“Beijing sees foreign threats ‘everywhere’ as powerful spy agency takes center stage.” [Nectar Gan, CNN’s Meanwhile In China, April 22, 2024.]

Thus read a CNN headline on Monday, immediately carrying me back to my school days in the early 1950s, when I spent hours one summer, glued to the black-and-white television set in my aunt’s living room, watching Senator Joseph McCarthy shouting, gesturing, and ruining the lives of mostly innocent Americans whom he — usually for specious reasons dreamt up in his twisted mind — suspected of being Communists or “Com-Simps”: Communist sympathizers.

Those were the days of the Red Scare, when McCarthy and his cronies appointed themselves a posse tasked with rooting out every Commie and Com-Simp in the country — and especially those in prominent positions. Government employees, movie stars, musicians, academics: all were vulnerable, and many were blacklisted, their careers and their private lives decimated. We were expected to believe there was a Communist spy in every closet, behind every tree, and under every bed. Those were crazy, suspicious, frightening times.

And now — in a somewhat different form and with a different goal — those days have come to the People’s Republic of China.

Of course, they’re not looking for Communists. They are the Communists. No, they’re looking for spies from “the West” — the U.S., all the other NATO countries, and our allies. We’re the bad guys now. And, according to China’s President Xi Jinping, we are everywhere: under the beds and behind the trees. Hiding. Lurking. Listening. Watching. It’s a massive infestation, and we must be rooted out and exterminated, like the cockroaches we really are.

Or so says President Xi. And he must know, because he is our honorable President.

Oh, sorry . . . wrong picture.

That’s better.

What has happened under China’s ultra-authoritarian leadership is that the formerly super-secret Ministry of State Security (MSS) has itself come out of the closet and embarked on a publicity campaign of such paranoid phantasmagoria as to be worthy of a George Orwell novel. I have not seen it personally, so I must resort to quoting from CNN’s description of a three-minute video released in tandem with National Security Education Day:

“As ominous music plays, a broad-faced, beady-eyed man disguises himself as a street fashion photographer, a lab technician, a businessman and a food delivery driver — he even sets up an online honey trap — to glean sensitive state secrets in various places and industries.

‘In the sea of people, you may have never noticed him. His identity is changeable and his whereabouts are hard to find,’ a narrator says. ‘They are everywhere, cunning . . . and sneaky, and they may be right here in our lives.’

Eventually, Chinese police catch the spy in a dramatic ambush after state security authorities receive multiple tip-offs from the public.

‘They can disguise as anyone. But among the crowds you and I together are protecting national security,’ the narrator concludes. ‘We 1.4 billion people are 1.4 billion lines of defense.’” [CNN’s Meanwhile in China, April 22, 2024.]

Wow! Looking forward to catching that on YouTube.

And apparently China’s cities have been plastered with posters and slogans “on sidewalks, subway trains, campuses and billboards,” as well as on social media and even in comic strips. That’s right, folks — get the little kiddies looking under the bed too! Why should they miss out on the fun?

*. *. *

One of the worst-kept secrets in the world has always been that everyone spies on everyone else. Of course we spy on the Chinese! Aren’t they doing it to us? The same is true of the Russians, the Iranians, the North Koreans . . . it’s endemic. And it’s “the world’s second oldest profession,” going back to biblical times. (If you have to ask what the oldest profession is, I suggest you contact Siri.)

Seriously, though . . . so what? Why are they suddenly making such a big deal of it — enlisting every one of their 1.4 billion citizens to report on one another? Has Xi Jinping really become that paranoid? Is he trying to take further control of his own people by turning them against one another? Looking for an excuse to take some action against the West? Maybe he’s just trying to keep pace with his BFF, Vladimir Putin. Or is there some other, even more devious purpose bubbling in the cauldron of his psyche?

I have no idea; but I, for one, can’t wait to find out.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
4/23/24