A new campaign offers rewards for those whom help to catch foreign spies, but will it work?

By Tom Pattinson

Beijing announced last month that it would be offering cash rewards to any citizens who dob in a foreign spy. Rewards would be as much as RMB 500,000 (£58,000) for information that would play “an especially major role in preventing or stopping espionage conduct”.

The new campaign has been launched in Beijing, the political and economic capital of China, and apparently “the favourite destination for overseas spy agencies and other hostile forces”.

The campaign is trying to find foreigners and traitors who “infiltrate, subvert, steal state intelligence, and collude to instigate rebellions,” according to state media.

This new campaign comes on the back of last year’s anti-spy propaganda campaign called “Dangerous Love”. A cartoon featured a red-headed visiting scholar, David, who seduces young Little Li, a Chinese government worker. Romantic walks in the park, dinner and flowers led Li to believe that David liked her, and she ends up helping David with his academic research by sharing her government reports with him.

Little Li ends up in handcuffs, whilst David is not to be seen again, supposedly reporting back to his foreign paymasters.

If last year’s campaign sought to sow suspicion between foreigners and Chinese, this new campaign is clearly aimed at forcing a wedge between them.

Foreigners have always been viewed with some suspicion in China. This goes back centuries to China’s humiliation under foreign powers. Neighbours and local community volunteers have always kept an eye out on the comings and goings of people at the homes of foreigners but since 2012, a rise in nationalism and a campaign against hostile foreign forces has risen up the country’s agenda.

But China is not just worried about the national security threat but the gradual influence of Western culture that has permeated Chinese big cities. International music and art festivals that feature foreign acts and artists have been shut down at the last minute and, last month, a number of nightlife areas that were popular with foreigners and locals in the capital were demolished with little notice.

However, this new campaign may well become a headache for the Chinese foreign ministry. For many Beijing citizens who don’t regularly engage with foreigners, a big-money reward might be incentive enough to randomly accuse any foreigner of being a spy, wasting a lot of the ministry’s time. One thing is for sure: it’s not going to help integration or cultural exchange among the international community and Beijing’s local population.