All the Places China Said Spies Are Lurking, Including Pens and Dates

• China has been trying to get its people to be more vigilant for foreign spies this year.
• The government has pushed warnings for things to beware of, like weird pens and strangers.
• Xi urged officials last year to adopt “worst-case-scenario thinking” for national security.

It’s been a busy year for the front-facing team of China’s State Security Ministry.

They’ve been following up on a nationwide push by Chinese leader Xi Jinping to maximize public awareness of foreign espionage.

Xi told officials in June 2023 that the country’s national security issues had risen significantly, and that they should adopt “worst-case-scenario thinking” to prepare for potential “perilous, stormy seas” ahead.

That mandate has, in part, taken shape in 2024 through a series of posts on government accounts on WeChat, or China’s version of Facebook.

Those include cautionary anecdotes of military documents being found in recycling plants, tour guides uncovering spies, and students getting duped by agencies promising entry into good colleges.

But they also contain clear warnings for things that could seem innocent, such as beautiful women offering “love traps” or drones disguised as dragonflies.

Funny-looking lighters, pens, and dragonflies

Spy gadgets aren’t just a movie concept, the State Security Ministry said in August.

“In real life, some inconspicuous daily necessities around us may also contain mysteries,” it wrote in a post about “hidden gadgets.”

It told the story of an unnamed businessman bidding on an overseas project who discovered microphones in a box of napkins.

The ministry added that pens can be cameras, lighters can be listening devices, and insect-like drones could be used to gather intelligence.

‘Good-hearted people’ with cash to spare

The same month, the ministry told the tale of Little Wei, a senior university student who grew up orphaned in a poor mountainous region.

It warned that Wei, a budding, top-scoring student, had come across a generous donor named “Teacher L” who offered to subsidize him until he graduated from college. In return, Wei would have to help with research projects and field surveys, for which he would be paid even more money.

The ministry said Wei later found a job that gave him access to confidential information, which he passed to Teacher L at the latter’s behest.

The ministry dubbed such people “wolves in sheep’s clothing.”

“Their methods are despicable and have no bottom line. They often disguise themselves as ‘good-hearted people,’ ‘passionate people,’ and ‘caring people’ around young people,” it added.

Job offers

Young students have been a recurring concern in the ministry’s messaging this year.

It wrote in September that it had found foreign spy agencies trying to recruit students with market research or science-related jobs touting “small efforts and high returns.”

Officials said that eventually, the spies would ask the students to start “collecting and compiling internal scientific research and academic materials, photographing military sensitive areas.”

‘Handsome men or beautiful women’

Online dating could also be teeming with danger, the ministry warned in the same September post.

Foreign spies may “even disguise themselves as ‘handsome men’ or ‘beautiful women’ and pretend to be close friends and drag young students into a false ‘love’ trap,” it wrote.

The ministry urged young people making friends online to be “highly vigilant and clear-headed.”

Express delivery

Authorities have also released statements about courier deliveries, which are especially cheap and widely used in China.

“In recent years, foreign espionage and intelligence agencies have been increasingly rampant in stealing secrets through delivery channels,” the ministry wrote in August.

It said it had found a case where a “foreign institution” had sent a hazardous powder to a Chinese research center. The ministry also said it had uncovered shipments of non-native animal species, sent to disrupt the local ecology, like “red-eared sliders, alligator snapping turtles, American bullfrogs, fall armyworms, and red fire ants.”

Telling your date you work in the military

In November, the Chinese navy told its personnel in the “internet generation” — or millennials and Gen Z sailors — not to post their military status online.

“A military profession is of a political, confidential, and disciplinary nature. Resolve not to reveal your military identity online,” the navy said in its post.

It warned especially of young officers and seamen who are “eager for love” and might try to snag dates by displaying their military status.

“If you expose your military identity to gain attention, it’s very easy to become the focus of criminals,” the navy wrote.

Rock music

The South China Morning Post reported in September that a new foundational textbook for college students warned of rock music and pop culture as “covers” for color revolutions.

Color revolutions generally refer to the Arab Spring and anti-government protests in post-Soviet states. For years, Beijing has accused the US of orchestrating them.

The textbook is likely to be made mandatory reading in at least some schools. State media has called it the “first unified textbook” of all of the principles and ideals that a core committee answering to Xi has tried to promote in the last 10 years.

The part left unsaid

Notably, China rarely says who these “foreign spies” work for, though these messages have come against the backdrop of frosty tensions between Washington and Beijing.

The US Justice Department, on its part, has been regularly charging people this year accused of spying for China and trying to manipulate local politics in Beijing’s favor.

“Part of this is inevitable,” Dylan Loh, a professor at the Public Policy and Global Affairs program at Singapore’s National Technological University, told Business Insider. “As China grows, the amount of national security concerns and interests will certainly increase.”

“The other part is reflective of geopolitics today, especially in the context of US-China competition,” he said.

Overall, Loh said, it’s indicative of a bigger push by China to group more issues into the domain of national security.

Ian Ja Chong, a professor of political science at the National University of Singapore, said it’s not clear how effective China’s messaging is, but that its strategy seems to rely on repetition.

“Even if a vast majority of people ignore or become desensitized to such claims, there may be some among the public for whom these ideas of danger become a source of motivation,” he said.

The danger could lie in this suspicion growing into nationalism, he said.

“There remain allegations that attacks on Japanese schools in Suzhou and Shenzhen earlier this year, as well as an attack on US teachers in Jilin, resulted from a growing sense of foreign threat in the PRC,” Chong said, referring to China by its formal name.

Xi’s drive goes beyond social media messaging. BI’s Huileng Tan reported in May 2023 about China’s sweeping updates to its anti-espionage law that broadened the definition of spying and the transfer of important information.

Since the original law passed in 2014, China has detained and charged dozens of foreign businesspeople with espionage. One of the most recent cases involves a Japanese employee of Astellas Pharma, a Tokyo-based pharmaceutical firm, accused by China of spying. According to Japanese media, he was the 17th Japanese citizen to be detained under suspicion of espionage in China, and his trial opened in November.