German security authorities think so China is still conducting policing on German soil even though Beijing assured Berlin in February that it had stopped doing so, the German foreign and interior ministries said on Monday.
“The security authorities continue to assume that there are two so-called overseas police stations in Germany,” an interior ministry spokesman said at a regular news conference.
Berlin called on Beijing in November to close extraterritorial police stations in the country.
“The Chinese side got back to us in early February and said that these so-called ‘gas stations,’ as the Chinese side called them, had been closed,” a foreign ministry spokesman said, adding that Berlin was still in talks. with Beijing to resolve the issue.
The Interior Ministry spokesman clarified that the police stations in question were not “fixed offices, but mobile facilities” from which Chinese and non-Chinese nationals carried out “official duties” on behalf of Beijing.
The Chinese embassy in Berlin did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
Germany is reassessing its bilateral ties with China amid growing wariness of Beijing as a strategic rival, even though it remains Berlin’s biggest trading partner.
[pub1]