A person on LinkedIn claiming to work for a think tank run by a high-ranking Chinese Communist Party department recently offered financial compensation for the names of my sources and for reports about the incoming Biden's administration's views on China.
A couple of weeks ago, someone named Aaron Shen sent me a request to connect on LinkedIn. I accepted after I saw he claimed to be the assistant director of international liaison at the China Center for Contemporary World Studies — the in-house think tank of the International Department of the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee (IDCPC).
（注：“当代世界研究中心”智库属于中联部直属事业单位）
So I decided to play along and see how far I could take it. And I thought, well, might as well have some fun with it. So I started sending him names of Simpsons characters.
I told him that Troy McClure and Kent Brockman "have unique insights into American society." -- Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian
（贝书颖提了两个《辛普森》角色）
After Shen offered to pay me for reports written with input from my sources, I told him I had an imminent meeting with a "former intelligence director" (an important-sounding but non-existent position) named "Krustofsky" — the last name of Krusty the Clown, a character from the Simpsons. He didn't seemed to catch on. His final message to me, before I sent him a formal media inquiry with questions for this article, was, "How about your meeting with Krustofsky, was there anything interesting?"
