CCTV9英语新闻：China marks first National Security Education Day

Friday marks China's first National Security Education Day. Events aimed at promoting public awareness of national security have been held across the country. Earlier on Thursday Chinese President Xi Jinping instructed the country to strengthen national security education. For more on this topic, I'm now joined by my colleague Han Peng. 

 

Q1: Why is China marking National Security Education Day?

 

A: Chinese lawmakers passed the National Security Law last October, which sets April 15th as National Security Education Day. The purpose is to raise public awareness of the threat to national security. The new law is a replacement of the Counter-espionage Law, which took effect in 1993. This law goes beyond just the fight against espionage, but covers such a wide spectrum of areas, as to include China's defense, finance, technologies, as well as the country's assets and activities in outer space, deep sea and polar regions. But as President Xi Jinping said on Thursday, national security is not a far-fetching issue for ordinary people, and that everyone should be mobilized to safeguard it.

 

Q2: Why is national security closely relevant to ordinary people?

 

A: Well, China now faces security threats from various angles. There are traditional threats like military tensions in the South China Sea, which still largely depends on the government and the army to deal with. But there are also new types of threats that need everyone's participation to fight against.

 

Take the infiltration of espionage for example, authorities say in recent years, there has been a rising number of young people being paid online by overseas intelligence agencies to steal classified information. In one prominent case last year, a 30-year-old photographer in Shandong was paid with just a few thousand dollars to illegally take photos of China's new aircraft carrier.

 

While he became an under-paid spy, the real ones didn't even have to show up. In his later confessions, he said he hadn't realized the consequences of his photos when he sold them. There are also other ways in which national security is closely relevant to us, such as spotting terrorist suspects, protecting our personal information from being stolen and efficient evacuation of overseas residents from war-torn areas.