China offers €68,500 reward to people who help catch spies

The Beijing government is keen to enlist the services of the general public into counterintelligence by offering cash bounties of up to 500,000 yuan (€68,500) for anyone who reports on foreign espionage activities.

According to the Beijing State Security Bureau, activities that count as espionage include working for foreign espionage organisations in any capacity, or accepting tasks from such shady groups, and the aim was to build "an iron Great Wall" to combat evil and guard against spooks.

Espionage activities also include incidents in which “overseas institutions, organisations or individuals obtain state secrets through their own prying”, according to the notice from the bureau.

The bureau told the Beijing Daily that it was easy to spot espionage as it "affects the public's daily life".

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"Obtaining state secrets" has a very broad definition in China and is often used as a charge against journalists reporting critical stories or activists who oppose the government.

In 2015, a Chinese court jailed the elderly journalist Gao Yu for seven years for leaking an internal Communist Party document to a foreign website. She was later released on medical grounds.

Academics and journalists

As part of a tighter system of controls under President Xi Jinping, there has also been closer scrutiny of foreign academics and journalists, and serious restrictions on the activities of overseas non-governmental organisations.

The bureau introduced the new reward scheme on Monday and it encourages the public to report any suspicious espionage activities, with any successful tip-offs netting the amateur sleuths cash payments of between 10,000 yuan (€1,370) and half a million yuan.

In April last year, China launched a poster campaign to mark national anti-espionage day called Dangerous Love which warned against handsome foreigners springing “honey traps” and seducing naive Chinese civil servants.

Local media reported how a fisherman surnamed Zhang in eastern China’s Jiangsu province found a “mysterious device with foreign writing on it” while fishing in the Yellow Sea. His friend Wan told the authorities and the local state security office decided it was a “device used for espionage” and rewarded the two men.

However, the Beijing bureau warned that people would be held legally responsible if they intentionally give inaccurate or misleading information.