China's State Security Ministry reported that two military personnel were tasked with shredding 200 secret military documents, but instead sold them to a recycling plant for less than $4 total.-
A retiree named "Grandpa Zhang" then purchased 4 volumes of these confidential documents from the recycling plant for only 85 cents.- Realizing the documents were marked "confidential" and "secret", Zhang reported them to authorities. The State Security Ministry then seized the documents.-
The ministry criticized the military personnel involved for their "weak sense of confidentiality" and "greed for convenience's sake", but said the incident did not result in a significant intelligence leak.-
The ministry used this incident as part of a push to encourage the public to report national security lapses through a hotline

I don't usually care about news from China, but I did find a bit of humor in this

[–] breadsmasher@lemmy.world 25 points 5 months ago (3 children)

So this wasn’t even like, espionage? Did they literally just take reams of highly confidential paper to what sounds like a second hand book store? It reads like they didn’t know what they had in their hands

[–] yokonzo@lemmy.world 24 points 5 months ago

I just love the line, "grandpa zhang, who collects military and historical newspapers as a hobby spotted the documents at a stall"

Such a grandpa thing to do

[–] dept@lemmy.sdf.org 11 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

they probably just felt it was a waste to destroy the paper lol

If it's anything like Egypt, old papers and books can usually be sold to scrap sellers for pocket change and they're sometimes resold to falafel restaurants to wrap the falafels in.

I assume this is a similar thing in China but replace falafel with the Chinese street food equivalent.

[–] Skua@kbin.earth 10 points 5 months ago

I guess China's civil servants are all big Warthunder players

[–] magnetosphere@fedia.io 2 points 5 months ago

They’re willing to take this risk for less than $4? What kind of miserable salary are these military employees being paid?