China warned women to beware of handsome dangerous spies in a new comic called “Dangerous Love” to promote “National Security Education Day.”
In the state-sponsored comic, a red-headed spy named David attempts to court a little girl named Xiao Li, also known as Little Li. He gives her “compliments on her beauty, bouquets of roses, fancy dinners and romantic walks in the park.” From the Associated Press:
After Xiao Li provides David with secret internal documents from her job at a government propaganda office, the two are arrested. In one of the poster’s final panels, Xiao Li is shown sitting handcuffed before two policemen, who tell her that she has a “shallow understanding of secrecy for a state employee.”
“Besides special forces, the FBI, and the CIA, you also might think of Superman, Batman, Iron Man, Spiderman and Captain America [as spies],” claims the narrator. “But actually, even in foreign countries, espionage is just a small part of national security. Those who safeguard [their country’s] national security [against China] are not men with magic powers and chest muscles.”
The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress passed the National Security Law on July 1, 2015, which made April 15 the official National Security Education Day, spearheaded by a Tsinghua University professor. The government wants the day to highlight “cybersecurity and demands the establishment of a coordinated, efficient crisis management system.” From Xinhua:
In an instruction issued ahead of the national security education day, Chinese President Xi Jinping said the whole society should be mobilized to safeguard national security, consolidate the social basis for national security, and prevent and defuse security risks.
The National Security Law, which is vital for countering emerging threats at home and abroad, covers a wide spectrum of areas including defense, finance, science and technology, culture and religion.
Outer space activities and assets, as well as those at ocean depths and in polar regions, were also brought under the national security umbrella.
The Ministry of Justice distributed pamphlets, posters, and cartoons at “government organizations, schools, businesses and housing complexes.”
“No state will allow harmful culture instigating hate among racial and ethnic groups or other negative ideology to spread unchecked,” explained Li Zhong, a researcher at the Institute of Law of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). “We will continue dialogs on equal basis with others and enrich our culture and contribute to the interests of all mankind during this process.”