Espionage involving China

Temstar said:

I haven't been keeping up with this news much in the last few days (until today) but I'm aware of it in the background.

The underlying issue is suicide by a high school student, he jumped off the school roof. Police have investigated this issue including viewing surveillance footage with his parents and found nothing nefarious. Seems to be mostly caused by emotional problem due to break up with girlfriend and bad relationship with his mother.

But prior to the police's final report settling the matter rumours were abound on Weibo and so on that it's a murder. Chengdu's education department were partly responsible for the situation because rather than being open and transparent about this they tried to play this matter down initially which gave opportunity for people to claim conspiracy like the principle had him killed because he took up an oversea scholarship position which the principle wanted for his own child etc.

Shortly after rumours started stirring other "odd" observance were found pointing to organised effort behind all the shit stirring:
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Here is someone discussing how to spread word about this issue via paper notes. Note the Chinese entry method - this person is using bopomofo which is a defunct predecessor to pinyin, only in use in places like Hong Kong, Taiwan and some overseas Chinese.

Then people showed up in protest in front of the school gate. It was notable that they only speak mandarin and not Chengdu dialect and all the Chengdu locals do not recognise any of them. They were also photoed uniformly holding up white carnation. White carnation is almost unheard of as a symbol of mourning in China. Instead it's thought if you are photoed holding up white carnation it's easier to sell the photo to CIA handler as you having been at the event. In Chinese culture you pretty much only do wreaths to honour the dead.

Looks like MSS is on the case now. They've apparently already made arrests both among the "protestors" as well as people involved at
Beijing News.

Must be that 300 million US dollarydoos at work right here.

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But What's the endgame here? How can people say - School bad so CCP must be toppled? There must be some logic to it? Or is it an attempt to sow mistrust on the public regarding the authorities?

If this is the case then even fish market quarrels can turn into Uprising against CCP.

Xsizor said:

But What's the endgame here? How can people say - School bad so CCP must be toppled? There must be some logic to it? Or is it an attempt to sow mistrust on the public regarding the authorities?

If this is the case then even fish market quarrels can turn into Uprising against CCP.

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Coloured revolution these days is an industry all in of itself, people do it as a job.

Now as you've correctly pointed out: popular support for CPC is at an all time high in China at the moment and there's hardly much opportunity for starting Coloured Revolution. Therefore all the more reason people in this line of work jump at every small opportunity that comes up - people gotta earn that sweet greenback somehow. They don't actually care if it has much chance of toppling CPC, they only care about that pay check. And with that 300 million budget there's plenty of pay to go around.

If you are interested in how this all works and you can understand Chinese here's a video I highly recommend by Xi Yazhou:

The Coloured Revolution industry actually works similar to idol band (AKB48, etc) industry.

plawolf said:

New American administration with new people coming into key positions all over the place. Would not surprise me if it’s some hot head young ‘up and comer’ getting promoted to a position beyond his ability launching this op thinking they can take down ‘big bad China’ all by themselves and make themselves an urban legend overnight.

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But now the MSS will know their tricks. Get ready for more AI tools to quickly spot these situations and find the instigators in real-time

Mr Su, our "peace loving journalist" with a mysterious past and much job experience have jumped onto this issue too. Will report back once I finish listening to it, he's bound to have lots of juicy details.

voyager1 said:

But now the MSS will know their tricks. Get ready for more AI tools to quickly spot these situations and find the instigators in real-time

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Rooting out instigators is necessary, but it is also necessary to be open and transparent when incidents like this happen. People tend to speculate when there is a dearth of information.

What happens in Chengdu stays in Chengdu. Even without foreign funding, people have a proclivity for reaching out to conspiracy theories and concocted tales of their own to fill the details and form a story.

Everyone knows how conspiracies and fake news arise. Someone tries to guess and connect dots and voilà!

Until we know more I am still hesitant to believe that foreign funding managed to trigger it (in this particular instance). Naive of me? Certainly.

Xsizor said:

What happens in Chengdu stays in Chengdu. Even without foreign funding, people have a proclivity for reaching out to conspiracy theories and concocted tales of their own to fill the details and form a story.

Everyone knows how conspiracies and fake news arise. Someone tries to guess and connect dots and voilà!

Until we know more I am still hesitant to believe that foreign funding managed to trigger it (in this particular instance). Naive of me? Certainly.

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Certainly a valid point you have made here.

IMO the biggest issue was the school trying to downplay it (cover up?)

The best medicine is always more transparency. The more you spin the story and try to keep it under closed doors the more the people get (understandably) anxious.

School's principal should be sacked for failing to properly and timely inform the parents and the public about the incident

voyager1 said:

Certainly a valid point you have made here.

IMO the biggest issue was the school trying to downplay it (cover up?)

The best medicine is always more transparency. The more you spin the story and try to keep it under closed doors the more the people get (understandably) anxious.

School's principal should be sacked for failing to properly and timely inform the parents and the public about the incident

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Schools always do that. A suicide near my dorm during freshman had a senior jumping down the 14 story building. He landed on the concrete pavement. Broad daylight.
(I moved into the guys room two years later).

The university didn't report it. Because a suicide is bad press and will shoo away many students in future.

Mr Su said he's not allowed to talk too much about this because the case is currently on going, but what he can reveal:

1. MSS managed to successfully intercept and trace an originating message organising this event. The IP traces to Taiwan. The message was picked up several hours before it emerged on Chinese internet and so MSS did have early warning
2. However this is not a Taiwan only op, the actual assets on the ground were cultivated by the Chengdu US Consulate General prior to them being kicked out last year. Since they left the cells have gone into hiding. They seem to be hungry for funding and to prove to their masters that they are still relevant, thus the speed of this operation
3. NGO was involved in organising, they managed to attract a "rent-a-crowd" among street performance subculture, you know rappers with lot of rebellious thoughts, that crowd. The organization was done via wechat
4. Part of the reason why this op was discovered so quickly was because it was done mostly via rent-a-crowd rather than professional full time Coloured Revolutionary. It was quite blatant and easily identified by Chengdu citizens as "smelling suspicious"

Both Mr Su and Mr Yang agrees that bad handling by the school allowed the opportunity for this event to occur. Trying to smooth things over and keep it on the down low like this is understandable and has a long tradition, but is now no longer suitable for this post-truth world. When you try to keep the media out you open up the space for conspiracy theories and bad actors.

Mr Su feels tactically, handling of such issues going forward isn't likely to improve dramatically in the short term. However at a strategic level both the state machinery and the People have become so familiar with Coloured Revolution tactics that such threats can how be easily recognised and countered. In this particular case as soon as people saw:

1. The "protesters" all holding up white carnation
2. People filming the protest with their phone
3. The "protesters" actively trying to stir up more trouble as soon as law enforcement showed up, before they even did anything

People can smell what this is. The Chinese now have herd immunity against Coloured Revolution.

Unreleased footage of this event exist where you can clearly identify who are the leaders (guys standing around not actually participating in the protest directly but watching closely). Also close associates of Consulate General have been photoed in the crowd too. Professionalism was sacificed for speed in this case, but it's clear there hasn't been any new tricks in the playbook.

Mr Su's advice to friends who might be in this line of business: don't try to cause any trouble during Gaokao. If you insists on interfering with Gaokao then he recommend you be on the look up for policemen standing around maintaining order and run to them once the parents catch what you're up to - the police will at least keep you breathing, parents will skin you alive if they catch you.

Xsizor said:

But What's the endgame here? How can people say - School bad so CCP must be toppled? There must be some logic to it? Or is it an attempt to sow mistrust on the public regarding the authorities?

If this is the case then even fish market quarrels can turn into Uprising against CCP.

Click to expand...

You are missing the point. This has absolutely nothing to do with the death of the poor student, just like how the Syrian war had fuck all to do with the (almost certainly mentally ill) street vendor who set himself on fire.

The colour revolution playbook is to hijack causes and issues that lots of people might care about to get them out on the street.

The ideal outcome is that the authorities panic and overreact with a brutal crackdown to turn grief into anger and confrontation and create a self-sustaining cycle of ever escalating violence until open insurrection and/or civil war breaks out.

If the authorities are restrained, then the CIA will push their foot soldiers into starting and escalating the violence to try to force the hand of the police, as was the case in Ukraine and probably Libya, Syria and lots of other places, but was only widely documented in HK.

This is basically straight out of the colour revolution playbook, which is what makes me think it’s someone new and inexperienced coming in thinking way too much of themselves.