On May 7, in a historic verdict, Peter Wai and Bill Yuen were found guilty of assisting a foreign intelligence service under the U.K. National Security Act. Their convictions send an unambiguous message: transnational repression by the Chinese Communist Party has no place on British soil. Remarkably, on the same day, the United States and Norway delivered that message too. That three liberal democracies acted against Beijing’s long arm on a single day was not coordinated – but perhaps it should have been.
Peter Wai, office manager of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (HKETO) in London, and Bill Yuen, a U.K. immigration official, were convicted for their roles in a “shadow policing operation.” Wai’s position at the HKETO lent weight to longstanding concerns from civil society groups that HKETOs, which are nominally trade missions, function as additional diplomatic outposts through which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) extends its surveillance reach and advances its anti-democratic agenda abroad. Yuen, meanwhile, was found to have exploited his access to British government databases to extract sensitive immigration data on Hong Kong dissidents living in the United Kingdom, turning the machinery of the state against the very people it was meant to protect.
The human cost of this operation had a face. Monica Kwong, a Hong Kong woman living in the U.K. on the British National (Overseas) visa scheme, became a target. Operatives slid a camera beneath her front door to observe her movements and poured water under it to lure her outside. A woman who left everything behind to seek safety in Britain was being hunted through her letterbox – that is the lived reality of transnational repression. Luckily, the counterterrorism police had been monitoring the suspects. When the men attempted to lure Kwong from her flat, police, who were already waiting inside, moved in and made the arrests.
Notably, some of the most serious acts uncovered during the investigation could not be charged, as they predated the National Security Act’s implementation in 2023. Yet the convictions that did result are significant. They demonstrate that British law is fit for purpose, and they set a precedent: stalking, intimidation, and repression on U.K. soil now carry real and serious legal consequences. The Foreign Office’s decision to summon the Chinese ambassador in the wake of the verdict underlines that the British government views this not merely as a criminal matter, but as a direct affront to national sovereignty that demands a diplomatic response.
The very same day brought parallel developments in New York, with the continuing trial of Liu Jianwang. Liu is charged with operating a secret Chinese police station in Manhattan’s Chinatown. This is just one of over 50 such stations identified by the NGO Safeguard Defenders in cities across Europe, North America, and beyond. Prosecutors allege Liu received direct orders from Beijing to monitor, intimidate, and ultimately silence pro-democracy activists living in the United States.
The case is part of a broader pattern. In recent years, U.S. federal prosecutors have charged multiple individuals with acting as unregistered foreign agents on Beijing’s behalf, targeting Hong Kongers, Uyghurs, and Tibetans on American soil. The Liu trial, which began on May 6, is the most high-profile test yet of whether the U.S. legal system can hold these networks accountable, and the fact that it is proceeding sends a signal of its own.
Norway’s contribution was quieter but no less pointed. On May 7, authorities arrested a Chinese national accused of collecting sensitive data near Andøya Spaceport, a facility central to Europe’s expanding space and satellite infrastructure. The alleged operation fits a well-documented pattern of Chinese intelligence activity targeting dual-use technology. In an era when satellite communications underpin everything from financial systems to battlefield coordination, Andøya is not a peripheral concern. It is exactly the kind of target Beijing’s intelligence services have shown sustained interest in.
Three cases involving Chinese transnational operations in three different countries saw major developments on one day. The coincidence is striking, but the underlying story is not coincidental at all. It reflects the sheer scale and geographic reach of Beijing’s transnational repression campaign to monitor, harass, and silence those who have dared to speak against it. It is a campaign that does not respect borders, residency status, or the protections that democratic citizenship is supposed to confer.
The response so far is necessary but not sufficient.
At present, democracies are largely fighting this battle alone, each developing its own legal tools, its own enforcement capacity, and its own political will at different speeds. The U.K. only passed its National Security Act in 2023. Other allies are further behind. Meanwhile, Beijing’s networks operate transnationally by design, exploiting the seams between jurisdictions, sharing intelligence across embassies and proxies, and adapting when one avenue is closed.
In Britain, one concrete and overdue step would be to include China in the enhanced tier of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme. FIRS, which came into force last year, requires individuals and entities acting on behalf of foreign powers to register their political influence activities. The enhanced tier, which imposes stricter obligations and greater scrutiny, is currently reserved for a small number of specified states. China’s exclusion from this tier is increasingly difficult to justify. The HKETO case alone illustrates precisely the kind of opaque, state-directed influence activity the scheme was designed to expose.
The answer beyond that is coordination. The Five Eyes intelligence alliance, NATO, and the Summit for Democracy all provide frameworks through which like-minded states can share information and align responses. What is needed is the political decision to use them explicitly for this purpose: to treat transnational repression not as a domestic law enforcement issue in each country, but as a collective security threat requiring a collective answer.
Practically, this could mean joint watchlists of known operatives, shared early warning systems when diaspora communities report intimidation, coordinated diplomatic expulsions when shadow policing networks are uncovered, and mutual legal assistance that allows evidence gathered in one country to support prosecutions in another. None of this is radical. It is simply the application of tools democracies already use for counterterrorism and organized crime.
For Hong Kongers, Uyghurs, Tibetans, and all those who sought safety in democratic countries, this week offers a measure of reassurance. The countries that took them in are beginning to defend them in earnest. The task now is to make that defense systematic, shared, and permanent.
