also, they tipped off rambo

(Why, yes, I am experiencing a burst of energy after weeks of being sick, thank you for asking.)

So Bruce Franklin's M.I.A: Mythmaking in America, which is a very good book, has a fascinating but sadly brief mention that in 1979-1980, Chinese intelligence agents in Southeast Asia deliberately spread stories of live US POWs in order to damage US-Vietnamese relations.  Unfortunately the only reference is a Vietnamese govenment pamphlet. So, a) anyone heard any mention of this elsewhere, and b) does it sound credible? It does to me, save that I wonder how the Chinese, hardly the most culturally astute nation at the time, would have picked up on the American POW obsession.

Comments

[Phil Mead]

"hardly the most culturally astute nation at the time, would have picked up on the American POW obsession"

Don't you think the top political cadres might have watched American TV? Surely Zhou Enlai was more 'culturally astute' than his comrades? He would have been preparing for Nixon's visit in 1972 and he was that rare sort of politcian who was likely to do his cultural "due diligence" beforehand.

That aside, I do very much enjoy your tongue-in-cheek posts about China. Keep up the great work!

[Alex]

Because the US and China, starting in the mid-70s, had an agreement on intelligence cooperation against the USSR, and people from various TLAs were using a station out west to grab electronic intelligence of various kinds. They could well have picked up on the issue from the general rightwing/spook/ex-military culture.

The Chinese were presumably concerned about the US rowing back on the rapprochement with China in order to keep detente with the USSR on the road. Vietnam was intensely pro-Soviet at the time, no wonder as they were fighting a war with China and with Chinese proxies.

[JamesP]

Ah, that's very useful to know Alex, cheers. Have you got a decent source on the intelligence cooperation, by any chance? You're spot on with the motivation, by the way; there's a strong school of thought that sees the invasion of Vietnam as essentially targeted at the Soviets.

[Alex]

Off the top of my head, and out of my library, The Wizards of Langley covers the technical aspects. Aldrich's GCHQ takes note very briefly, IIRC. Raymond L. Garthoff's Detente and Confrontation (really excellent book on Nixonian foreign policy) is fuller.

[johnf]

jamie

On your thread a couple of weeks ago about Chen Guangcheng's incarceration being a nice little earner for lots of locals, this expands your idea:

Watching dissidents is a booming business in China

http://news.yahoo.com/watching-dissidents-booming-business-china-140236692.html

[Phil]

Ugh. You wouldn't think anyone would try to fit that story into an "old Maoist Red China=bad, new capitalist Red China=good" frame, but how wrong you would be.

In Mao Zedong's radical communist heyday, colleagues, neighbors and family members snitched on suspected enemies of the revolution. Free-market reforms broke the totalitarian grip and gave people incentive to leave farms and state jobs for work in booming cities and industrial zones. Private lives and private wealth blossomed, creating less reason for snooping.
...
the money sometimes is called "stability preservation funds" for the overriding priority the government now puts on control. As long as trouble is quelled, Beijing doesn't seem to mind how this money is spent. It's proving a growth opportunity for cash-strapped local governments and small-time enforcers.

Emph. added.

Things are much better these days: it's not repression, it's control - and the government isn't actually doing it, it's just turning a blind eye to what the local jobsworths get up to. Those wacky foreigners.

[ajay]

johnf: very interesting piece. I'm just doing the multiplication now: 1.3 million people in the targeted population, eight watchers per person at $16 a day, that's... almost 12 million people involved in the project (watchers and watchees) at $166 million a day, or $60 billion a year.
(Plus the salaries of the watchees, who are apparently not supposed to do any work.)

$60 billion a year! More than half the total budget of the PLA! Surely some mistake.

[JamesP]

Not necessarily; the "stability maintenance" budget is widely reported to be higher than the defense budget. And the PLA's official budget is probably lower than reality.

[ajay]

Blimey. And I wasn't even counting the budget for all the people who supervise the watchers, sign off their expenses, read their reports, provide them with free cigarettes, etc. If you reckon that every ten watchers - or every watchee - has a single case officer, and there's a whole supervisory structure on top of them, that's got to be another 1.5 million people.

On the other hand, the article suggests that it's providing a valuable social service by giving gym teachers an incentive not to be gym teachers.