You’re listening to part two of a Barefoot Lawyer Reports on China interview with Elsa Johnson, student at Stanford University and managing editor for The Stanford Review, conducted by Dr. William Saunders, director of the Center for Human Rights. To listen to the rest of this interview, check the link in the description or go to humanrights.catholic.edu.
William Saunders: You could disappear into the system if you don’t have the proper documents, and even with them, you might disappear into the system. So, I think that was very wise of you.
Elsa Johnson: It’s really concerning that these are… That Americans would be encouraged to travel to China in this way. And when I sort of brought up my concern to Charles, I said, “Why would I want to go to China without a visa? And also, why would I only want to go for six days maximum?” He told me, “It’s no problem. You can go to Japan in between and then come back and do another six-day stint.” So it was extremely suspicious. And after that he sort of gave up on the… Well, I’d also like to mention, you know, he was also telling me about Stanford students that he knew of who were in China at the time, and that was also really scary to me because, as I sort of grew to realize he wasn’t a Stanford student through my own research, I was looking through student directories, I could not find any trace of him.
The fact that he knew of students who were currently in China was really scary to me. And, thankfully I was able to get in touch with these people and sort of ask them what their experiences with Charles Chen were. But he seemed to know who was in China at the time, and was trying to use them, you know, other Stanford students, as another reason for me to go to China.
W: So you felt very uneasy because he wasn’t who he seemed to be, and he seemed to know things he shouldn’t know. He seemed to have had similar kinds of relationships or connections with other Stanford students, right?
E: Yeah. Yeah, and I… Yeah, as I said, I eventually figured out that he wasn’t even a student, and I already was suspicious of this while we were having our conversation, and… Yeah, I was extremely concerned that he would know about the whereabouts of other Stanford students who were also interested in China.
And eventually, you know, he gave up on the “visit China,” and he just started to incessantly ask me to add him on WeChat and join the Chinese version of WeChat. There’s… on American app stores, you can download WeChat, but it’s not going to be CCP-monitored in the same way that it is if you add WeChat from a QR code from a Chinese national.
And I don’t think WeChat should be allowed in the United States at all. I think it’s a huge national security risk. I mean, I think it’s also a tool for transnational repression. But, you know, in my conversations with Charles, he would send a new QR code, like, every two hours and he would…
He got very aggressive and rude when I didn’t want to add him on WeChat, or when I wasn’t responsive. And eventually it got to the point where he, at the end of July, almost two months into our communication, he commented on one of my Instagram posts asking me to delete screenshots of our conversations.
And that was sort of my breaking point with him, and that’s when I very aggressively told him that I never wanted him to speak to me because I didn’t know how he knew that I had screenshots of our conversations.
W: So let’s, just to people listening, just say that again. He knew about screenshots you had and you don’t know how he knew that you had them, right?
E: Right. And, you know, I was aware of Instagram’s policies with screenshots; you know, it was that if somebody sends a vanishing message, it will notify someone if a screenshot is taken and I, you know… Charles hadn’t sent any of those to me, so nothing Charles had sent me qualified for a notification that I’d taken a screenshot would be sent to him.
And at that point, a few days prior, I had already told my bosses at the Hoover Institution about Charles and what our conversations were like, and they had already told me that this seemed like MSS, Ministry of State Security, which is sort of China’s CIA.
And then, I was already very… on very high alert at this point, because I was in the process of getting in touch with someone at the FBI; this situation was to be taken very seriously, and that’s when, after he commented on my Instagram post in Mandarin, I decided that was it.
And he deleted all of his messages that he had ever sent to me, blocked me, and shortly after, he actually deleted his Instagram account entirely. And he had had this account for six-plus years. He had been contacting other Stanford students for years on this account, so I was… I was glad that, despite the sort of creepy conversation I had with him, this led to the end of his correspondence with and harassment of Stanford students.
W: So, just for the people listening, this might be… Who, it’s new for them, and correct me if I – if you would put this differently, but, your experience illustrates that the CCP, through various official and unofficial- mainly unofficial -agents is trying to influence American students to have favorable opinions of the CCP, and they’re not disclosing that that’s what they’re doing.
Is that true?
E: Yeah. Exactly.
This has been part two of a Barefoot Lawyer Reports on China interview with Elsa Johnson. To listen to the rest of this interview, check the link in the description or go to humanrights.catholic.edu.