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A 16-panel comic book-style poster that's been widely displayed across Beijing tells the story of an attractive young female civil servant -- Xiao Li or Little Li -- who is wooed by a red-haired foreigner posing as a visiting scholar.
The scholar, named Dawei or David, showers her with compliments, red roses, fancy dinners and romantic walks in the park, and convinces the girl to provide him with internal documents from her government propaganda workplace.
Xiao Li initially declines to hand over the documents but David manages to convince her. Xiao Li is later taken away by security officials and the girl finds out that her boyfriend was a foreign spy.
The poster also provided a hotline to call. CNN called the number four times but no-one answered -- save for an automatic welcome message.
The posters have to be posted on all bulletin boards and community leaders will be trained with "counter espionage knowledge," the notice said.
"Everyone in the community should be urged to increase their sensitivity and level of awareness to national security, as well as be political sensitive."
Campaign greeted with disbelief, ridicule
On the streets of Beijing, few seemed to be taking the cartoon's message seriously.
"We don't actually believe this. A lot of our friends have foreign boyfriends, and we would never believe that they are spies," said Tou, a female student who only gave her family name.
Another woman surnamed Wang also doubted the poster's credibility.
"Isn't this supposed to be a joke? I mean this kind of stuff can happen anywhere I guess."
Huang Yu, the man sentenced to death for leaking classified documents, was shown shackled in chains on national television.
"The government hopes to send out a signal of deterrence to warn anybody who may be in a similar position of disclosing state secrets to foreign organization, while at the same time, giving the general public the perception that spies and potential spies may be in their midst, right at their side," Nee said.
"This idea of spies being everywhere, common to China in the Mao era, to some extent, is now helping to increase paranoia and suspicion in society, and even greater xenophobia," he added.