On the 35th anniversary of Hu Yaobang's death, China launched the "April 15 National Security Education Day" in a high-profile manner

Beijing - April 15 this year marks the 10th anniversary of China's overall national security, with commemorative activities being held across the country. It is also the 35th anniversary of the death of former Chinese Communist Party leader Hu Yaobang, but now a different picture is emerging in Chinese society. As China continues to implement its strategy of pan-national security, some foreign companies have withdrawn from China. China accuses the West of undermining economic development in the name of "national security", while Western society is also very secretive about China's espionage activities.

China's Ministry of State Security has previously emphasized "political security" and raised the national security risk level to a high level, emphasizing the special nature of the national security police and the department's "privileges." In this year's theme publicity day, it emphasized that there are a total of 20 areas of China's national security.

China's Ministry of State Security said that in law enforcement work, national security police show their people's police certificates, which shows their identity as law enforcement officers, thereby ensuring that law enforcement is standardized and civilized. It also shows that national security police are performing anti-espionage tasks in accordance with the law, and citizens should assist and cooperate with them.

China's high-profile emphasis on the importance of "national security" has also aroused concerns from Western countries. China's pan-national security issue has always been considered "vague and without standards", especially after China began to revise the Anti-Espionage Law and the promulgation of Article 23 of the Hong Kong Basic Law last year, Western countries have warned their citizens to be careful when traveling to China. The US State Department has always emphasized in its travel warnings for China that "the arbitrariness of local law enforcement will affect the US diplomatic services in the region."

Some young students from Hebei University told me that China welcomes foreigners and believes that there is no "strategy of excluding the West" in China.

According to an Associated Press survey, more and more American students are no longer willing to study in China.

On the eve of the "4.15 National Education Day", China's Ministry of State Security listed the "Top Ten Anti-Espionage Cases" on its WeChat official account. The first one was the case of Henry Lee during the Hong Kong anti-extradition movement in 2019; the second was the case of Canadian citizens Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, which caused tensions in Sino-Canada relations; the third was the case of Liang Chengyun, who was once regarded as a "patriotic overseas Chinese leader and spy"; the sixth was the case of Taiwanese scholar Zheng Yuqin; and the tenth was the case of consulting industry leader Kaisheng Rongying, which aroused strong concerns from foreign companies.

China is also constantly expanding its definition of national security. On Xidajie, Lianchi District, Baoding City, Hebei Province, a non-legacy cultural tour on the theme of "national security" was held today. Some college students from Baoding City wore Hanfu to show the importance of "cultural security" in national security.

In recent years, nationalism and patriotism have gradually become increasingly blurred in China, and have also profoundly affected the trend of China's private economy.

Not long ago, the "collective climax" of nationalists caused by Nongfu Spring made nationalists forget their own problems and national development by borrowing the collective activity of "patriotism". In fact, whether nationalists are patriotic or not is a matter of opinion. Superficial patriotism seems to allow them to quickly gain social recognition.

This dilemma also makes Chinese private entrepreneurs feel very dangerous and worried. In the eyes of many private entrepreneurs, this sense of crisis is difficult to completely eliminate, and the impact it brings is the reduction of market confidence and the fatal blow to the economy caused by political uncertainty.

At this year's exhibition on national security education in Baoding City, Hebei Province, the local government listed "cracking down on gangland crimes and evil forces" as one of the acts that endanger national security. In China, private entrepreneurs are arbitrarily subject to law enforcement and defined as "evil forces", which has caused considerable political impact.

Often, the execution of some national security is the responsibility of the local national security bureau, and now public security crimes are also considered as an act that endangers national security. In some local cities in China, there are family forces that are connected to the officialdom. This situation has been very common in the past decade.

Some families have even become powerful people who control local public resources, and have also become the treasury of local corrupt officials. Some Chinese people believe that the government's anti-corruption actions in the past decade have won trust, but have also increased the emergence of many political opponents, causing China to begin to adopt "pan-national security" actions internally.

A local official from Baoding, Hebei, said, "China has always handled matters related to national security in accordance with laws and regulations, including the crackdown on illegal religious and terrorist forces."

Similarly, for the younger generation in China, when voices against the government emerge, the measures taken by the government to crack down on and restrict them are far more advanced than the means used by China’s civil society movements thirty years ago. This is also an important manifestation of China’s society’s strengthening of its national security strategy.

Today, more than 30 years later, the political influence of former Chinese Communist Party leader Hu Yaobang continues to extend to the current participants of the White Paper Movement. For the younger generation of Chinese, the existence of information asymmetry gradually makes these young people realize the gap between them and the world.

China's Ministry of State Security also released a case through the official Xinhua News Agency in which a college student was recruited to join an "anti-China political party" by browsing websites using a "wall-climbing" tool, but the result was only a "warning". This is much lighter than the "detention and fine" of some Chinese netizens for spreading dissenting voices on the Internet and using the international Internet privately. Many Chinese people left comments under the news saying "Why just a warning?"

A student named Zhang from Hebei University said that even if the punishment for the college student was just a warning, such cases are just the beginning.

This has also prompted China's national security authorities to increase their control measures over young people being "politically exploited" and "politically tempted."

It is worth noting that China's local Internet public opinion management department, the Cyberspace Administration of China, will adopt a "recruitment" strategy for local "Internet celebrities", hoping to influence the trend of regional public opinion and reduce people's dissatisfaction with the government.

This includes giving these local "Internet celebrities" special "network traffic" support. And this traffic will be converted into high advertising fees. This situation is particularly common in some local cities in China. In China, where short videos are well developed, the income obtained by shooting videos is regarded as a "new Internet business model."

People don’t care about the political impact of short videos, but the economic income through short videos is the most concerned issue.

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