Following the arrest of a British parliamentary researcher on suspicion of spying for China, RANA MITTER spoke to Matt Elton about how surveillance culture has shaped Chinese society
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The nation’s 20th-century history directly informs its current attitude to global relations, argues Rana Mitter
The history of intelligence in the UK and China is different in many ways, and we can look at the historical contrast of what intelligence means in the two nations. Over the past 100 years or so, British intelligence services, both at home and abroad, have built up a wealth of experience, much of it during the Cold War. But spying is regulated by society: there are laws, regulations and strictures on what British spies can do.
In China, you have to look at the history of a particular institution: the Communist Party (CCP). Secrets are part of its means of consolidating power. When we think of how the CCP came to power in the early 20th century, a key moment is the Long March, which was the famous occasion in the 1930s when communist rebels marched thousands of miles through the interior of China to set up a base [and evade oncoming nationalist forces during the Chinese civil war]. But what’s not as well known is that, during that time in the countryside, they perfected techniques of intelligence-gathering and used them to create a surveillance society. This carried on in the 1940s as a means of not only gathering intelligence but also retraining people to understand they should confess and tell all to the party. The idea was that the party was bigger than them.
Today’s China is a very different sort of society: modernised and consumerist, with a growing middle class. But there’s still a belief that intelligence is not separate or even a secret part of how it is organised. It’s an integral part of government and seen as a good thing. That’s very different to what you find in liberal societies such as the United Kingdom.
Many people who work in Chinese government would be aware of the names of people such as Kang Sheng. He was basically Chairman Mao’s top intelligence operative, particularly during the time they were holed up in the countryside during the Second World War. Much of what he’d learned was under Stalin’s henchmen in Moscow in the 1930s. He transferred these tactics. But other figures, who were not as involved with torture and cruelty as Kang
