Job Discussion Forums

Yu · Joined: 06 Mar 2003 Posts: 1219 Location: Shanghai

I dont know about the FTs here, I only talk to a few of them and they are surely not the spies.
There was one guy last year who was a chinese guy who just always seemed to know where the students were and how to get ahold of them.... I used to affectionately call him the spy because he knew where evrybody was all the time. I did not know his name so I really called him the spy.

TravellingAround · Joined: 12 Nov 2006 Posts: 423

Leon Purvis · Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2007 5:10 am Post subject:

There was a guy in my apartment building who picked through people's garbage. He even OFFERED to take out my garbage for me! A special four-flight walk downstairs!

It makes me wonder about some of the people who come to China.

profM · Joined: 18 Jun 2005 Posts: 481 Location: in political exile

The FBI used to pick through garbage in the 60's as part of it COINTELPRO activities. Supposedly, it helps them find out things about dissidents or even spies. A pretty famous 60's freak name Alan Weberman identified the FBI picking though his garbage and reported it on WBAI radio in N.Y.C.

The CIA asks the 95% of applicants for jobs with it, who are initially not unconditionally accepted as trainees, to see if they can get some foreign experience. There are thousands, even tens of thousands of such CIA wannabees in various foreign travel patterns. Becoming an FT could be a real natural opportunity for dozens, even hundreds, of wannabe CIA agents. If a wannabe can add agitating activities or some form of pseudo recruitment activities or some kind of data collection about expats or Chinese or facilities, even if such collection may not be directly relevant to any immediate or even any foreseeable real intelligence concerns, he or she may get extra points added onto her foreign experience. Persons with a persistent deep desire to be an American agent act out their sort of assignment in many different forms. By assignment is meant the suggestion they received at their initial interview to "get foreign experience" and the implications of that meaning to join radical groups, get into foreign government or business confidence or even some pseudo, tangential experience.

Those are the "spies" I'd think China might be concerned about, and I'd be too to the extent that such people might wind up helping the next stages of the Iraq war and some of the other self-destructive of America and the world mad policies.

As far as the spies that have already been talked about here. There are types like that in U.S. corporations, High Schools, church groups and everywhere. Snitches, rats, apple polishers, teachers pets all may tell on anyone who breaks a rule or who complains.

prof · Joined: 25 Jun 2004 Posts: 741 Location: Boston/China

Most "spies" in China are not really "spies."

They are Americans new to China who want to gain favor with their bosses/masters by 'reporting' the activities of other teachers.

Malsol · Joined: 06 Mar 2006 Posts: 1976 Location: Lanzhou

Joe C. · Posted: Sat Jan 27, 2007 3:40 pm Post subject:

Bayden · Joined: 29 Mar 2006 Posts: 988

Joe C. · Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 9:20 am Post subject:

jwbhomer · Joined: 14 Dec 2003 Posts: 876 Location: CANADA

There was an FT at Shenzhen University who had been there quite a long time who was well-known for spying and reporting on others, especially those who lived in the same teachers' residence. She used to keep track of who visited the other teachers' flats, particularly visitors who were not students. It was said that she also used to pick through the garbage and count the beer and wine bottles. Worse yet, she recruited another FT and Chinese students to help her in keeping an eye on things.
One of my colleagues left that residence and moved into a smaller flat in the residence where I stayed, just to get away from this "lady"'s prying eyes!
What was the purpose of this spying? This teacher was one of these "concerned Christians" who seem to feel it their moral duty to impose their own beliefs and standards on the rest of us heathens. The odd thing was that her own standards seemed to leave room for more-than-friendly relationships with students of the same sex.

cj750 · Joined: 27 Apr 2004 Posts: 3081 Location: Beijing

I see a cross in her future...

Leon Purvis · Posted: Fri Feb 02, 2007 12:16 am Post subject:

The guy who picked through the other FT's garbage at my school was probably counting beer bottles and looking for things to report to the FAO in order to create a smokescreen for his own activities which included having a part-time live-in girlfriend, trawling the various internet boards for "broads," hanging out in public parks and near public toilets and bringing home "students" who were supposedly allowed to use his computer.

And he liked going to class drunk.

He had a wild story about moving from the U.S. to a European country then to a middle eastern country and then coming directly to China from the middle east. A look at his passport indicated that he hadn't accomplished this on the passport that he showed me.

The guy was a complete sleaze bag.