“China is haunted by a secter”, Radio Austria’s China correspondent reported on July 11, “the specter of deflation”. The car market served as an example, with prices going down by the week, with inflation at zero percent, and producers’ prices at minus five percent. Price expectations that postpone purchases because cars will be cheaper one week later, and still cheaper two weeks later, put the breaks on demand, which makes profits drop, which makes wages drop, which makes demand drop further: “a downward spiral”, the correspondent explained. Add China’s family’s reduced savings (because of the pandemic), youth unemployment, interest rate cuts that don’t work anymore, and a general feeling of pessimism among the population. Investment by the state, on tick if need be, looked like the last resort.
You can see the state’s perplexity from the car market: China subsidizes the purchase of electric vehicles, thus contributing to the falling prices. The car manufacturers, on the other hand, have been told to stop their discount battle, but with little avail so far. Still, the subsidies continue, as if China wanted to drive its economy into the wall, in a cheap new car.
Die Ratlosigkeit des Staates kann man am Automarkt gut erkennen: China subventioniert den Kauf von Elektroautos und trägt damit zum Preisverfall bei. Die Autohersteller wurden hingegen zu einem Ende der Rabattschlacht gezwungen, bisher aber mit wenig Erfolg. Die staatlichen Subventionen laufen aber weiter. Es sieht fast so aus, als ob China seine Wirtschaft im billigen Neuwagen gegen die Wand fährt.
It’s all about dollars, CCTV coverage, July 4, 2023
As the promise of rising prosperity loses some of its luster, repression has to take its place: the spy that reported you may well be your neighbor, your wife, or your own child. The espionage law, in its second article, points out that
Anti-espionage work insists on the party central committee’s centralized and unified leadership, the overall concept of national security, joint open and secret work, the combination of specialized and mass-line work, insisting on proactive defense, punishment in accordance with the law, treatment of both the cause and the symptoms, and the strengthening of the national people’s defense line.
第二条 反间谍工作坚持党中央集中统一领导，坚持总体国家安全观，坚持公开工作与秘密工作相结合、专门工作与群众路线相结合，坚持积极防御、依法惩治、标本兼治，筑牢国家安全人民防线。
Apart from some typical cases of espionage, the anti-espionage law, states in the first paragraph of its fourth article that
Espionage as stated in this law refers to the following activities:
(1) Activities that endanger national security, carried out or prompted or financially aided by espionage organizations and their agents, or carried out by organizations or individuals in collusion with them.
本法所称间谍行为，是指下列行为：
（一）间谍组织及其代理人实施或者指使、资助他人实施，或者境内外机构、组织、个人与其相勾结实施的危害中华人民共和国国家安全的活动
[…]
According to article 13,
People’s governments at all levels and related departments should organize and develop anti-espionage vigilance propaganda and education, turn the anti-espionage law’s vigilance knowledge into educational, training, and law popularization content, and strengthen the entire people’s anti-espionage awareness and self-cultivation.
第十三条 各级人民政府和有关部门应当组织开展反间谍安全防范宣传教育，将反间谍安全防范知识纳入教育、培训、普法宣传内容，增强全民反间谍安全防范意识和国家安全素养。
I’ve tried my own bits of translation (taking the CPC folklore it contains into account), but there’s a full translation as well, done by China Law Translate and republished by the American Air University.
“China Daily”, on August 4, wrote that
some Western media outlets have recently expressed so-called “concerns” over the law, sensationalized its impact on investment and business environment, and some even maliciously misinterpreted it as “encouraging citizens to spy on each other”.
The paper quotes an official with the ministry of state security as saying that “companies and their employees who abide by Chinese law and provide normal commercial services are not bound by the article”. Which still leaves the question open what is considered abidance, and what isn’t.
What struck me is that in defense of its “anti-espionage law”, Chinese media rarely seem to emphasize that there is actually knowledge that needs to be protected, because the country is switching from mostly growth-driven to “high-quality” development (which would, obviously, presume that there is stuff foreign agents would want to steal in the first place).
Then again, intimidation is definitely one of the objectives, if not the main objective, of the “anti-spy law”.
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