BEIJING – A new Chinese spy museum exhibits guns disguised as lipstick, hollowed-out coins used to conceal documents and maps hidden as a deck of cards.
What you won’t find there, however, are foreigners.
A sign outside the Jiangsu National Security Education Museum in a park in the eastern city of Nanjing states that only Chinese citizens are allowed inside, a policy designed to keep the communist regime’s cloak and dagger methods secret — no matter how timeworn they may be.
“We don’t want such sensitive spy information to be exposed to foreigners, so they are not allowed to enter,” a spokeswoman for the museum, who would only give her surname as Qian, told The Associated Press by telephone.
“Most of the people we turn away are pretty understanding since this is not your average museum,” she added.
MSNBC (thanks, Eliza)
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Hilariously typical.
Now that’s what I called a news. and it will be fun going there. Thanks for sharing.
”we are communists because we believe in equality,but NO FOREIGNERS!”
how rude! I wouldn.t want to go in on princible. Aren’t they being racist?
ITS A TEST! to get in, we have to become the spy and sneak past them!
Oh for goodness’ sake – I’m sure plenty of Chinese citizens have dual nationaility, and will easily put half of the contents on the internet anyway…
Think about it: it’s nationalist propaganda.
It’s not a message to foreigners, per se. Think about if MI6 had a museum and had a similar sign outside: how would you feel as a British citizen?
It’s *really* an indirect message to Chinese visitors. Something like: “By virtue of birth you have a patriotic loyalty we trust. You have the freedom to see all that is within, because you are one of us. You are equal to all within the Chinese republic, even our spies, because you can be trusted, and you can be trusted because you are Chinese. Foreigners and their ways are not like us.”
It’s a powerful piece of indirect persuasion, able to enforce loyalty to the party and government. Subtle, but clever.
I’m quite happy with being Chinese but sometimes the Chinese can be a RIGHT bunch of donkeys! Paranoid and stupid… Like zizi who left that message. No one is gonna steal out of date techniques from another country. Get a grip.
See now, I would have had very little interest in this but because I wouldn’t be allowed in all I want to do is go there… hmmm…
I’m sure all information about that museum already went into the world. Pretty weird way of thinking they still have there.
Hmmm. Like Derren and his ‘Keep Out of This Casino’ scenario. You just send a wee friend in to run off with the goods.
Perhaps we could send in an agent of asian extraction to spy on the spy museum and tell us if it was any good… either that or use the tried and tested jedi mindtrick to get past security.
I seem to recall a certain poison-pellet-tipped umbrella used on a Bulgarian dissident landing up in Scotland Yard’s infamous “Black museum”. It’s a real crowd puller, the Chinese have definately missed a trick here.
Beware of Bulgarian agents and their wet weather accessories!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2636459.stm
Pauls spot on, I think it’s brilliant! when the ira open there museum I’d love to see if they’d have the neck to put a sign like that out.
I wonder will this mean a huge wave of people signing up to be a chinese spy
It’s nothing of a spy museum just a place intend to give the folks national safety education. All the spy nonsense comes from the bad interpretation from the spokeswoman, I suppose she just can’t remember confidential or other proper words to say that moment on the phone. You can’t expect getting through every gate that involves somehow military or governmental. Don’t blame it on nationalist, just the world’s general rules today.