In a slick video marking the National Security Education Day, China's top spy agency has a stern message for Chinese people: foreign spies are everywhere.
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."
The three-minute video is the latest propaganda push by China's powerful civilian spy agency, the Ministry of State Security (MSS), to mentally arm the Chinese public against what it sees as the growing threat of foreign espionage.
Under Xi Jinping, China's most authoritarian leader in decades, the country's notoriously secretive spy agency has drastically raised its public profile and broadened its remit.
From a shadowy organization without any discernable public face, the MSS has been transformed into a highly visible presence in public life.
In Chinese cities, posters and slogans promoting national security are now a common sight on sidewalks, subway trains, campuses and billboards. On social media, the ministry commands a massive following with near-daily commentaries, short videos or even comic strips sounding the alarm about supposedly ubiquitous threats to the country.
According to the MSS, foreign spies are omnipresent and infiltrating everything – from mapping apps to weather stations. The ministry has also posted details of what it claims are espionage activities carried out by American and British spy agencies, and detailed how Chinese nationals studying or working abroad have allegedly been recruited by the CIA.
Last week, as part of a documentary to mark National Security Education Day, the MSS revealed that a Chinese scientist convicted of selling state secrets to a foreign intelligence agency was executed in 2016. The documentary did not explicitly mention which country, but its images show an American flag and the US Capitol building.
The MSS' transformation is part of Xi's sweeping pivot to ramp up national security in the face of heightened geopolitical tensions and mounting domestic challenges.
As US-China relations fray, the MSS has undertaken significant efforts to provide guidance to other government agencies and broader society, said Xuezhi Guo, a professor of political science at Guilford College in the US.
"These endeavors aim to foster anti-espionage awareness and enhance security measures in light of the evolving landscape of espionage threats," he said. "The goal is to empower Chinese citizens and entities with the knowledge and skills required to bolster their vigilance and preempt espionage activities effectively."
The emphasis on external threats also helps Beijing deflect criticism at home over its own policies by shifting blame onto "foreign forces" – a playbook the Chinese government has repeatedly applied during periods of public discontent, most recently over protests in late 2022 against Xi's hardline measures to prevent Covid.
And the spy agency's extending reach is a sign of the increasing securitization of Chinese life and society under Xi, where "an incredibly wide array of issues can be viewed as threats to national security," said Sheena Chestnut Greitens, director of the Asia Policy Program at the University of Texas at Austin.
Keeping reading the spy agency's bigger public profile.
More on China's intelligence operations:
- Beijing claims US citizen jailed for life in China was decorated spy who worked undetected for decades
- As Beijing's intelligence capabilities grow, spying becomes an increasing flashpoint in US-China ties
