Safeguard Defenders, a Europe-based human rights organization, published a report in September revealing the presence of dozens of Chinese police “service stations” in major cities around the world, including New York.

Republicans in Congress have requested answers from the Biden administration about their influence.

The report said the stations were an extension of Beijing’s efforts to pressure some Chinese nationals or their relatives abroad to return to China to face criminal charges. It also linked them to activities of China’s United Front Work Department, a Communist Party body charged with spreading its influence and propaganda overseas.

“I’m very concerned about this. We are aware of the existence of these stations,” Wray told a U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing, acknowledging but declining to detail the FBI’s investigative work on the issue.

“But to me, it is outrageous to think that the Chinese police would attempt to set up shop, you know, in New York, let’s say, without proper coordination. It violates sovereignty and circumvents standard judicial and law enforcement cooperation processes.”

Wray, asked by Republican Senator Rick Scott if such stations violated U.S. law, said the FBI was “looking into the legal parameters.”

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, including Greg Murphy and Mike Waltz, sent letters to the Justice Department in October asking if President Joe Biden’s administration was investigating such stations and arguing they could be used to intimidate U.S. residents of Chinese origin.

China’s embassy in Washington did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

Earlier this month, its foreign ministry denied it had such stations in the Netherlands after a probe by Dutch authorities. China said they were offices to help Chinese citizens renew documents.

Wray said the United States had made a number of indictments involving the Chinese government harassing, stalking, surveilling, and blackmailing people in the United States who disagreed with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

“It’s a real problem and something that we’re talking with our foreign partners about, as well, because we’re not the only country where this has occurred,” he said.

The United States unsealed criminal charges in October against seven Chinese nationals accused of waging a surveillance and harassment campaign against a U.S. resident and his family in a bid by the Chinese government to repatriate one of them back to China.

It was the latest case by the Justice Department targeting China’s effort to track down people overseas who Beijing calls criminal suspects, known as “Operation Fox Hunt.”

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Speaking to the Hudson Institute in Washington, Christopher Wray described a multi-pronged disruption campaign.

He said China had begun targeting Chinese nationals living abroad, coercing their return, and was working to compromise US coronavirus research.

“The stakes could not be higher,” Mr Wray said.

“China is engaged in a whole-of-state effort to become the world’s only superpower by any means necessary,” he added.

In a nearly hour-long speech on Tuesday, the FBI Director outlined a stark picture of Chinese interference, a far-reaching campaign of economic espionage, data and monetary theft and illegal political activities, using bribery and blackmail to influence US policy.

“We’ve now reached a point where the FBI is now opening a new China-related counterintelligence case every 10 hours,” Mr Wray said. “Of the nearly 5,000 active counterintelligence cases currently underway across the country, almost half are related to China.”

The FBI Director said that Chinese President Xi Jinping had spearheaded a programme called “Fox Hunt”, geared at Chinese nationals living abroad seen as threats to the Chinese government.

“We’re talking about political rivals, dissidents, and critics seeking to expose China’s extensive human rights violations,” he said. “The Chinese government wants to force them to return to China, and China’s tactics to accomplish that are shocking.”

He continued: “When it couldn’t locate one Fox Hunt target, the Chinese government sent an emissary to visit the target’s family here in the United States.

“The message they said to pass on? The target had two options: return to China promptly, or commit suicide.”

Washington now sees Beijing as global leadership contender

Analysis by Zhaoyin Feng, BBC News Chinese, Washington

This is not the first time FBI Director Christopher Wray has categorised China as a “top intelligence threat” for the US, but on Tuesday he ramped up the criticism by focussing on Beijing’s “whole-of-state effort” to become the world’s only superpower.

It clearly signals that Washington now sees Beijing not only as an aggressive adversary, but also an ambitious contender for global leadership.

Since the Covid-19 outbreak in the US, the Trump administration has attacked China on everything from its initial response to coronavirus to Hong Kong’s new national security law.

Mr Wray’s remarks are among a series of hard-hitting speeches by senior US officials on the topic.

The Trump administration says it is now time to wake up from the 40 years of policy failures with regard to China, while critics see this as an attempt to deflect attention from the president’s own failures in office and to increase his chances of winning re-election.

What is certain is that the power dynamics between China and the US have fundamentally shifted, and no matter who will be the next US president, the tense stand-offs of Sino-US relations will inevitably continue.

In the unusual address, Mr Wray asked Chinese-born people living in the US to contact the FBI if Chinese officials target them seeking their return.

The Chinese government has defended this programme in the past, saying it is part of a legitimate anti-corruption effort.

The threat posed by China will be further addressed by the US attorney general and secretary of state in coming weeks, Mr Wray said.

The address comes amid heightened tensions between the US and China.

US President Donald Trump has been highly critical of China amid the coronavirus outbreak, repeatedly blaming the country for the global pandemic.

In another move, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said this week that the administration was looking at banning Chinese apps – including the hugely popular TikTok.

The apps “serve as appendages of the Chinese Communist Party’s surveillance state”, he said.