Is Xi Jinping afraid of death?
As students returned to Beijing’s top universities in early September, a propaganda blitz on campus announced an ominous addition to their curriculum: a crash course on how to identify spies.
According to the nation’s spy agency, videos were broadcasted onto faculty screens at the government-run Tsinghua University instructing teachers and students to become a “defence line” against foreign forces, while the Beijing University of Technology threw a national-security-themed garden party.
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Students at Beihang University, a military-linked aeronautics institute sanctioned by the US, were even asked to play an interactive training game called Who’s The Spy? “In what special way will the college students around you reinvigorate national security?” asked the Ministry of State Security on its new WeChat account.
Is Xi Jinping afraid of death?
As President Xi Jinping deploys a security forcefield to repel perceived foreign threats to Communist Party rule, Beijing’s message to the public is that spies are everywhere, not just in universities.
In Henan province, police have urged citizens to quiz neighbours they distrust on pop culture to determine their patriotism, while Shandong province state media have published posters with the tagline “spies might be all around you.”
The push comes after Xi presided over a National Security Council meeting in May that emphasized the importance of “extreme-case scenario” thinking – a phrase previously reserved by the ruling party to describe natural disaster preparedness.
Since then, China has enacted a new anti-spy law, accused consulting firms of collaborating with foreign intelligence agencies, and warned that foreign forces are infiltrating the energy sector.
Maybe Xi has a good reason for rallying the populace behind a common threat. Just as the Asian giant enters a slowdown that runs the risk of igniting yet another wave of social unrest, China is embroiled in an ideological conflict with the US that is straining its economy.
Infrequent nationwide demonstrations last year were led by students who demanded the repeal of Covid Zero and, in some cases, the ouster of Xi.
“At the time of economic pressure, there are quite obvious concerns at the top leadership,” said Katja Drinhausen, head of the politics and society program at the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin. “Using collective fear as a way to build political and social cohesion is a very dangerous game to play.”
Spy Agency
The Ministry of State Security was established in the 1980s when the Communist Party merged its intelligence divisions.
Since then, the organization has remained secret. Since hotlines were its only public platform for reporting activities endangering national security, it is the only cabinet-level ministry without an official website.
When the ministry joined the Chinese social media platform WeChat last month, that situation changed.
Since then, it has posted nearly daily about its efforts to ensure national security, even going so far as to advise primary school students on which photos they shouldn’t share online.
That follows CIA director William Burns’ declaration in July that the organization had improved its spy network in China.
In a rare move for an organization that doesn’t release information on its arrests, the MSS has since provided details about two cases involving Chinese officials it detained for giving information to the CIA.
Even the geopolitical realm has been touched upon, with a warning to the US that it must demonstrate “sincerity” in order for Xi to attend a gathering of the world’s top businessmen in November in California, where he is scheduled to meet President Joe Biden for the first time this year.
“The rising visibility of the MSS appears to be part of an effort to normalise national security as a top priority in government policymaking by encouraging it to adopt a public profile more like that of economic agencies,” said Neil Thomas, a fellow for Chinese politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis.
In a country where many people still recall the negative effects of asking citizens to snitch on one another, the result is a growing level of mistrust among citizens.
The Cultural Revolution under former leader Mao Zedong was a bloody time when the populace was urged to report even the most remote possibility that a friend, spouse, or parent was involved in organizations working to bring down the Communist Party.
One Chinese employee’s failure to remember the words to a well-known Chinese song during a karaoke night allegedly led to his coworkers reporting him to the police in July.
“He turned out to be a you-know-what,” one user who knew the group wrote on the social media app Xiaohongshu, named after Mao’s Little Red Book that was used to compel the nation’s population to inform each other. China offers up to 500,000 yuan ($68,160) to citizens who successfully report spies.
About 16,000 people liked that post, which Bloomberg was unable to verify, as they enthusiastically traded spy-detection advice. They claimed that failing to understand slang made popular by the annual spring gala broadcast or maths class mnemonics could all be signs of a spook.
The campaign to catch spies runs the risk of harming innocent people. One person expressed regret in a now-deleted post on Xiaohongshu after learning that the person they had mistaken for a suspected foreign agent was actually a student taking pictures for fieldwork research. A request for comment from Bloomberg received no response from the subject.
In the workplace, there is an increase in hypervigilance regarding disclosing confidential information.
According to those with direct knowledge of the situation, state-owned businesses are conducting training programmes on state secrets. One of the people, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from the government, claimed that more documents are being designated as state secrets and are only accessible at the office.
The government has also released an app to assist Communist Party members and government workers in improving their knowledge and proficiency in maintaining secrecy.
Protecting the future of the Communist Party is fundamentally connected to the obsession with national security.
In a July article, State Security Minister Chen Yixin stated that political security was a component of national security. “Regime security is the core of political security,” he continued.
In contrast to the party’s recently stated goal of luring investors and reviving the private sector, that drive is also fostering a strong suspicion of foreigners.
As the climate of suspicion intensifies, foreigners are reporting that it is more difficult to meet with officials who were once friendly.
Sheena Greitens, associate professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at UT-Austin, said encouraging citizens to spy on each other would have “damaging consequences” for overall governance in China.
“It can lead to false reporting,” she said. “That can backfire for the internal security agencies themselves because it means they are working from increasingly bad information.”
