It is an open secret that countries spy on each other. That’s probably why world leaders almost never talk about espionage in public. But over the weekend, it was the punchline of a joke between China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, and President Lee Jae Myung of South Korea.The joke revolved around two cellphones Xi gave Lee – one for him, one for his wife – during their meeting in the South Korean city of Gyeongju on Saturday. The phones were manufactured by the Chinese company Xiaomi, with Korean-made displays, a spokesman for Xi said as the two leaders inspected them with cameras rolling.Lee picked up one of the phones, still in its box, and admired it. Then he asked how good the security was.Xi laughed. “You can check if there’s a backdoor,” he said, referring to pre-installed software that allows a third party to monitor a cellphone. That prompted Lee to laugh and clap his hands in apparent delight.The exchange was notable in part because Xi is rarely seen speaking off the cuff in public. It also deviated from a “sort of old-fashioned gentlemen’s agreement” in which world leaders pretend that covert activities aren’t happening, said John Delury, a historian of China based in Seoul. “What’s interesting here is they’re doing it in public, but they’re not acknowledging ‘I spy on you, you spy on me,'” said Delury, the author of a book about a CIA campaign in China in the 1950s. “They’re more ironically and playfully referencing the secret world of espionage and surveillance and laughing it off.“For years, the US and its allies have been warning that Chinese technology could be used for espionage. The US, the UK, and Australia have banned Huawei, a Chinese firm, from their 5G mobile communication networks. They argue that the company is inseparable from China’s Communist Party.The first Trump administration placed Xiaomi on a blacklist and warned American companies that doing business with the maker of smartphones and electric cars could get them barred from future Pentagon contracts. Xiaomi successfully sued the US govt to be removed from the blacklist.When Lee met Xi on Saturday, on the sidelines of an international economic summit, he seemed to be acknowledging concerns about Chinese products and China’s surveillance capabilities, Delury said. “But by joking about it, by using irony, ultimately he’s dismissing a lot of those concerns and saying, ‘Thank you for the phone and it’s great that Korean and Chinese companies are building it together,'” he said.The jovial interaction reflected efforts by the two leaders to strengthen their countries’ relationship through economic collaboration. That is a challenge for South Korea, a key US ally, in part because the rivalry between Washington and Beijing is growing. During a meeting last week in Gyeongju, Lee awarded President Trump South Korea’s highest decoration and a replica of an ancient gold crown.Lee has also faced a domestic backlash from opposition that accuses him of aligning too closely with China. Govts usually acknowledge spying on allies only when they’re forced to. In 2013, after Edward Snowden revealed that the US had been monitoring the phone of German Chancellor Merkel over a decade, President Obama promised Merkel that it would not happen again.Mobile phones are not a common diplomatic gift because of the security concerns, said Patrick F Walsh, a professor of intelligence at Charles Sturt University in Australia. Will Lee use the Xiaomi phones? Probably not, he said. “I can’t imagine him saying ‘We’ve got this phone, I’ll talk to Tokyo or Washington,'” Walsh said. “He might gift it to someone.”
