The Chinese government has launched a major counter-espionage social media campaign targeting minors. Platforms like Douyin, WeChat and Xiaohongshu are flooded with spy-related videos and cartoons. Some resurrect decades-old materials urging students to monitor their family members. Many Chinese parents worry this propaganda will warp their children’s minds. The messaging portrays everyone as a potential spy – friends, lovers, job recruiters, etc. Clips advise vigilance against honey traps and bribes.

On July 1st, a revised Counter-Espionage Law took effect. The law was heavily publicized. One 2017 cartoon now recirculating tells students to watch their family for suspicious behavior on weekends and to report their behavior to authorities.

Some parents have privately expressed alarm over the counter-espionage program, saying that it promotes suspicion, destroys trust and relationships, and harms children’s mental health. In an interview by Radio Free Asia, a schoolteacher reported that one student’s parent had said that the campaign brainwashes kids to see even their relatives as hostile, stirring family conflicts. Another parent was reminded of the reporting and antagonism between people seen during China’s Cultural Revolution. The teacher added that the mentality of self-protection risks spawning new social problems.

Source: Radio Free Asia, August 17, 2023
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/kejiaowen/gt2-08172023072815.html

The Chang’an Branch of the Xi’an Municipal Public Security Bureau, Shaanxi Province, issued a notice on August 14 regarding individuals staying abroad who are “highly likely to have engaged in fraud.” Among those mentioned were those “staying in northern Myanmar,” “staying in the Golden Triangle,” “staying in the UAE,” and “staying in Cambodia.” The article didn’t name specific crimes committed. {Editor’s Note: This might refer to people involved in the crime rings of Internet fraud operated in those areas, but it may also include people trying to escape the communist regime by going to those countries to apply for asylum.}

The notice stated that “those individuals involved in fraud who are illegally staying overseas” must return through official channels by September 10. They must also report to local police stations 14 days before entry to China. Failure to comply with the order would result in “the individual and those within his/her direct three generations being subject to strict scrutiny during political examination when applying to join the Communist Youth League, the Communist Party, and the military, or when applying for the jobs of civil service and positions supported by public funding.” The term “three generations” include grandparents, parents, children, and grandchildren.

Source: Radio France International, August 16, 2023
https://www.rfi.fr/cn/中国/20230815-西安通告-家有嫌犯不归-查直系三代

Qiushi Theory recently published speech given by Xi Jinping. The speech was given on February 7, 2023, following the CCP’s 20^th Party Congress. The audience was the newly “elected” members and alternate members of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) Central Committee as well as major leading cadres at the provincial and ministerial level.

Xi stated: “The path of modernization that a country chooses is determined by its historical tradition, social system, development conditions, external environment, and many other factors. Different national conditions will lead to different paths of modernization. Practice has proved that a country’s modernization should not only follow the general law of modernization, but also conform to its own realities and have its own characteristics. Chinese-style modernization has the common features of modernization in all countries, but it also has distinctive features based on its own national conditions.”

Xi further stated twice that China should not take the “old path of Western countries.” {Editor’s note: the problems that Xi highlights as resulting from “the Western path” of modernization have already come to pass in China. See below.}

“Fourthly, the modernization of mankind in harmony with nature. Since modern times, most of the modernization of western countries have gone through the stage of wanton plundering of natural resources and vicious destruction of the ecological environment, often causing serious problems such as environmental pollution and resource depletion while creating huge material wealth. … (I)t is impossible for China to follow the old path of Western modernization.”

“Fifthly, modernization on the path of peaceful development. The modernization of Western countries is full of bloody evils such as war, slavery, colonization, and plundering, and has brought deep suffering to the vast number of developing countries. The Chinese nation, having experienced the tragic history of invasion and abuse by Western powers, is well aware of the preciousness of peace and will never repeat the same old path of the Western countries.”

Source: Qiushi, August 15, 2023
http://www.qstheory.cn/dukan/qs/2023-08/15/c_1129801483.htm