Dashing foreigner ‘David’ tempts hapless state worker ‘Little Li’ into handing over state secrets in cartoon posters put on display by government

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

China has marked “National Security Education Day” with a poster warning young female government workers about dating handsome foreigners who could turn out to be spies.

China lashes out at US after claims Beijing is deploying ‘covert agents’ Read more

A 16-panel cartoon poster entitled Dangerous Love, tells the story of an attractive young Chinese civil servant nicknamed Xiao Li, or Little Li, who meets a red-headed foreign man at a dinner party and starts a relationship.

The man, David, claims to be a visiting scholar but actually is a foreign spy who butters Xiao Li up with compliments on her beauty, bouquets of roses, fancy dinners and romantic walks in the park.

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”.

The poster has appeared on local governments’ public bulletin boards, targeting mainly rank-and-file state employees.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The ‘Dangerous Love’ story features state worker ‘Little Li’ being buttered up by foreigner ‘David’ and eventually handing over official secrets’. Photograph: Ng Han Guan/AP

A Beijing district government said in a statement that it would display the poster to educate its employees about keeping classified information confidential and reporting to state security agencies if they spot any spying activity. It said it would familiarize employees with ways to counter espionage.

The central government’s inaugural “National Security Education Day” was meant to make people aware about security problems in China, and was marked by speeches and the distribution of materials.