What, concretely, would western governments do about this?

Arrest and trade any Chinese spies (that’s what they are. There’s no such thing as foreign secret police. They’re called spies and terrorists) and barter them for Chinese political prisoners coerced in this way.

I'm sure that there are plenty of crimes these folks could be arrested for, and then subjected to the normal legal process. Kidnapping and intimidation are criminal offenses, at least where I live

intimidation and black mail sound like perfectly good reasons to arrest these people in most countries

What makes you think this doesn't happen if there is good evidence of wrongdoing? In democracies, we don't just randomly arrest people, we need actual evidence that holds up in court.

>>In democracies, we don't just randomly arrest people,

There are tons of proof and examples of this being false. Lots of example of police targeting people then finding the law they broke, instead of starting with a crime and finding who did it

And this is a good thing that we should do more of?

To be fair, non-immigrant visas can often be revoked on a discretionary basis.

>There’s no such thing as foreign secret police.

The US secret service has offices in over a dozen countries, including China.

That's different. We're the good guys.

The NYPD is also in singapore

Unlikely to happen unfortunately. I mean Russia performed assassinations on UK soil and everyone knows it. Nothing really seemed to happen from that.

Prisoners of War are not the same as slaves. Words have meaning.

You really count on semantics to keep us safe from tyranny?

Not parent's point. The point was not to conflate Prisoners of War (or Prisoners of Spy War here?) with slaves. Slaves are enslaved to provide labor without rights and payments, are treated as commodity, and are traded for other commodities, with explicit monetary value. In the case of spy prisoners, people who are in jail because they broke some law are traded for other people in jail in another country who broke another law, because they are valuable to their country of origin, and they too want to return to their home country instead of being in jail in a foreign country. They are not used for labor and they do not have monetary value that can be used in a market.

I would not be so sure...

Yet.

Remove diplomatic status for anyone involved in such activities, put oversight on the diplomacy, make a big international public stink out of it (this matters), share intel with other governments and create a working body to root out this, implement local programs so that schools/companies etc. are aware that this happens and should report it, consider other forms of action.

But all of that would be pretty hard in the current geopolitical situation, there would be a huge price to pay.

Australia was slapped with huge trade war in the order of billions for pointing out that China was lying about COVID origins.

There's a ton of diplomatic and other forms of protests:

- evict caught spies and other agents (or imprison them, it's no secret China does that as well)

- summon or evict their embassy staff and ambassadors

- harass China-owned companies or make their lives difficult with bureaucracy just like China does

- impose tariffs and trade sanctions

- support CCP-critical groups and dissidents both domestic and in China

- threaten China militarily (e.g. by deploying maritime units just right outside of their maritime borders), just like China does

- support nations whose sovereignty is threatened or violated by China, including African nations where Chinese fish trawlers are stealing fish

- hack Chinese government and corporate entities, just like China does

- impose export bans on technology or resources that China needs (which is already done, e.g. ASML litho machines)

- restrict Chinese citizens from visas, buying real estate

- seizing Chinese-owned assets like real estate (bonus: reduces housing pressure)

Individual people can stop purchasing Chinese products. Act locally is small, though it can start a boycott maybe like what pressured S.A. apartheid.

Also, let’s make sure to recycle our cans to stop climate change.

So this is a neat idea, but impossible and it demonstrates the very powerful reach of China.

Major American corporations have deep ties with China and China would pressure them to tamp this down.

Without some kind of institutional support from probably a few media companies it would be very hard.

The 'Tea Party Movement' was basically nothing until Fox News decided to put them up front, for example.

American corporations have incredible influence over media.

In particular, the massive hypocrisy over the NBA, and some players who scream about injustice, and then repeat Xi's talking points when it comes to China. Even NBA players have their marching orders.

Truly grassroots things are really really rare, it usually takes participation from aligned forces.

Do you notice how 'Tibet' used to be all the rage? It was the hip thing in Hollywood about 2000. The Dalai Lama was a thing. China put huge pressure on everyone to "Shut the F up about the Dalai Lama" and so corporations, NGOs, Hollywood, Governments, go the message. It becomes more rare to have him visit, and corporations no longer talk about Tibet.

Marc Benioff of Salesforce fame, is illustrative of this - he's ostensibly a big supporter of Buddhism etc. and the Tibet issue should be front and centre with him if he was in any way legit, but of course he keeps his mouth shut entirely, because, hey: it's just business.

Hollywood dutifully keeps their mouths shut and will happily kill anything in their periphery (i.e. documentaries) with the word 'Tibet'. Actors who want to not be blackballed/banned from China will stay the F away from the world 'Tibet'. Actors are corporations.

And of course the Uyghur issue - can you imagine any other major nation putting people in camps on the basis of their ethnicity? E. China is an open air police state, with stations every few hundred meters, propaganda everywhere etc.. There would be huge uproar over this if it were any other state. But we are told to keep our mouths shut, 'or else' - so we do.

All of this could change however - with a bit of coordinated action and political will, it could flip.

Lastly, Germany, which mostly controls EU, is one of the few nations to be a net exporter to China, and they don't want to mess that up and so they are the most likely to 'acquiesce' on the issue, which means the EU will 'keep their mouths shut'.

A very simple, very easy place to start, would be not allowing the construction of Chinese secret police stations in Western cities.

How does that stop Chinese authorities from threatening relatives of Chinese students protesting in the West?

Step 1 to filling holes is to stop digging new ones.

Infinite things. Literally infinite. Governments exert influence in countless countless ways.

Enact high import tariffs to discourage economic support for China and move the world's wealth into freer nations.

Bingo. Every nation should implement an 'externalization tax'.

So USA would implement X% tax on China for their authoritarian stuff, Y% for their aggression against Taiwan and Z% for their carbon emissions.

Every nation gets a tariff.

That would push them into line on some things.