【Epoch Times October 13, 2026】Before a fisherman casts his line, he often needs to “set the nest.” Select a location, scatter bait, let the fish find food, gather around, and get used to feeding here. The food thrown is the capital, willing to spend time nurturing the nest, not just thinking about immediate harvest.
In recent years, some national security and public security cadres have also referred to using small benefits as bait and gradually gaining trust from people as “setting the nest.” Returning this term to internal materials of the Chinese Communist Party’s political police, it is found that there is a well-thought-out set of tactics for these methods: “Build nests to lure birds, set nets to catch fish; fictitious organizations, control channels.” People have more needs than birds and animals. Those who are persecuted need to find a place to confide and seek help; those who leave their hometown need housing and work; those who are unwilling to surrender to tyranny also hope to find like-minded people to engage in resistance. In the eyes of the political police, these desires are all about getting close to and taking advantage of an individual.
Such traps particularly value people who want to do things. They are willing to invest time, introduce friends, and testify for a common cause. Once the contact is controlled by the authorities, these investments for resistance will attract more people to set up traps for the planners. A fake organization does not need to deceive the trust of everyone, as long as it borrows the credibility of a few sincere anti-communists, it can continue to approach others along the original relationship.
Such a fake organization already had a precedent in the Soviet Union. In the 1920s, the Soviet secret police OGPU and its predecessor operated “Operation Trust,” packaging an organization under its control as a powerful underground network in the Soviet Union, connecting with overseas exiles. Among the participants were even true monarchist figures; they fell under the control of the secret police but still carried a status sufficient to gain the trust of old friends. By infiltrating, disrupting exiled monarchist groups, the OGPU also lured foreign rivals into its control. In 1925, Sidney Reilly, who had worked for British intelligence, was lured into the Soviet Union through this network, subsequently arrested, interrogated, and executed. People thought they were seeking resistance forces inside the country, but they might have walked into prison and execution along the path paved by the political police.
Between 1925 and 1926, exiled political figure Vasily Shulgin secretly returned to the country under this arrangement to search for his missing son. He did not find his son