The Globe and Mail's Geoffrey York on working in the paranoid, authoritarian country that is China, with its omnipresent security apparatus.

From the Globe's Middle Kingdom blog (posted Sept. 16):

People often ask me if my telephone in Beijing is bugged by the security agencies. They have a mental image of the old Cold War days of clicking phones and mysterious voices that interrupt your conversation.

Whenever people ask this, I usually give this answer: it's clear that the Chinese authorities can wiretap anyone in the country, and they often do. But the human resources to do so - the hundreds of thousands of spies who would need to speak perfect idiomatic English to understand the conversations of every foreigner in China - probably don't exist in China. And anyone with such perfect English could probably find a much better paying job at a multinational corporation.

More importantly, why would anyone bother to tap my telephone? Anything that I learn about China is usually accessible a day later on the Globe's website when my story is published. I don't keep any secrets.

But I've had to rethink my theory during the Olympics and Paralympics, a time when China's security paranoia has run rampant. For the first time in years, it's become quite obvious that the authorities are monitoring my phone. I've heard similar evidence from other foreign journalists here too.