MIDLAND, Texas (AP) — Retired Chinese official Li Chuanliang was recuperating from cancer on a Korean resort island when he got an urgent call: Don’t return to China, a friend warned. You’re now a fugitive.
Days later, a stranger snapped a photo of Li in a cafe. Terrified South Korea would send him back, Li fled, flew to the U.S. on a tourist visa and applied for asylum. But even there — in New York, in California, deep in the Texas desert — the Chinese government continued to hunt him down with the help of surveillance technology.
Li’s communications were monitored, his assets seized and his movements followed in police databases. More than 40 friends and relatives — including his pregnant daughter — were identified and detained, even by tracking down their cab drivers through facial recognition software. Three former associates died in detention, and for months shadowy men Li believed to be Chinese operatives stalked him across continents, interviews and documents seen by The Associated Press show.
“They track you 24 hours a day. All your electronics, your phone — they’ll use every method to find you, your relatives, your friends, where you live,” Li said. “No matter where you are, you’re under their control.”
The Chinese government is using an increasingly powerful tool to cement its power at home and vastly amplify it abroad: Surveillance technology, much of it originating in the U.S., an AP investigation has found.
Within China, this technology helped identify and punish almost 900,000 officials last year alone, nearly five times more than in 2012, according to state numbers. Beijing says it is cracking down on corruption, but critics charge that such technology is used in China and elsewhere to stifle dissent and exact retribution on perceived enemies. Outside China, the same technology is being used to threaten wayward officials, along with dissidents and alleged criminals, under what authorities call Operatio
ns “Fox Hunt” and “Sky Net.” The U.S. has criticized these overseas operations as a “threat” and an “affront to national sovereignty.” More than 14,000 people, including some 3,000 officials, have been brought back to China from more than 120 countries through coercion, arrests and pressure on relatives, according to state information.
“They’re actively pursuing those people who fled China. … as a way to demonstrate power, to show there’s no way you can escape,” said Yaqiu Wang, a fellow at the University of Chicago. “The chilling effect is enormously effective.”
The technology used to control officials at home and abroad over the past decade came from Silicon Valley companies such as IBM, Oracle and Microsoft, according to a review of hundreds of leaked emails, government procurements, and internal corporate presentations obtained exclusively by AP. This technology mines texts, payments, flights, calls, and other data to identify the friends and family of officials and their assets.
Exiled former Chinese official Li Chuanliang describes how his mother and business associates have been targeted by the Chinese government in an effort to put pressure on him to return back to China. (AP video Serginho Roosblad)
Among the agencies pursuing Li and his family is China’s economic crimes police, which hunts corruption suspects domestically and abroad. IBM said in internal slides that it sold the i2 surveillance software program to this Economic Crime Investigation Bureau, and procurement records show Oracle and Microsoft software was sold to that same division. Leaked emails show i2 software was copied by a former IBM partner, Landasoft, and sold to China’s disciplinary commissions, which investigate officials. None of the sales violated U.S. sanctions.
IBM said in a statement that it sold its division making the i2 program in 2022, and has “robust processes” to ensure its technology is used responsibly. Oracle declined comment, and Microsoft did not respond.
China’s State Council, Ministry of Public Security, National Supervision Commission, and Supreme People’s Court and Prosecutorate did not respond to faxed requests for comment. China’s foreign ministry told AP that Chinese authorities protect the rights of suspects, handle cases lawfully and respect foreign sovereignty.
“We urge relevant countries to drop double standards and avoid becoming a safe haven for corrupt officials and their assets,” it said.
Li’s story is a rare firsthand account from a former Chinese official. Beijing has accused Li of corruption totaling around $435 million, but Li says he’s being targeted for openly criticizing the Chinese government and denies criminal charges of taking bribes and embezzling state funds. A review of thousands of pages of legal, property, and corporate records, interrogation transcripts, and Li’s medical and travel files obtained exclusively by AP, as well as interviews with nine lawyers, support key parts of his story, showing distorted charges, blocked access to evidence, coercive confessions, and altered legal records.
Li drew ire because as a former official, he knew well and exposed the inner workings of local politics, including naming names. While in the U.S., he also started what he called the Chinese Tyrannical Officials Whistleblower Center.
“China places enormous emphasis on the political discipline of even former officials and (Communist) Party members,” said Jeremy Daum, Senior Fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center. “So when one becomes a vocal critic of the country’s leadership, it doesn’t go over well.”
At a pro-democracy gathering in California in 2020, Li said, he was tailed and questioned by a stranger who knew his identity. That November, an activist secretly working for Beijing asked Li to a meeting and added him to a dissident group chat monitored by China’s police, a 2025 FBI indictment later revealed. In June, an FBI letter identified Li as the possible victim of a crime involving an unregistered Chinese agent.
Both the FBI and the White House did not comment on Li’s specific case. But the White House said it pursues any violations of U.S. law, and the FBI told AP it considers China’s efforts to retaliate against people in the U.S. who exercise their rights “unacceptable.”
Li’s future in the U.S. is unclear. The Trump administration has paused all asylum applications. If he doesn’t return, he could face trial in absentia; if convicted and deported, he could face life in prison.
“Electronic surveillance is the arteries for China to project power into the world ... each step that every one of your relatives takes is being monitored and analyzed with big data,” Li said. “It’s absolutely terrifying.”