Beijing sees forces bent on weakening it everywhere: embedded in multinational companies, infiltrating social media, circling naïve students. And it wants its people to see them, too.
Chinese universities require faculty to take courses on protecting state secrets, even in departments like veterinary medicine. A kindergarten in the eastern city of Tianjin organized a meeting to teach staffers how to “understand and use” China’s anti-espionage law.
China’s Ministry of State Security, a usually covert department that oversees the secret police and intelligence services, has even opened its first social media account, as part of what official news media described as an effort at increasing public engagement. Its first post: a call for a “whole of society mobilization” against espionage.
“The participation of the masses,” the post said, should be “normalized.”
China’s ruling Communist Party is enlisting ordinary people to guard against perceived threats to the country, in a campaign that blurs the line between vigilance and paranoia. The country’s economy is facing its worst slowdown in years, but China’s authoritarian leader, Xi Jinping, appears more fixated on national security and preventing threats to the party’s control.
“We must be prepared for worst-case and extreme scenarios,” Mr. Xi told China’s National Security Commission in May. He called on officials to “enhance real-time monitoring” and “get prepared for actual combat.”
The sense of urgency may be heightened by the fact that Beijing is confronting some of its biggest challenges since Mr. Xi’s ascension more than a decade ago. Beyond the economic gloom, China’s relations with the West are increasingly tense. And unexplained personnel changes at the highest tiers of power — including the sudden removal in July of China’s foreign minister and two high-ranking generals — suggest that Mr. Xi may have feared threats to his control.
In July, China revised its anti-espionage law to broaden an already sweeping scope of activities that it regards as spying. It is offering rewards of tens of thousands of dollars to people who report spies.
While the call for mass vigilance has inspired widespread caution, it is unclear to what extent that is translating to action on the ground. In the last month, the authorities have announced the capture of at least four spies, including two men recruited by the C.I.A., but some of the cases appeared to be old ones belatedly announced, such as a married couple arrested in 2019.
The authorities also said earlier this year that they had sentenced an American citizen to life in prison for espionage, and they arrested a high-ranking Chinese newspaper editor while he was dining with a Japanese diplomat. (The editor’s family has called the charges trumped up.)
“The push reflects the profound legitimacy challenges and crisis that the regime is facing,” said Chen Jian, a professor of modern Chinese history at New York…
2023-09-02 16:00:17
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