Jennifer Richmond

🚨 A CCP security file with 24,170 records is built around one task: turning overseas social media accounts into real names, ID numbers, home addresses and sometimes employers and family members. The Epoch Times says it obtained the database. It's called the 涉政落查人員庫, roughly a registry of "politically involved" people to be traced. In the Party's political-legal jargon, 落查 means running a target to ground, identity and location both. After duplicates, it covers a little over 10,000 people. About 93% of records carry a mainland location, and 4,783 people are pinned to addresses precise enough for a home visit. Some of those may be pre-emigration addresses or a relative's, which puts family within reach. The Epoch Times says it couldn't verify the full dataset, though spot checks on public figures matched. Who's on it? Wei Jingsheng, Chen Guangcheng, Sheng Xue. Falun Gong practitioners, Epoch Times and NTD staff, Shen Yun performers. And left-wing students and labor activists who actually support communism. That last group is the detail I keep coming back to, because it means this isn't an ideological list. The only test is whether the Party has decided you're a threat. The database doesn't explain how an X handle becomes a street address. Federal court filings do. On October 4, FBI agents arrested Wanying "Heather" Zhang, a 34-year-old Irvine realtor, at LAX before she could board a flight to Shanghai. Prosecutors allege she and an associate went to Seattle in September 2025 and surveilled Lai Ting-yu, son of Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te, sending photos, video and license-plate information to Chinese officials. She's charged with acting as an unregistered agent of the PRC and hasn't been convicted. Taipei's Presidential Office called it a classic case of transnational repression. The next day, the Justice Department announced it is seeking to strip citizenship from 40 people. One is Ping Li of Florida, sentenced in November 2024 to four years. He admitted working at the direction of China's Ministry of State Security from at least 2012, feeding it information on dissidents, pro-democracy advocates and Falun Gong practitioners. Beijing hacks when it can, but the last step is usually a person, whether that's a realtor in a rented car or a houseguest who turns out to be reporting back. Sheng Xue says she had the second. She appears in the file three times, under Sichuan, Gansu and Canada. She told The Epoch Times that from 2013 to 2017 her husband, sister, uncle and brother were pulled into online groups built to attack her, and that a man who lived in her home for a long stretch was later found to be a CCP agent. Washington is building the legal tools to match. Prosecutors charge these cases under other federal statutes today. The bipartisan Stop Transnational Repression Act from Senators Adam Schiff and John Curtis, introduced July 14, would put a definition of the crime in the federal code and allow up to 10 more years in prison plus a fine of up to $100,000. Canada's C-219 would write the term into Canadian sanctions law. Beijing has already mapped door-level addresses for 4,783 people. What I want to know is how many of them are the parents of someone posting from New York or Vancouver. ACI — Aric Chen | Insights