[10] In March 2017, Ningxia investigators and Paris embassy personnel “successfully persuaded” fugitive Zheng Ning to come home, after he had lived in France for three years before his mysterious disappearance.
Paul Charon, an expert on China at the French defense ministry's Institute for Strategic Research, said “It also shows a bigger phenomenon: the hardening stance of the regime in Beijing, which dares to carry out these operations overseas and mock the sovereignty of other countries.”[11] The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) publicly acknowledged to The Globe and Mail that China is using threats and intimidation against members of Canada's Chinese community that are akin to the tactics used in Operation Fox Hunt.
South China Morning Post reported that program will "go further" than previous manhunts through the coordination of multiple government agencies to cut off the exfiltration of state and corrupt assets abroad.
[15] According to reports by state media the program was still active as of 2023 with long time fugitive Guo Qigang "voluntarily" returning to China in July 2023 to face charges.
The article stated that Guo was a police officer of the Guangzhou Public Security Bureau's traffic department, fled overseas in March 2000 after she was suspected to have accepted bribes.
[18][19] In August 2017, American citizen Daniel Hsu and Jodie Chen were prevented from exiting China, forcing their 16-year-old daughter to return to the United States alone.
In April 2019, Chen's exit ban was lifted after writing a petition to Chinese authorities pledging that she would convince her father-in-law to return to the United States, but Hsu remained under detention within China.
[17] In September 2021, reporting by the South China Morning Post confirmed that exit bans against Victor and Cynthia had been lifted and the pair had been allowed to return home.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki denied claims of a "prisoner swap", stating the Meng Wanzhou case was a "legal matter" overseen by independent prosecutors at the Department of Justice.
Instead, Fox Hunt is a sweeping bid by General Secretary Xi to target Chinese nationals whom he sees as threats and who live outside China, across the world.
[33] In 2023, the NYPD ordered him to answer questions from internal investigators about the spying case but Angwang, on the advice of his lawyers, declined because the department refused to provide documents that would have allowed them to prepare.
In his decision letter, NYPD commissioner Edward Caban wrote that as the department is a paramilitary organization, failure to comply with the official questioning "undermines its ability to carry out its mission".
The individuals are alleged to have surveilled, harassed, stalked, and coerced American residents to return to China, sometimes threatening family members if they failed to comply.
The Justice Department accuses Tu Lan, a prosecutor of the Hanyang People's Procuratorate and one of the indicted, of directing the surveillance campaign and subsequent destruction of evidence to obstruct the American investigation into their activities.
[40] The Department of Justice accused the two of engaging in transnational repression of US based dissidents to "silence, harass, discredit and spy on U.S -based residents for exercising their freedom of speech"[41] In a superseding indictment unsealed on July 7, a grand jury charged Craig Miller, a current DHS agent, and former DHS agent Derrick Taylor, for destroying evidence and allegedly accessing confidential government databases to secure information in aid of repression of local dissidents.