If I were to create a Venn Diagram of the most terrifying things to the Chinese Communist Party, it would look like this:
Foreign spies! Who are also Tibetan Falun Gong Pro-Democracy Lawyers.
But at least when it comes to foreign spies, the Communist Party has a plan to stop them. That’s why they’ve just celebrated China’s first-ever National Security Education Day! A day for people throughout China to have correct education thrust upon them by their benevolent overlords.
Now you might be wondering, isn’t that every day in China? Well, on this day, there were comics! Among the 100-plus promotional materials put out by China’s Ministry of State Security, there’s this lovely 16-panel comic called “Dangerous Love.”
And it’s captured the world’s imagination. It stars Little Li—an innocent Chinese girl—and David—a unassuming foreigner. You can tell he’s a foreigner by the big schnoz. But while at first you might assume David is merely your typical evil foreigner, he’s actually an even evilier evil foreigner.
And then the last two panels describe how providing state secrets to foreign forces violates China’s Counter-Espionage Law. And you can be sentenced to 5 to 10 years in prison. Happy National Security Education Day!
But the Chinese Communist Party isn’t just worried that their hapless citizens will accidentally leak state secrets. They’re worried that ginger-haired foreigners like David will steal Chinese people’s souls.
I mean, figuratively. They don’t want foreigners influencing the thoughts of the Chinese citizens they’ve spent decades...educating.
For example, in this article, a Quartz reporter interviewed 24-year-old May Xu. She said her foreign boyfriend once declared that “Mao is a dictator.” She didn’t like that, “because that makes Mao the equivalent to Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin, she explained.” Outrageous, right? As explained in this helpful internet graphic, Mao killed way more people than Hitler and Stalin.
Fortunately, May held fast to her soul, and broke up with that shameful foreigner. The Quartz article goes on to show how foreigners sometimes try to talk about sensitive political topics with their Chinese girlfriends. And as you can imagine, these foreign ideas like so-called democracy cause chaos in the carefully honed minds of innocent Chinese girls.
And the Communist Party isn’t just worried about foreign political influence. There’s religion, too. In mid-April, Chinese leader Xi Jinping said China “must resolutely guard against overseas infiltrations via religious means.”
But don’t worry, they’ve already got a plan to “direct the religious circle and their followers to enhance social harmony.” I think it’s this. And this.
So if you’re a foreigner, and you have ideas and/or beliefs, you might want to stay away from China. Because you know what the comic strip doesn’t show? What happens to David. I’m sure he’s fine.
So what do you think? Leave your dangerous ideas and/or beliefs below.
