“They were trying to build up links among everybody, trying to get me to tell them who was supporting what,” said Liu, who walks on crutches after a leg injury sustained in a protest over the demolition of a former home.

Chinese leaders believe domestic foes, their foreign backers and Western governments are scheming to undermine and ultimately topple the Communist Party. Recent speeches and articles from security officials echo with warnings of subversive plots backed by Western “anti-China” forces.

Shortly before China’s clampdown ramped up in February, a senior domestic security official, Chen Jiping, warned that “hostile Western forces” — alarmed by the country’s rise — were marshalling human rights issues to attack Party control…

“It’s not just a general sense that the Western governments supported the Nobel decision; it’s a real belief that it was dreamed up in Washington as a way to attack China,” said one of those sources, a researcher.