Ambiguous attributions: Who orchestrates and who executes transnational repression at the behest of the Chinese Party-State?

Testimonies of transnational repression are often vague when it comes to the actors that carry out the transgressive action against them, with at times interchangeable attributions to China, the Chinese government, Chinese police or Chinese secret agents. In some cases, targets of repression more specifically refer to officers of a Public Security Bureau or the Ministry of Public Security. Advocacy organizations and academic work often follow these vague attributions. The question of attribution is however central to determining whether an action or an event can be classified as "transnational repression." In this paper, I present an institutional analysis of the Chinese Party-State, focusing on the departments and entities who are demonstrably tasked with such work within the CCP/PRC system. These findings are bolstered empirically by drawing on the few yet prominent cases of transnational repression against Tibetan and Uyghur communities abroad where attribution has been established by courts or other branches of government. The paper ends by discussing the relevance of attribution in different settings of transnational repression. This includes cases where attribution seems near impossible at first glance, and those in which it seems to be in the interest of the party-state (and its specific exponents?) to be actively identified as the sources of repressive practices.