Ministry of State Security (China)
The Ministry of State Security is the principal civilian intelligence and security service of the People's Republic of China, responsible for foreign intelligence, counterintelligence, and political security of the Chinese Communist Party. One of the largest and most secretive intelligence organizations in the world, it maintains powerful semi-autonomous branches at the provincial, city, municipality and township levels throughout China. The ministry's headquarters, Yidongyuan, is a large compound in Beijing's Haidian district.
The origins of the MSS date to the beginnings of the CCP's Central Special Branch, which was established in 1927. It was replaced by the Central Social Affairs Department from 1936 through the proclamation of the People's Republic of China in 1949. In 1955, the department was replaced with the Central Investigation Department, which existed in various configurations through the Cultural Revolution to 1983, when it was merged with counterintelligence elements of the Ministry of Public Security to form the Ministry of State Security, marking the first time a Chinese intelligence organ was placed under the State Council instead of the party.
An executive department of the State Council, the contemporary MSS is an all-source intelligence organization with a broad mandate and expansive authorities to undertake global campaigns of espionage and covert action on the so-called "hidden front." Within China, the ministry leverages extrajudicial law enforcement authorities to achieve its domestic objectives: the State Security Police serve as a secret police authorized to detain and interrogate people in what is known as an "invitation to tea." Those remanded by state security are detained in the ministry's own detention facilities.
Outside the mainland, the ministry is best known for its numerous advanced persistent threat groups, some outsourced to contractors, which carry out prolific industrial and cyber espionage campaigns. The ministry has also been implicated in political and transnational repression and harassment of dissidents abroad. Its influence operations, carried out with the United Front Work Department in accordance with the "three warfares" doctrine, have produced some of the country's most pervasive diplomatic rhetoric including "great changes unseen in a century" and "China's peaceful rise." Estimates of the ministry's size range from 110,000 to 800,000 employees, with most of the workforce spread between the dozens of semi-autonomous bureaus across the country.
Overview
MSS functions as China's intelligence, security and secret police agency. A document from the U.S. Department of Justice described the agency as being like a combination of the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation. Australian author Clive Hamilton described it as being similar to an amalgamation of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service "with a lot more power and less subject to the constraints of the rule of law." It is an all-source intelligence organization with a broad mandate and expansive authorities to undertake global campaigns of espionage and covert action on the so-called "hidden front." Its influence operations have been carried out with the United Front Work Department in accordance with the "three warfares" doctrine.According to Peter Mattis, president of the Jamestown Foundation and former CIA analyst, and his fellow analyst Matthew Brazil, a former U.S. Army officer and diplomat in Asia:
The MSS is a civilian agency that controls its own secret police force, the State Security Police, which is one of the four components of the People's Police. The State Security Police is authorized to detain and interrogate people in what is known as an "invitation to tea." Those remanded by state security are detained in the ministry's own detention facilities. The MSS seal contains the emblem of the Chinese Communist Party and the official uniform is identical to that of the other People's Police, with the only difference being the police insignia include the Chinese characters "国安".
Article 4 of the Criminal Procedure Law of the People's Republic of China gives the MSS the same authority to arrest or detain people as MPS for crimes involving state security with identical supervision by the procuratorates and the courts. The National Intelligence Law of 2017 grants the MSS broad powers to conduct many types of espionage both domestically and abroad; it also gives the MSS the power to administratively detain those who impede or divulge information on intelligence work for up to 15 days.
History
Central Special Branch (1928–1936)
In November 1927, the CCP established its first formal intelligence service, with Zhou Enlai founding the Central Special Branch to conduct "special operations" work. With Xiang Zhongfa and Gu Shunzhang's assistance, Zhou designed the organization that many Chinese intelligence officers today see as the origins of their enterprise. Establishing secret bases across the Chinese territory, the Teke was composed of four sections led by Gu Shunzhang and Kang Sheng.Zhou's primary objective was to disrupt the Kuomintang's secret police attempts to penetrate the CCP which required both a defensive counterintelligence effort to identify potentially traitorous members of the party and an offensive intelligence effort to plant spies within the Kuomintang's security and intelligence services. To prevent leaks and limit damage caused by infiltration by Nationalist spies, agents of Teke were forbidden to have any relationship with other agents making the party so compartmentalized that many never knew the name of the organization only calling it "Wu Hao's Dagger", a reference to Zhou Enlai's nom de guerre.
Based in Shanghai, Teke grew to become "a small army of messengers, people smugglers, and informers" with a constant presence in clubs, religious organizations, music groups, and brothels serving as Zhou Enlai's eyes and ears both in Shanghai and across the nation. Nonetheless, Teke had to compete with the newly established KMT Bureau of Investigation and Statistics under the notorious Dai Li whose nickname as the "Chinese Himmler" lives on for his horrific torture record which included death in excruciating agony and forced heroin overdosing. Under Dai Li, the BIS created vast networks of 100,000 operatives across and outside the borders of China and mastered new means of intercepting communist communications — an art taught to the KMT by American cryptographer Herbert Yardley for use against the Japanese. The overwhelming advantages of the KMT were challenged only by the extensive and thorough infiltration of the security services by Teke agents including Qian Zhuangfei, Li Kenong, and Hu Di.
Gu Shunzhang, whom Zhou Enlai had chosen to head operations for Teke, would prove to be one of the most adversely consequential members of the CCP's underground intelligence ring. Having been born in Shanghai on "the wrong side of the tracks" according to French author Roger Faligot, Gu lived crudely out of bars smoking opium, having affairs, and joining the Green Gang but made a name for himself as a magician. Made a bodyguard for Mikhail Borodin, the Comintern agent and advisor to the Kuomintang from Soviet Russia, Gu was sent to Vladivostok to learn the tactics of insurrection and tradecraft of espionage as Borodin feared division between the Chinese nationalists and communists. A trained spy, Gu led Teke operations from the group's 1927 founding until 25 April 1931.
While performing the typical magic show for young children that usually covered for his espionage missions, a nationalist informer who had turned on the CCP recognized Gu from a photograph and alerted the KMT authorities. A number of KMT agents appeared and tackled Gu, not only gleeful to have detained one of their most challenging communist adversaries but were successful in turning the spymaster against the communists making Gu the most notorious intelligence traitor in modern Chinese history. As Gu provided the KMT with a flood of Teke agents' names and safe house locations, Zhou's spy inside the BIS, Qian Zhuangfei, immediately notified Zhou and Kang Shang who were able to relocate every Teke agent within two days — avoiding a potential extermination of CCP's core. Some agents, however, were located and arrested. On 21 June 1931, presumably with help from Gu's defection, the KMT captured CCP General Secretary Xiang Zhongfa hiding in a jewelry store with his cabaret dancer mistress. Despite offering to convert to the KMT party, Xiang was shot by his jailers before the received word of Chiang Kai-shek's pardon. Though the CCP's nascent intelligence branch under Kang Shang had narrowly escaped destruction, the damage done by Gu's defection and the number of communist spy arrests attrited the group until, in 1935, the CCP elected to disband it. While many of Teke's agents moved to the Red Army's Political Protection Bureau led by Dong Fa, the PPB focused entirely on counterintelligence meaning real intelligence collection would go largely dormant until the formation of the Society Department.
Society Department (1936–1955)
In 1936, the CCP established the Society Department at the CCP Central Committee in Yan'an, Shaanxi to consolidate the party's foreign intelligence and counterintelligence efforts. It wasn't until 1938 when Kang Sheng took control of the department and restructured the organization that it took its final form in the merging of the preceding Special Branch, the Political Protection Bureau, and the Guard Office. The Political Protection Bureau provided rear area security to CCP forces prior to the Long March and close security to Mao during the march while the Guard Office established a local constabulary and counterintelligence service. Under Kang Sheng and his deputy Li Kenong, the Society Department provided the CCP foreign intelligence, domestic intelligence, military security, and political security in every province in which communist forces held terrain.From 1942 to 1944, as the Society Department expanded, Kang Sheng became paranoid and fearful of spies within his organization. Kang, known as the "Chinese Beria" abroad, frequently reminded others that political deviation was inextricably linked to being a traitorous spy, remarking "There is a close link between the twin crimes of espionage and deviationism. One is not a deviationist, as we have tended to believe, by chance or error. It is, ineluctably, dialectically, because one is a Japanese agent or a Kuomintang spy—or both. We must begin a ruthless hunt to root out these two plagues from Yan'an because, by fighting against deviationism, we weaken the clandestine plots of our enemies, and vice versa." Convinced that at least 30 percent of his organization were counterrevolutionaries and spies, Kang established a counterintelligence quota which contributed greatly to the practice of bigongxin, forcing a false confession in order to build a case against the accused. Kang's counterintelligence inquisition utilized "techniques of punishment and interrogation inspired by the millennia-long Chinese tradition of torture, updated by twentieth-century Stalinism for the requirements of the era" with torture practices including driving bamboo spikes under fingernails, inserting hair from a horse's tail into the penis, pumping high-pressure water into the vagina, cutting off the breasts of women looking for their tortured husbands, forcing the ingestion of large amounts of vinegar, applying burning incense to armpits, tying to a whipped horse's tail, and live burials. Kang's perceived connection between political deviation and traitorship led many senior leaders to avoid criticizing Kang's purges.
Known by 1944 as the "party hangman", Kang was eventually opposed by Zhou Enlai and later Mao Zedong who forced Kang to produce his own self-criticism proclaiming that perhaps only 10 percent of the comrades accused were spies and, in November 1944, relieved him of the position as head of the Society Department. Various rumors for the cause of his removal endure. One version claims that his paranoid purges made him a target of many senior communist officials, many of whom found themselves in Kang's sights. Another less likely explanation from Mao's physician, Li Zhuisui, claims that Kang suffered acute paranoia and symptoms of schizophrenia and was consequently sent to a mental asylum. American intelligence reportedly believed Kang's downfall was the result of the collapse of the pro-Stalinist faction proceeding the deaths of Stalin and Beria since Kang had trained as an intelligence officer in Moscow. Li Kenong, the new head of the Society Department, developed the organization's intelligence networks and was appointed by Zhou Enlai to simultaneously serve as the nation's deputy minister of foreign affairs.