During the Anti-Rightist Campaign, which started in 1957, 600,000 people were sent to jail, many because they had been denounced by those around them. In the early 1950s, the Communists dispatched millions to labour camps and executed millions more on the basis of evidence culled from those near and dear to them. The results of these campaigns are well known. In China, the stool pigeon is the true hero of the revolution.Ī Chinese land owner and the "local tyrant" are forced to parade through a village wearing dunce caps during the early 1950s. From the founding of the People's Republic of China, people have been expected to report on their friends, relatives, teachers, classmates and co-workers, because it is they who know the most private thoughts of their loved ones. Nonetheless, these now-yearly endeavours underscore what remains a vital goal of China's government: to shore up the snitch society that has kept the Communist Party in power since its early days. It's unclear whether these campaigns will actually dig up any moles. State media across China warned of an increasingly "severe" national security situation. Authorities in Beijing offered cash rewards to citizens who reported foreign intelligence operatives and their Chinese lackeys. Educators in Jiangsu province rolled out a set of elementary school textbooks featuring games such as "Find the Spy". This year, the competition to root out foreign spooks and their Chinese co-conspirators has spread nationwide. The moral: There are spies everywhere, beware! In one of the final panels, we see Little Li sitting handcuffed before two police officers. He cozies up to Little Li and purloins Chinese state secrets. The man, David, claims to be a visiting scholar but is actually a foreign spy. The 16 panels, tantalisingly titled Dangerous Love, told the story of a comely Chinese civil servant, Little Li, who meets a Western man at a dinner party. In April of last year, to mark National Security Education Day, a series of posters went up in an alleyway near my home in Beijing.
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