Xi’s Security Obsession Turns Ordinary Citizens into Spy Hunters
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Re: Xi’s Security Obsession Turns Ordinary Citizens into Spy Hunters
#2Re: Xi’s Security Obsession Turns Ordinary Citizens into Spy Hunters
#3Worth adding to the Evil Overlord List:
When making decisions about my security forces, I will bear in mind the example of East Germany's supposedly all-knowing and all-powerful Stasi...and of how utterly useless they proved to be. Better to be accidentally killed by the Hero's comic-relief Sidekick than to have my Evil Empire collapse without the Hero having had to lift a finger.
Re: Xi’s Security Obsession Turns Ordinary Citizens into Spy Hunters
#4Worth adding to the Evil Overlord List: When making decisions about my security forces, I will bear in mind the example of East Germany's supposedly all-knowing and all-powerful Stasi...and of how utterly useless they proved to be. Better to be accidentally killed by the Hero's comic-relief Sidekick than to have my Evil Empire collapse without the Hero having had to lift a finger.
This stuff isn’t intended to do anything but point the finger away from the man behind the curtain for the current social and economic problems in mainland China. By creating an external boogie man all problems can be attributable to that.
Re: Xi’s Security Obsession Turns Ordinary Citizens into Spy Hunters
#5> Police in Henan province have urged citizens to quiz neighbors they mistrust on pop culture to ascertain their patriotism, while Shandong province state media published posters with the tagline “spies might be all around you.”
All this campaign will do is generate a ton of false positives. They'll end up duplicating Russia's practice of reporting people you don't like as unpatriotic. The US also has some experience with the practice [1], but fortunately those days are way behind us.
Re: Xi’s Security Obsession Turns Ordinary Citizens into Spy Hunters
#6> Police in Henan province have urged citizens to quiz neighbors they mistrust on pop culture to ascertain their patriotism, while Shandong province state media published posters with the tagline “spies might be all around you.” All this campaign will do is generate a ton of false positives. They'll end up duplicating Russia's practice of reporting people you don't like as unpatriotic. The US also has some experience…
I think the idea with campaigns like these is not to actually root out spies - it's to get people to self censor because they're afraid that their neighbor is going to report them to the government. If everyone is afraid of saying any forbidden ideas, nothing "subversive" can spread because everyone lives in too much fear to spread it. Knowledge of this campaign is more important than the function of the campaign itself
Re: Xi’s Security Obsession Turns Ordinary Citizens into Spy Hunters
#7Worth adding to the Evil Overlord List: When making decisions about my security forces, I will bear in mind the example of East Germany's supposedly all-knowing and all-powerful Stasi...and of how utterly useless they proved to be. Better to be accidentally killed by the Hero's comic-relief Sidekick than to have my Evil Empire collapse without the Hero having had to lift a finger.
> how utterly useless they proved to be
Worse than useless. Consider the social and economic utility of people that piss others off.
No actual harm caused. Not bad people. Just those neighbours or colleagues or friend’s significant others that, through selfishness and lack of awareness or simply bullheadedness, question everything and come up creative (sometimes not totally legit or invited) workarounds.
Those people do not survive such regimes. And the societies blighted of them show it rather quickly.
Re: Xi’s Security Obsession Turns Ordinary Citizens into Spy Hunters
#8> Police in Henan province have urged citizens to quiz neighbors they mistrust on pop culture to ascertain their patriotism, while Shandong province state media published posters with the tagline “spies might be all around you.” All this campaign will do is generate a ton of false positives. They'll end up duplicating Russia's practice of reporting people you don't like as unpatriotic. The US also has some experience…
I think the idea with campaigns like these is not to actually root out spies - it's to get people to self censor because they're afraid that their neighbor is going to report them to the government. If everyone is afraid of saying any forbidden ideas, nothing "subversive" can spread because everyone lives in too much fear to spread it. Knowledge of this campaign is more important than the function of the campaign its…
It's kind of impressive to watch Xi continually double-down on disastrous policy. The memory of the Cultural Revolution is still there, and nobody wants to revisit those times. But after the disastrous Shanghai lockdowns, a lot of ordinary people realized that the government can just arbitrarily lock you up and destroy your ability to earn money / run your business. Young people who sacrificed their childhood to relentless studying only to find no jobs get tone-deaf messaging about "eating bitterness". People can only take so much. The Covid lockdowns turned out to be too much. But I think that many people, especially youth, are still pretty near too much. You can only pile on so much pressure before things explode, and Xi doesn't have Mao's charisma.
Re: Xi’s Security Obsession Turns Ordinary Citizens into Spy Hunters
#9Worth adding to the Evil Overlord List: When making decisions about my security forces, I will bear in mind the example of East Germany's supposedly all-knowing and all-powerful Stasi...and of how utterly useless they proved to be. Better to be accidentally killed by the Hero's comic-relief Sidekick than to have my Evil Empire collapse without the Hero having had to lift a finger.
Stasi was very efficient in suppression of German dissent.
East Germany collapsed on the account of persistent information inflow from the West (TV, radio, zero language barrier against West Germany), plus its ideological allies (the Warsaw Pact led by USSR) abandoning them. A country of 17 million isolated in a sea of non-friendly powers would be unviable. Once USSR dropped the Brezhnev Doctrine of Limited Sovereignty and Poland started introducing democracy, GDR was in a very tight spot.
China won't become isolated anytime soon, and there isn't really an efficient way to supply dissenting news to Chinese people in Chinese en masse. Unfortunately, I believe that Chinese secret service can stay efficient for a long, long time.
Re: Xi’s Security Obsession Turns Ordinary Citizens into Spy Hunters
#10Worth adding to the Evil Overlord List: When making decisions about my security forces, I will bear in mind the example of East Germany's supposedly all-knowing and all-powerful Stasi...and of how utterly useless they proved to be. Better to be accidentally killed by the Hero's comic-relief Sidekick than to have my Evil Empire collapse without the Hero having had to lift a finger.
Stasi was very efficient in suppression of German dissent. East Germany collapsed on the account of persistent information inflow from the West (TV, radio, zero language barrier against West Germany), plus its ideological allies (the Warsaw Pact led by USSR) abandoning them. A country of 17 million isolated in a sea of non-friendly powers would be unviable. Once USSR dropped the Brezhnev Doctrine of Limited Sovereign…
Particularly when Hollywood too is self-censoring w.r.t. China.