Some of this is going to have a boomerang effect on his power and authority.” “It seems to show that 10 years of an anti-corruption campaign to purge the Party and create it in Xi’s image has failed. “It is a bit Mao-like, keeping everyone off guard by running new national campaigns where you are breaking up trusted relationships and making people think maybe they should tell the authorities about a friend who had a conversation with a foreigner,” Michael Shoebridge, a founder of Strategic Analysis Australia and a former senior Defence Department official, tells AFR Weekend. ”Games are the appetiser, and professional classes are the main course,” the Ministry said in a social media post on September 6 promoting a National Security Education Day at Beihang University in Beijing. Role-playing, interactive games and quizzes, training sessions, lectures, and even a “national security themed garden party” were all aimed at educating students how to identify spooks and contribute to the national security effort. Meanwhile, some of Beijing’s top universities this month launched campaigns to recruit students and teachers as spy-catchers, according to Bloomberg, which is backed up by social media posts by China’s powerful Ministry of State Security. One poster urges people to be cautious with lovers they do not know well, while another says “To report spies, please call 12339″, according to state media. In the eastern Chinese province of Shandong, posters have been distributed with headlines urging citizens to “be wary” of spies who could be all around. Forty-seven years after Mao’s death and China’s transformation into a capitalist powerhouse, citizens are being asked to turn in neighbours, relatives and even lovers if they are suspected of passing on sensitive information to foreigners. However, a Chinese leader is once again calling on the nation of 1.4 billion people to be on the lookout for spies. ![]() There are no signs, at least on the surface, that the Chinese Communist Party’s 73-year grip on power is under threat. Decades later, China has modernised and become one of the world’s most powerful nations economically and militarily, but Xi Jinping’s increasingly paranoid government is ramping up its crackdown on perceived national security risks to a level not seen since Mao’s era. Reutersĭuring Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, citizens were encouraged to rat out relatives and neighbours. Xi Jinping is stepping up his security crackdown as tensions with the United States rise. Visiting Australian politicians and business executives take burner phones and unused laptops with them because they know their private data is not safe once they step onto Chinese soil.īut China also has a long history of spying on its own citizens, particularly those it believes are colluding with foreign powers to undermine the Communist Party’s authority. ![]() Any foreign journalist who has lived there knows it’s likely their phone calls and residences were bugged and there’s a good chance they were followed by plainclothes police when out covering stories. Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.China has a long history of spying. Syria's Assad in China, seeks exit from diplomatic isolationįed keeps rates steady, toughens policy stance as 'soft landing' hopes grow Inside the subsea cable firm secretly helping America take on China You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. ![]() Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. An earlier version incorrectly described Edi Rama as the president of Albania. Plus, Budweiser won’t cut off the tails of its famous Clydesdale horses. Assad visits China in search of funding and deeper ties. The United States and China are overhauling their espionage systems, out of sight and deep underwater, as cheaper new technology changes the game.
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