook in Europe utilizes several basic, sophisticated techniques, including borrowing mouths, which represents delegating narratives to local European journalists, academics, politicians, or digital influencers. Chinese government institutions seek out Western opinion makers, offering them exclusive paid trips, grants, or honorariums, and these selected individuals then use their existing reputation to publish uncritical reports in the European press about China’s technological advancement or defend its geopolitical positions.
An equally important technique is information laundering, which exploits local European media’s hunger for content and covertly distributes materials from Chinese state media through a sequence of smaller European websites until, with each subsequent share, the connection to the original government source is lost, making it look like independent local news. This approach is supplemented by cloaking (message concealment), i.e., producing content through platforms that mask any connection to the Chinese state from the outset, and the bait-and-switch technique, which builds an audience on neutral cultural or travel content and subsequently inserts political topics.
The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) has become a fundamental technological multiplier for these operations. According to reports from the European External Action Service (EEAS) from March 2026, approximately 27% of disinformation incidents were supported by the use of AI, including synthetically generated texts, deepfakes, and synthetic audio recordings. Chinese influence networks use advanced language models to quickly and cheaply localize propaganda into European languages and conduct coordinated online campaigns. Although the release of the Chinese open generative model DeepSeek-R1 at the beginning of 2025 closed the performance gap with Western technologies, independent audits proved that these models exhibit up to a 60% error rate, as they systematically filter out information contradicting CCP narratives and function as automated disinformation machines.
This informational pressure intertwines with direct digital surveillance. The WeChat application, which is a key communication tool for the diaspora, is subject to the direct control of Chinese security services. Any sharing of independent news leads to account suspension and potential threats to the exile’s relatives. On social media, posting patterns are managed by Chinese agencies known
as Multi-Channel Networks (MCNs), which are subordinated to the censorship regime and use AI search algorithms to massively flood the internet with positive content about the situation in Xinjiang or Tibet, thereby artificially creating the impression of organic support. In the early phase of 2025, the operations of the Pravda and CopyCop networks were unmasked; they attempted to systematically infect the training data of Western commercial chatbots with disinformation AI spam, confirming the transition to a sophisticated doctrine of algorithmic cognitive warfare.
Informational and cognitive supremacy is structurally supplemented by the extensive development of space capabilities. The PRC is investing in military-civilian satellite constellations, such as the Yaogan-39 remote sensing satellites, which build a sovereign surveillance system with a high revision frequency for capturing signals and imagery intelligence. The Space-Ground Integrated Information Network (SGIIN) project integrates satellite data with ground information ports, overcoming data silos and dramatically shortening the decision-making cycle of Chinese security agencies when monitoring critical targets and the movement of people abroad. The intention to build the Guo Wang constellation with a planned 13,000 satellites as a direct alternative to the American Starlink system represents a strategic effort to dominate global information pipelines themselves. This provides Beijing with massive leverage during peacetime and the capability to trigger selective information blackouts during crises.
Asymmetric Operations in the European Space
The consequences of these activities point to a complex network of semi-formal and informal structures operating directly in the heart of European cities and exploiting the openness of the democratic environment. In its reports, the European Parliament describes in detail the overlap of transnational repression with the operations of the so-called United Front system, whose goal is to cultivate intermediaries within diaspora communities, influence local media, and build pro-Beijing networks managed through consulates and officials abroad. These structures then act as a seemingly independent local voice, significantly complicating the detection of their actual assignments. The most visible physical symbol of this problem has become the so-called illegal overseas police service stations, which were reported in 14 EU member states by the end of 2022 and operated out of the premises of private companies or community associations.
In the Czech Republic, two such centers were uncovered in Prague in October 2022. Their activities were long monitored by the Security Information Service (BIS), leading to a diplomatic intervention by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MZV) and their formal closure. However, it must be emphasized that the physical closure of the offices merely prompted the operatives to move into deeper conspiracy, utilizing ad hoc rented spaces or virtual networks. Similarly, in France, counterintelligence identified nine such stations, and in the Netherlands, concerns over pressure on journalists prompted the preparation of legislation criminalizing illegal espionage. In Germany, investigations confirmed a station in Frankfurt am Main, and in 2025, a former assistant to a Member of the European Parliament was convicted of spying for China. Meanwhile, in Hungary, during Xi Jinping’s visit in 2024, Tibetan activists faced organized harassment from pro-state groups. A sharp judicial precedent was then set in May 2026, when a US federal court found Lu Jianwang (64) guilty of operating a secret station in New York and actively assisting Chinese intelligence services in locating a dissident, showing the path toward a tough criminal law defense of sovereignty.
An exceptionally specific dimension is represented by maritime hybrid warfare and the application of the concept of lawfare in the gray zones of international maritime law. China demonstrates the ability to connect military and civilian maritime capabilities under the unified command of the Central Military Commission (CMC) through a „three navies“ strategy, namely the regular People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), the China Coast Guard (CCG), and the Maritime Militia (MM), which possesses thousands of reinforced civilian fishing vessels. In October 2023, this model of civil-military fusion was linked to an incident involving the Chinese container ship Newnew Polar Bear (operated by an entity connected to Russia), which, after passing through the Northern Sea Route, damaged the Baltic connector gas pipeline and fiber-optic cables in the Baltic Sea. The use of commercial vessels
to destroy critical undersea infrastructure demonstrates how difficult it is for European states to determine intent and clearly attribute state responsibility for hybrid sabotage.
Limits of European Institutional Detection and Legislative Gaps
The ability of the EU and its member states to timely identify, name, and effectively counter Chinese hybrid interference has shown considerable asymmetry in recent years. In the area of countering FIMI, the EU, under the leadership of the EEAS, has built a robust institutional foundation. A significant step was the launch of the integrated Rapid Alert System, the establishment of specialized StratCom teams, and the creation of the shared FIMI-ISAC platform, which allows government institutions, the non-governmental sector, and technology companies to share standardized data on offensive campaigns in real time. The introduction of the FIMI Deterrence Playbook in March 2026 represents a conceptual turning point, as it shifts the focus of the European response from mere reactive debunking of disinformation to proactively disrupting the infrastructures of attackers and their local European intermediaries.
The existing institutional and legislative framework of the EU in countering transnational repression exhibits certain limits, as pointed out by a European Parliament study from January 2026. A fundamental factor is the lack of a unified, legally binding definition of this phenomenon at both the EU and national levels, which often leads to these incidents being classified as isolated ordinary crimes without fully considering their organized and geopolitical character. Room for deeper coordination of this agenda also exists within the mandates of European agencies, particularly Europol, where more centralized sharing of data on the cross-border methods of foreign actors could facilitate the timely detection of their operational patterns.
Certain challenges also arise around immigration and asylum policy, where it is desirable to further strengthen the specific expertise of authorities regarding potentially politically motivated international arrest warrants from third countries to ensure the effective protection of exiles. Although EEAS already prepared an internal methodological document for its delegations in 2025, creating a fully coherent and comprehensive approach across all EU institutions remains an open task for security policy.
Building European Democratic Resilience Against Extraterritorial Coercion
Chinese hybrid interference and transnational repression seamlessly merge macro-level FIMI with micro-level coercion, utilizing generative AI and extraterritorial surveillance directly inside Europe. Crucially, the Chinese diaspora is not the source of this threat, but its primary victim. However, Europe’s response remains asymmetric, while the EEAS proactively counters disinformation,
the EU faces a dangerous legislative vacuum and fragmented national approaches regarding protection against transnational repression.
To safeguard its sovereignty and core values, the EU must transition from reactive incident management to systemic defense. This requires establishing a unified, legally binding definition of transnational repression as a specific criminal offense, expanding Europol’s operational capacity, and enforcing strict foreign influence transparency registers. Ultimately, defending European democracy depends on ensuring security and human rights for even the most vulnerable residents seeking refuge from authoritarian tyranny.
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Source of the picture:https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/03/13/opinion/transnational-repression-global-authoritarianism/
Written by Barbora Burjaková
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