The Nation is Full of Cameras
[People News] Beijing, on a cold and dark morning, several men dressed in black stormed into your home, blindfolding you with a black cloth and forcing you into a van that drove into an unknown darkness. As you travel, you catch a glimpse of a familiar face among the escorting team through the gaps in the cloth—it's the woman who knocked on your door the night before, claiming to be in Beijing to petition for help and pleading for your assistance. In that moment, a chill runs down your spine. The 'seeker' who was so tearfully grateful to you just last night is now sitting smugly beside the police.
This is not a scene from a novel or a television drama, but the real-life experience of petitioner Yu Hong in September 2012.
Such betrayals are not isolated cases. In October 2017, Beijing rights activist Ma Bo received an urgent phone call: 'Someone is in danger, please come quickly!' Without hesitation, she rushed to the scene, only to find police cars that had already been deployed and the cold grip of handcuffs awaiting her.
An even more extreme ethical dilemma occurred in 2016: a person disguised as a persecuted religious member attempted to infiltrate an underground religious organization but was denied entry due to failure in identity verification. This individual then drew a knife and harmed themselves, threatening to kill their accompanying children to force the volunteers to open the door. Should they save a life or protect the organization? Faced with a countdown to a life-threatening situation, the volunteers chose to save the life—resulting in police arrests shortly thereafter.
Three incidents, three methods, all pointing to the same underlying truth: the Party has carefully examined the compassion, sense of responsibility, and empathy found in human nature, and has turned these admirable moral qualities into traps—achieving political goals while simultaneously eroding the kindness and trust that exist between individuals.
This technique of 'weaponizing' human conscience and trust is one of the key findings in The Dajiyuan' latest exclusive report, 'The Walls Have Ears—A Study of the CCP's Special Intelligence System,' which consists of over 100,000 words.
The term 'special intelligence,' which appears frequently throughout the report, is the official term used within the CCP's Public Security and National Security systems to refer to this type of secret human resources that operate outside formal structures. These individuals do not wear uniforms or receive public salaries; they present themselves as friends, fellow townsmen, colleagues, or those in need of assistance, while in reality, they secretly and continuously gather intelligence and carry out entrapments for the Party-state apparatus.
Spanning eleven chapters and including four professional appendices, 'The Walls Have Ears' systematically assembles fragmented evidence found in victims' recollections, court records, and foreign judicial documents into a comprehensive picture of how the CCP transforms ordinary citizens into invisible surveillance tools that the state can deploy at any moment.
Unveiling the reality of 'invisible policing': this is not merely an 'insider blacklist' but rather a national-level control mechanism.
Most people’s understanding of 'informants' or 'snitches' tends to be limited to the simplistic narrative of 'someone betraying a friend.'
The report intentionally sidesteps this moral judgment, offering a core diagnosis: the real concern is not a singular instance of moral failure, but rather a comprehensive system of organized training and replicable state control capabilities.
In the operational terminology of the Chinese Communist Party's political security defense (Guobao) and national security system, this process is known as 'Wujian,' which stands for identifying targets and establishing secret relationships.
The report provides a detailed analysis of the complete lifecycle of an ordinary citizen being transformed into an invisible tool: from identifying targets that meet 'proximity conditions' to understanding their economic circumstances, criminal vulnerabilities, or family weaknesses; from forcibly establishing a single-line control through fear or incentives to assigning investigation topics, maintaining single-line contact (where the informant only communicates with one designated contact, isolating each other, ensuring that if something goes wrong, the entire network remains unconnected), and conducting regular verifications, until the relationship becomes ineffective and is permanently 'dormant.'
This thorough analytical approach is what sets this report apart from typical 'exposé' articles: it refrains from rushing to deliver emotional moral judgments and instead provides the reader with a scalpel to dissect the totalitarian dark web.
Challenging common assumptions about secret rules: the most pronounced 'anti-Communist face' may actually be an informant for the Party-state.
The details revealed in the report challenge the public's everyday perceptions.
Counterintuitive point one: those who express the harshest criticisms online are not necessarily 'absolutely safe.' It is commonly believed that individuals who openly insult the highest leaders of the Communist Party online could never collaborate with security agencies. However, the report contradicts this assumption: for missions that require infiltrating highly vigilant dissent communities, a sufficiently sharp, radical, and seemingly 'irreconcilable' anti-Communist persona is precisely the 'pass' that security agencies grant in exchange for core trust.
Counterintuitive Point Two: Surprisingly, having served time in prison or facing severe disciplinary action is recognized within the industry as a 'gold plating' tactic. While imprisonment may appear to be the strongest evidence that someone 'could never be an insider,' the report cites public accounts from former public security investigators who explain that this practice is known in the industry as 'gold plating' and 'recycling.' Agencies may even fabricate a verifiable criminal record or allow informants to be arrested alongside co-defendants during a crackdown, serving time together. This establishes an unshakeable 'insider' identity in the eyes of co-defendants, and they then exploit the opportunity of detention and imprisonment to continue building relationships and gathering intelligence.
These details are not unfounded; their credibility stems from the traceable evidence chain meticulously outlined in the report: from Ye Fu's account of the 'Xiong Zhao Zheng Informant Case' to Zhao Wei's disclosures of coercive experiences during interviews with international organizations regarding the '709 Case'; from the real-name testimony of human rights lawyer Wang Yu to several recent indictments and judgments from U.S. federal courts.
Speaking with numbers: The true scale of the control network
How extensive is the CCP's secret human intelligence network? Two sets of official public figures cited in the report are particularly noteworthy.
First, the head of the Public Security Bureau in Kailu County, Inner Mongolia, revealed in a public interview in 2009 that all police officers and auxiliary police, regardless of their positions, are required to establish 20 informants in communities, villages, and industry units, while also developing at least 5 long-term informants (secret informants who provide intelligence) and 4 criminal informants (informants specifically cooperating in solving criminal cases). In this ordinary county alone, the public security agency was actually controlling over 12,000 informants.
Secondly, by the end of 2017, the 'Chaoyang Masses' registered in Chaoyang District, Beijing, had surpassed 140,000 individuals, with over 210,000 various leads submitted that same year.
The report emphasizes that these individuals should not be simplistically categorized as 'full-time agents.' Instead, this data reveals a complex, layered filing system and a demand-driven organizational logic: a vast social network (including grid workers and volunteer citizens) infiltrates various aspects of daily life, gathering extensive information, while specialized agencies focus on in-depth investigation and intelligence filtering.
The report highlights that the Party-state does not need to transform everyone into informants; it merely needs to ensure that ordinary citizens remain under its surveillance.
Spanning 76 years and multiple national judicial reviews: unveiling the Party-state's 'global stranglehold.'
The report's analysis extends beyond mainland China. Chapter Ten systematically examines transnational suppression and infiltration cases that have been resolved or are currently being adjudicated in courts across countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Sweden over the past two years. This includes the New York case involving the 'Fuzhou Overseas Police Station,' the case of Wang Shujun, who documented personal interactions in an electronic 'diary,' and the case of Tang Yuanjun, who was compelled to cooperate due to his prolonged inability to visit his critically ill mother.
The distinctive value of these transnational cases lies in their 'judicial visibility': domestic covert operations are often concealed within official records, leaving victims to reconstruct their experiences from fragmented memories. In contrast, Western criminal procedures facilitate the retrieval of electronic devices, shared accounts, bank transfers, wiretaps, and cross-examinations in court, allowing the previously invisible chain of 'real identity—secret instructions—relationship proximity—information reporting—Party-state benefits' to be verified in a comprehensive manner for the first time.
For Chinese scholars, engineers, students, and community leaders living abroad, this report serves not only as a revelation of geopolitical realities but also as a protective guide regarding personal safety.
The Antidote to Fear: A Reference Book for Ongoing Consultation
As noted by Li Linyi, a senior commentator at Dajiyuan, the significance of this extensive report for those interested in the political and intelligence studies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) extends beyond merely uncovering the truth; it also possesses unmatched normative and practical qualities. The report includes four appendices that form the most robust database available in similar Chinese research:
Appendix One (Core Cases and Action Chain Quick Reference Table): A matrix that categorizes dozens of historical and contemporary cases by 'social entry - key actions - forced takeover - main consequences';
Appendix Two (Timeline of Systems and Cases from 1949 to 2026): A thorough account of the 76-year evolution of the special situation system, tracing its development from the covert operations of revolutionary parties to modern political security infrastructure;
Appendix Three (Mechanisms and Chapter Matrix): A tool that helps researchers quickly identify where specific control measures are analyzed within the report;
Appendix Four (Terminology and Case Status Quick Reference): A clear distinction between judicial statuses such as 'accused', 'pleaded guilty', 'conviction pending sentencing', and 'final judgment', eliminating the common issues found in 'exposé' formats that blur the lines between facts and accusations.
Conclusion
Yu Hong, Ma Bo, and the tearful religious volunteer who opened the door all suffered without leaving any official record of 'state involvement.' This report serves to remind society of a crucial point: the most profound damage caused by secret police often goes unrecorded in legal judgments. The most frightening outcome is the transformation of society into a desert characterized by mutual suspicion and individual fear.
When those seeking assistance are suspected of being bait, when those offering help fear their goodwill may be weaponized, and when barriers arise between friends and colleagues, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) doesn't even need to deploy police cars—the society has already engaged in self-censorship and contraction out of fear.
Li Linyi noted that this exclusive report from The Dajiyuan aims to dismantle the veil of mystery and fear. The darkness of totalitarian regimes is most afraid of light; understanding every gear and logic of this oppressive machine is not only about exposing evil but also represents the first step toward rebuilding social trust and breaking through the towering walls of fear.
(Report by Dajiyuan reporter Leng Feng)
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