China's MI5 tells citizens to SPY on each other... as secretive organisation shares its first ever social media post

China's state security agency has announced itself on social media with a stark assessment: every civilian should play a role in its counter-espionage work. In recent years, China has detained dozens of Chinese and foreign nationals on suspicion of espionage, usually treated with secrecy due to their nature. China has upped its counter-espionage commitments in response to what it judges to be aggressive surveillance by the West. As China now calls for all citizens to play a role in counter-espionage, Li Wei, an expert on national security at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, told the Chinese state-affiliated Global Times on Tuesday: 'With the range and methods of espionage activities becoming increasingly widespread and complex, the tactics are becoming increasingly sophisticated. US officials claimed in July that state-backed Chinese hackers had foiled Microsoft's cloud-based security in hacking the email accounts of multiple US agencies dealing with China ahead of Secretary of State Antony Blinken's trip to Beijing in June. A White House official also claimed in June that China has had a spy base on Cuba for at least four years, after Xi Jinping said he wanted to set up China's first surveillance station on the island. The report concluded Beijing had 'worked hard on disinformation' over the Covid pandemic and 'greatly exaggerated its work to counter the virus and develop vaccines, and has sown seeds of doubt about the origins of the virus, to make the world believe that China was not at fault'.