- China told its sailors on Monday to avoid posting about their jobs on dating apps.
- It was part of a wider warning for military staff not to expose their identities online.
- In the last year, China has pushed hard on warnings about online habits that it deems are security threats.
China’s navy warned its younger members on Monday to avoid publicizing their military careers on dating apps over concerns of security breaches by foreign entities.
“The internet has tricks. The internet has traps,” the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s official propaganda arm wrote in a social media post for the “internet generation.”
The post addressed those born in the 1990s and 2000s, saying that sailors of these ages were becoming the navy’s “main force.”
Among the potential threats listed were online tools for video games, file-sharing sites, phishing emails, gambling platforms, and Trojan viruses.
“Nowadays, dating apps have emerged in an endless stream,” the post reads. “Young officers and soldiers eager for love may expose their military identity to gain attention, making it easy to become the focus of criminals.”
The post is the latest in a series of social media campaigns from China’s government agencies urging civilians and staff to take responsibility for national security.
It’s a wider push from Beijing that’s seen ministries put out warnings in recent months against dating apps and rock music, dragonflies and pens that the Chinese government says could be spying devices, and lucrative part-time job offers that could be scams.
That’s all happening against the backdrop of growing tensions between China and the US, which has also repeatedly accused Beijing of hacking large businesses such as Microsoft and government branches.
In the last year, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has publicly directed his administration to loop civilians into the national security effort. In June 2023, he told officials that they should “adhere to bottom-line thinking and worst-case scenario thinking.”
Beijing rarely names foreign states directly when issuing warnings to its people, often referring to them instead as “malicious entities” or “criminals.”
But its distrust of the US has increasingly been on display as Xi accuses Washington of waging a hidden war of “encirclement and suppression.” In the last two years, the Chinese leader has been intensifying his crackdown on corruption within the military, ousting then-Defense Minister Li Shangfu after the latter had served for just seven months.
Meanwhile, the US has been publicizing arrests and charges of its military personnel accused of spying for China, such as two sailors of Chinese heritage who were charged last year with conspiring to sell secrets to Beijing.
