Fang Lian Talks: The Truth About the Nationwide Spy Hunt! From Ordinary People to Zhang Youxia! How Xi Jinping Uses the Label of "Spy" to Discipline Chinese People, Harvest Foreigners, and Suppress Dissenters?

This video explores the truth behind the CCP's propaganda of "nationwide spy hunting" in recent years. The video points out that the spy cases publicized by the CCP are mainly concentrated in three categories: insiders, foreigners, and overseas Chinese. Among them, insider cases are often accused of selling secrets on the grounds of "insufficient ability" or "unfair treatment," such as the Huang Yu case, Liu Mou case, and Wei Mou case. The article also mentions that Rocket Force Commander Li Yuchao and Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission Zhang Youxia were accused of leaking secrets, suggesting this might be related to political struggles. Regarding arrested foreigners (such as the "Two Michaels" in the Meng Wanzhou incident, and the Cheng Enfu couple) and overseas Chinese (such as Li Yanhe, Gui Minhai, and Yuan Keqin), the video argues that they are mostly victims of diplomatic struggles or targets of political suppression, rather than actual spies. The video concludes by analyzing that the CCP's spy hunting aims to discipline the public and suppress dissidents, rather than genuinely catching spies, and points out that the CCP's infiltration abroad far exceeds foreign infiltration in China.

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The CCP has been hyping up the issue of hunting down foreign forces and spies for several years. Spies and foreign forces have now become a catch-all term. But are there really so many spies and foreign forces in China? And what exactly are these foreign forces and spies like? Hello everyone, I'm Teacher Li is not your Teacher. In this episode, we will take a look at what the spies and foreign forces in the CCP's narrative are like, by examining the spy cases that the CCP has recently claimed to have apprehended.

In recent years, the CCP has been very aggressive in its propaganda about hunting spies, making it seem as if everyone is at risk of encountering spies. However, in reality, spies are something completely unrelated to ordinary people in China. According to information released by the CCP, there are actually only three categories of people that the CCP has apprehended as spies: insiders, foreigners, and overseas Chinese.

Let's first look at the first category, insiders. This is the category with the largest number of cases publicized by the CCP. When the Anti-Espionage Law was first released, the CCP launched a case known as the Huang Yu case in response to the law. According to the CCP's description, Huang Yu was born in 1974 and majored in computer science, graduating in 1997. After graduation, he joined a so-called top-secret technology institution in China as a researcher. This institution was engaged in research related to military cryptography. According to this description, born in 1974 and graduating in 1997, Huang Yu likely obtained a master's degree. After graduating with a master's in computer science at the age of 23, he joined a research institute engaged in cryptography research. After working there for about seven years, Huang Yu resigned in 2004. As for the reason for his resignation, according to official descriptions, it was because Huang Yu's abilities were insufficient and he was not suitable for R&D, and he was eventually eliminated through a bottom-ranking process due to his unsuitability for R&D. At the same time, after being eliminated, Huang Yu was narrow-minded and believed that his elimination was not due to his abilities but due to his leader's exclusion of him. Therefore, out of a desire for revenge, Huang Yu decided to start selling classified information and sold the core secrets he possessed to foreign forces. What is quite absurd is that according to relevant CCP news reports, Huang Yu relied on the information he collected during his previous employment to continuously sell secrets for ten years, and through these secrets, he ultimately received a reward of 700,000 US dollars.

I can't tell the difference immediately. How could a grassroots employee, on the verge of being fired and lacking any technical skills, obtain so much top-secret information and sell it for $700,000? Is this story fake, are foreign forces foolish, or is this institution's security mechanism so terrible that even a person who has been ostracized can pry loose so much classified information? Furthermore, besides this one point of contention, this story has many other flaws. For example, this classified research institute is clearly a state-affiliated unit. In that case, even if Huang Yu didn't have a formal position and was a temporary worker, in 2004, there wouldn't have been a system of last-place elimination. Last-place elimination is simply not applicable to such research institutes, let alone the fact that Huang Yu likely had a formal position. Of course, Huang Yu's case might be real, but the actual circumstances, the reasons for his betrayal, might be very different from what the CCP claims. Ah, of course, that's not the key point. Cases modeled after Huang Yu's – involving internal personnel, low moral character, inability to resist temptation, and being bought off by foreign forces – quickly became typical cases for the CCP's crackdown on spies. Subsequently, the CCP reported many similar cases, almost all of which were replicas of Huang Yu's case. For instance, in early 2025, the Ministry of State Security mentioned an assistant engineer, Liu, from a research unit. Because he felt he had been treated unfairly, believed he was not being recognized or promoted, and was dissatisfied with his leaders and the unit, he chose to resign. Before leaving, he copied a large amount of classified information about China's stealth fighter jets and sold it to foreign forces. Later, they also mentioned a staff member, Wei, from a research institute affiliated with a military industrial group who was allegedly turned. He, too, had long been unable to get promoted and was disappointed with his unit, making him vulnerable. While walking in a park, he was allegedly recruited by foreign personnel and subsequently stole multiple Chinese military secrets, and so on. A quick search online for such cases yields about a dozen or twenty.

Of course, theoretically, in addition to these cases announced by the Ministry of State Security, two particularly typical figures have also joined this pattern. These are the commander of the Rocket Force, Li Yuchao, and the Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, Zhang Youxia. In 2023, Li Yuchao, the commander of the Rocket Force, was purged. The usual reason for his purge was a report on the Rocket Force released by the US military, which detailed the deployment of China's entire Rocket Force and missile launch silos. Don't let the name

Of course, some people might say here that arresting these two Michaels was possibly to find some hostages, but this does not mean that these two Michaels were not wronged or were not used. What if the CCP had been watching them for a long time? And only chose to net them to deal with the Meng Wanzhou incident? In fact, whether these two Michaels were wronged or not, the answer is obvious. Although the CCP did not later disclose the details of the case, Canada did disclose them, and in a rather undignified manner. Michael Spavor, one of the two Michaels, sued the Canadian government and his former cellmate, Meng Hongwei, after returning to Canada. The reason for the lawsuit was that Spavor believed Meng Hongwei had used him and had not informed him of this use, which led to Spavor's mistake. Meng Hongwei had previously worked at the Canadian Embassy in China, collecting information for Canada, while Spavor was a Canadian fluent in Korean who had lived in North Korea for over twenty years. At the same time, Spavor was not an ordinary foreigner living in North Korea; he held a very high position and often met with North Korea's great sun, Kim Jong Un. The visit of famous basketball star Dennis Rodman to North Korea was also facilitated by Spavor. Meng Hongwei, on the other hand, would often find Spavor for drinks and bragging when Spavor was on business trips to China, discussing his experiences in North Korea and reporting them to the Canadian government. This operation became the key evidence for the CCP to label Spavor as a spy. After returning to Canada, Spavor sued the Canadian government, demanding compensation on the grounds that the Canadian government had obtained intelligence without his knowledge, leading to his imprisonment. Ultimately, the Canadian government compensated Spavor with 7 million Canadian dollars, about 35 million RMB, and reached a settlement with him. So, did Spavor and Meng Hongwei engage in espionage activities? One can only say they dabbled a bit. Meng Hongwei learned some North Korean intelligence by bragging, and he only learned about North Korea, which had nothing to do with China. This can be considered part of a diplomat's job; diplomats can't know nothing, can they? Looking back, it seems that the two Michaels actually did nothing significant, but were caught in the crossfire because of Meng Wanzhou's arrest and were labeled as spies to satisfy some political demands of the CCP.

Of course, the case of the two Michaels is not isolated; it has basically become a template for the CCP's arrest of foreign spies, especially for Western countries. For example, in 2014, the Canadian couple, the Kangs, who ran a coffee shop in the border city of Dandong between China and North Korea, were arrested by Chinese state security on suspicion of stealing intelligence and endangering national security. This arrest was actually retaliation for Canada's arrest of Chinese-Canadian businessman Su Bin. Su Bin was arrested by the Canadian government for colluding with Chinese military hackers to infiltrate U.S. defense contractors like Boeing and steal data on the F-22 and F-35. The timeline of the Kang couple's arrest and release was basically consistent with that of Su Bin.

With the enactment of the Anti-Espionage Law, the CCP's methods of taking hostages have become significantly more diversified. Previously, when the CCP faced the arrest of its intelligence personnel, it could only take drug traffickers from those countries as hostages to confront foreign governments. However, with the Anti-Espionage Law, this method has become much more flexible. Of course, besides using some people as hostages for prisoner exchanges, China sometimes arrests them simply to retaliate against certain countries. The most typical unfortunate target in this regard is Taiwan. In 2020, Tsai Ing-wen won the general election and began her second term. Compared to her first term, Tsai Ing-wen in her second term was significantly tougher on the CCP, and her determination for independence was also more resolute. In retaliation for Tsai Ing-wen's toughness, a special operation called "Thunder 2020" to arrest Taiwanese spies was launched in October 2020. According to the CCP, this operation cracked down on over a hundred cases of Taiwanese spies stealing secrets. Subsequently, to publicize the results, "Focus Interview" dedicated three consecutive episodes on Taiwan's National Day, the Double Tenth Festival, to showcase four Taiwanese individuals confessing on television to promote "Thunder 2020." However, despite the grand fanfare, these confession programs are quite comical upon closer inspection. For example, one of the individuals who confessed, Li Mengju, was arrested by Shenzhen customs when she traveled from China to Hong Kong during the anti-extradition bill protests because her luggage had a Hong Kong cheering tag. At the same time of her arrest, Li Mengju's mobile phone was searched, and state security found many photos of Shenzhen armed police gathering on her phone. Ultimately, Li Mengju was accused of serving Taiwan independence forces, plotting to advance Hong Kong independence, and was sentenced to one year and ten months in prison.

Doesn't this all sound like a joke? The Hong Kong anti-extradition bill protests were in 2019, not 1919. We have the internet and cloud storage now. Do you think spies dedicated to inciting Hong Kong independence would take photos and store them on their phones, or carry a "Hong Kong Jia You" (Hong Kong, add oil!) banner in their luggage when leaving the country? Are they afraid the Ministry of State Security (MSS) wouldn't catch them? Are these spies afraid they aren't exposing themselves fast enough? This clearly shows the MSS apprehended a Taiwanese individual who genuinely supported Hong Kong's democracy and protests. Coincidentally, this Taiwanese person had taken some photos without police presence, possibly intending to warn Hong Kongers or post them online. This then became a feat for the Chinese MSS, who labeled them as foreign agents and spies. Another mismatched case is that of Taiwanese national Cheng Yu-ching. According to the CCP's narrative, Cheng Yu-ching studied for his doctorate at Charles University in the Czech Republic and stayed on to teach there. During his studies, he outwardly supported China's "Belt and Road" initiative in the Czech Republic. However, in private, he was allegedly instructed by Lee Yu-peng, the representative of Taiwan's office in the Czech Republic, to spy on CCP "Belt and Road" intelligence and to denigrate and disrupt the initiative. But if you look closely at this program, you'll find a bunch of issues. Firstly, the representative of Taiwan's office in the Czech Republic has never been named Lee Yu-peng, and no representative in history has held that name. Some might argue that there could be many representatives. Taiwan, unlike many normal countries, faces recognition issues from the CCP in many nations. Therefore, Taiwan typically doesn't have embassies abroad, only representative offices. In this context, the head of a representative office is essentially equivalent to an ambassador residing in a country; there aren't usually multiple representatives simultaneously. Who the representative is at any given time is fully verifiable. Furthermore, the CCP has misstated Cheng Yu-ching's position. The CCP claims Cheng Yu-ching is a professor at Charles University, but his actual position is merely a researcher. As for what Cheng Yu-ching actually did, the CCP doesn't specify in the video. A quarter of the accusations against Cheng Yu-ching involve him publishing three articles criticizing China's "Belt and Road" policy among the Chinese diaspora, which is quite comical. This case involving Cheng Yu-ching is either fabricated or a product of the MSS exaggerating its achievements and falsifying battle records. Cheng Yu-ching might have interacted with some staff at Taiwan's office in the Czech Republic, but likely only at a grassroots level. Cheng Yu-ching himself is a minor figure, and his role has been completely exaggerated. Of course, the "Thunderbolt Action" in 2020 was an ongoing operation. By 2024, after Lai Ching-te took office, the "Thunderbolt Action" was relaunched, claiming over a thousand infiltration cases had been cracked. However, Taiwan stated they had no understanding of what the CCP was talking about and couldn't find a thousand Taiwanese people arrested by China. I suspect that if Lai Ching-te wins the presidential election again in 2028, the number of cases cracked by the "Thunderbolt Action" will rise again. Of course, if KMT's Cheng Wen-tsan wins the election, I imagine the "Thunderbolt 2028" will cease to exist.

Meanwhile, the Japanese have faced similar treatment during this period. When Sino-Japanese relations are good, there are no so-called Japanese spies. But when relations sour, a few Japanese spies are immediately paraded as trophies. Since the Counter-Espionage Law was enacted in 2014, nearly twenty Japanese spies have been arrested.

Of course, for foreigners, and even Taiwanese and Japanese people, they are often arrested to take them hostage or to make political demands. For the third category, overseas Chinese, the charge of espionage by foreign forces becomes a hat that can be arbitrarily placed on their heads if the authorities want to arrest them but cannot find a reason. A typical case is Li Yanhe, nicknamed "Fu Cha" (Review). Li Yanhe was born in Liaoning, Northeast China, in 1971. He married a Taiwanese in 2005 and moved to Taiwan in 2009. Later, Fu Cha founded the Eight Banners Publishing House in Taiwan and hosted the program "Looking at China This Way." Eight Banners Publishing House published many books critical of the CCP, and Fu Cha also criticized the CCP multiple times on the program. Later, Fu Cha returned to Shanghai in 2020 to cancel his Chinese nationality. However, upon arrival in Shanghai, he was arrested by the Shanghai State Security Bureau for endangering national security and was eventually sentenced to three years in prison. Although Fu Cha was finally released in May 2026, he is still restricted from leaving the country. Another more typical representative is Hokkaido University professor Yuan Keqin. Yuan Keqin was born in Changchun, Jilin, in 1955. He went to Japan to study in 1984 and later taught at Hokkaido University of Education for more than 20 years. He has long been engaged in research on the history of Sino-Japanese relations. In 2019, he was arrested by state security while returning to China to attend a funeral. In 2024, he was sentenced to six years in prison for violating the Anti-Espionage Law. You might ask, how can researching Sino-Japanese history violate the Anti-Espionage Law? In fact, we can probably guess the reason. I searched for Yuan Keqin's related research. He mainly studied Sino-Japanese history, focusing on the period from Japan's surrender in 1945 to the establishment of diplomatic relations between Japan and Taiwan in 1952. This period must have involved the interactions of the US, China, Taiwan, and Japan, as well as the history of the Communist Party. Perhaps some of his historical views or certain viewpoints of Yuan Keqin damaged the glorious and great image of the CCP, which ultimately led to Yuan Keqin's arrest. Of course, there are many similar cases to Yuan Keqin, such as Chen Lei, a former host of China Global Television Network in Australia, and Li Kai, a Chinese-American. Of course, the most notorious and typical among them is the Gui Minhai case. Gui Minhai operated the Causeway Bay Books in Hong Kong, which contained a large number of books critical of the Communist Party, as well as the book "Xi Jinping and His Six Women," which enraged Xi Jinping and led to his crackdown on Hong Kong. Of course, Gui Minhai was actually not a Chinese citizen long ago. He had long ago emigrated to Sweden and obtained Swedish citizenship. However, after Xi Jinping's rage, Gui Minhai, holding Swedish citizenship and having renounced Chinese nationality, was forcibly kidnapped from Thailand back to China by the CCP while he was traveling in Thailand. After returning to China, Gui Minhai was forcibly reinstated as a Chinese citizen. Ultimately, Gui Minhai was sentenced to ten years in prison for illegally providing intelligence to overseas entities. Gui Minhai's case makes me afraid to travel to Thailand now; I only dare to travel to democratic, developed, and law-based countries. These are probably the types of spies announced by the CCP. In fact, if we look at all the spies announced by the CCP, they are either high-ranking officials with positions in the system or researchers who can access various confidential information. In short, they are people in government buildings. Otherwise, they are some noble foreigners or overseas Chinese, and ordinary people are simply not targeted. Of course, if you say whether state security has accused ordinary people of being spies, yes, but they are all nameless or without specific cases. For example, the Ministry of State Security said that a high school student, Xiao Wu, was tempted by a part-time job to photograph military equipment, and a junior high school student, Xiao Liu, was tricked into taking photos of docks and airports. These cases are clearly fabricated to fool the public. I even think that not only ordinary people, but among the three categories of spies listed by state security – overseas Chinese, foreigners, and internal personnel – only one category is truly spies, and that is internal personnel. Because we can find that among the cases announced by state security, only internal personnel are sentenced particularly heavily. According to the CCP's own account, Huang Yu, the main culprit in the earliest case of leaking secrets, was eventually sentenced to death, and his wife and brother-in-law were also sentenced to five and three years respectively for negligent disclosure of state secrets. In 2025, engineer Liu, who allegedly leaked secrets about the CCP's fighter jets, was also sentenced to death. Wei, who was lured in a park by someone from a research institute affiliated with a certain military industrial group mentioned above, was sentenced to life imprisonment. In these cases, it is difficult to find anyone sentenced to less than 15 years; however, in the espionage cases of overseas Chinese, Taiwanese, and foreigners, you rarely find spies sentenced to more than ten years, let alone death sentences. The superior who instigated others to become spies is sentenced to less than ten years, which is clearly unreasonable. Such sentencing only indicates that these spies are fake spies.

This is also normal. Firstly, this era is no longer the era of US-Soviet rivalry. The United States and Japan, of course, hope for China to be democratic, but they will not actively spend energy trying to change China's political system. They feel it is a waste of money and ineffective. Even Taiwan is the same. Taiwan has long lost the concept of counter-attacking the mainland, and the Taiwanese government has no intention of inciting Chinese people to rebel or spending money to help Chinese people achieve democracy. Without such plans or intentions, at most they will focus on human rights issues, such as labor rights. Who would instigate subversion in China? As for technological secrets, China doesn't have much good technology to steal, so the number of spies is bound to be not that large. Where are there so many imaginary enemies? The only thing that is worth stealing or worthy of being stolen from China is related to the military. Foreigners need to know the development level of the Chinese military and whether there is a possibility of attacking Taiwan. Therefore, we also find that the individuals involved in leaking secrets are mainly concentrated among insiders, and specifically among insiders of the military. After all, only they have the core data that foreigners want. Of course, I believe that even if there are insiders leaking secrets, the scope is clearly exaggerated by the CCP. The leakage of secrets by Zhang Youxia and Lü Yuchao, for example, is clearly unreasonable. The claim that Zhang Youxia leaked nuclear secrets to the US can at best be interpreted as Zhang Youxia exchanging some information with some high-level US military officials, and only then would it be reasonable. As the second-in-command of the PLA, what necessity does Zhang Youxia have to collude with the US? What benefits can he gain from colluding with the US? Besides the US promising to support Zhang Youxia as General Secretary, what else can the US provide Zhang Youxia? It is clearly unrealistic to say that Zhang Youxia colluded with the US.

Of course, we can also find that the spies ultimately propagandized by the CCP and the spies actually arrested are not the same group. The actual spies are some grassroots officials and researchers within the CCP, people we don't often come into contact with. However, the CCP often likes to portray spies as people we encounter in our daily lives, as various netizens we see online, and as high-ranking officials who oppose Xi Jinping. The reason for this is fundamentally because the CCP's arrest of spies is not for the purpose of catching spies at all, but to use the name of catching spies to help Xi Jinping eliminate his enemies. For example, the way Zhang Youxia was labeled as a spy colluding with the US reminds me of Mao Zedong's story of overthrowing Liu Shaoqi. To overthrow Liu Shaoqi, Mao Zedong thoroughly discredited him by smearing Liu Shaoqi's wife, Wang Guangmei, as a high-level agent of the US CIA, and accusing Zhang Youxia of being a traitor colluding with the US. This is very similar to smearing Wang Guangmei as a high-level CIA agent. Doing so is clearly to better arrest Zhang Youxia and prevent the possibility of mutiny during the arrest. When Zhang Youxia becomes Xi Jinping's enemy, he automatically becomes a spy. The promotion of a spy-catching atmosphere among the public is actually to hope that the ignorant masses will interpret some criticisms of the CCP and Xi Jinping as espionage activities. When you criticize the CCP or Xi Jinping, you automatically become a spy. Fortunately, people are no longer interested in this kind of spy narrative or foreign forces narrative. The movie "Catching Spies" recently had a box office explosion. An earlier movie about catching spies, "Silent Awakening," which featured many stars, could not even recoup its costs. Earlier today, an article claiming that even lying flat was instigated by foreign forces was mocked across the internet. More and more people do not accept the narrative of foreign forces, and compared to foreign forces and spies active in China, the spies sent out by the CCP and foreign forces engaged overseas are far more numerous than those sent by foreign countries to China. In this episode, I hope everyone will give it a lot of likes. If there are many likes, I will do a reverse episode next time, to catch some foreign propaganda and see how the CCP, which is always shouting about catching spies, infiltrates overseas and frantically sends spies abroad. Finally, thank you for watching today's program. I am Toronto Fang Lian. I hope everyone will like and support my videos, as this can increase YouTube's recommendation weight for me. See you in the next episode.