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135-783: The origins of the MSS begin with the CCP's Central Special Branch, better known as the Teke, which was replaced by the Central Social Affairs Department (SAD) in 1936, which was in turn succeeded by the Central Investigation Department (CID) – the MSS's immediate predecessor – in 1955. In 1983 CID was merged with the counterintelligence elements of the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) to create

270-402: A Chinese driver was employed by Senator Dianne Feinstein who was notified that the driver was being investigated for possible Chinese spying. At some point, he visited China and was recruited by China's MSS. He worked for Senator Feinstein for several years. The FBI concluded the driver hadn't revealed anything of substance. The fundamental purpose of our counter-espionage struggle is to defend

405-556: A constant presence in clubs, religious organizations, music groups, and brothels serving as Zhou Enlai's (and subsequently the CCP'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 (BIS) 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,

540-594: A decision taken by the Secretariat of the Chinese Communist Party on 18 February 1939. The decision assigned to the department some five major tasks, including those of overseeing CCP counter-intelligence work and intelligence . An alternative designation of the department at this early stage was the "Central Commission for Enemy Area Operations." The first director of the SAD was Kang Sheng . By

675-417: 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

810-505: 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

945-610: A list of companies and organizations considered to be at risk of foreign infiltration and requiring them to take security measures. In addition, staff travelling on business trips to the Five Eyes countries (the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand) have been ordered to report all contact with foreign personnel, participate in anti-espionage seminars, and leave mobile phones, laptops, and USB drives at home before traveling abroad. In September 2022, it

1080-547: A local constabulary and counterintelligence service. Under Kang Sheng and his deputy Li Kenong, the SAD provided the CCP foreign intelligence, domestic intelligence, military security, and political security in every province in which communist forces held terrain. The Social Affairs Department was constructed similarly to the Soviet model (as Kang had been trained by Soviet intelligence in Moscow): From 1942 to 1944, as

1215-603: A man "trained by one of the world's greatest experts in the abuse of human bodies and minds: the head of the Soviet NKVD, Nikolai Yezhov " As Mitter explains, Kang Sheng was the mastermind behind the "pain and friction" that underlay the Rectification process. He used a classic Soviet technique of accusing loyal party members of being Nationalist spies. Once they had confessed under torture, their confessions could then set off an avalanche of accusations and arrests. As

1350-752: A meeting of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in Beijing. As Byron and Pack write The challenges that Kang faced during the early months of 1956 underscored the dangers he would have risked by continuing his retreat. As soon as he reappeared, Kang encountered serious problems that caused his position in the hierarchy to fluctuate dramatically. After the purge of Gao Gang and Rao Shushi in 1954, he had ranked sixth, below Chairman Mao, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De and Chen Yun. But in February 1956, just weeks after his return to public life, he

1485-566: A multiple game. On the one hand he was humoring Stalin, but at the same time he was betraying his confidence. Similarly, he had made contact with the Trotskyists , and had considered joining their movement, but he had also taken steps to infiltrate and sabotage their Fourth International… Tito made these comments to Hua Guofeng on his only visit to China, in 1977 after Kang was dead, and certainly had his own agenda in doing so, but as Faligot and Kauffer remark, "in any case, Tito certainly got

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1620-407: 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

1755-658: A number of concentration camps ( Chinese : 劳改 ; pinyin : Láogǎi ) where apprehended enemy spies like the Taiwanese "Society of the Continent" network in Tianjin . The 2nd Bureau of the MSS was responsible for foreign intelligence collection beginning in the nearby capitals of Tokyo , Bangkok , and Singapore . Intelligence officers of the 2nd Bureau operated under diplomatic cover posing as advisors or secretaries to diplomats in-country. The MSS' 3rd Bureau

1890-457: A perfect excuse for the rival, yet parallel, states [in Chongqing, Nanjing and Yan'an] to use similar techniques, from blackmail to bombing, to achieve their ends, and mute the criticisms of their opponents. If each of them paid tribute to Sun Yat-sen in public, they also each paid court to the thinking and techniques of Stalin in private. In the person of Kang Sheng, Mao had at his disposal

2025-687: A senior position in the security services from Luo and to gain a stronghold over the party's security apparatus, Kang Sheng prepared a traitorous dossier on Luo complete with accusations of "illicit intercourse with foreigners". Lin Biao sent for Luo's arrest, and, under appalling conditions of incarceration and interrogation, Luo attempted to commit suicide in March by throwing himself from his cell breaking two legs after which Red Guards forced him to make his own self-criticism . As Mao Zedong launched his Cultural Revolution in 1966, Kang Sheng attempted to limit

2160-553: A severe reversal of fortune at the Central Committee plenum that followed the first session of the CCP's Eighth Congress, when he was demoted to alternate, nonvoting membership of the Politburo. Roderick MacFarquhar writes: The reasons for Kang Sheng's reduction to alternate membership of the Politburo are not clear. … The immediate reason for his demotion may have been the general revulsion against secret police within

2295-599: A supporter of Wang Ming for leadership of the CCP. After returning to China in the late 1930s, Kang Sheng switched his allegiance to Mao Zedong and became a close associate of Mao during the Second Sino-Japanese War , the Chinese Civil War , and after. He remained at or near the pinnacle of power in the People's Republic of China from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1975. After

2430-469: 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

2565-776: A teenager, he entered into an arranged marriage with Chen Yi, in 1915, with whom he had two children, a daughter, Zhang Yuying, and a son, Zhang Zishi. After graduating from the German School, Kang taught in a rural school in Zhucheng, Shandong in the early 1920s before leaving, possibly for a sojourn in Germany and France, and ultimately for Shanghai, where he arrived in 1924. After arriving in Shanghai , Kang enrolled in Shanghai University , an institution under

2700-576: A wheelchair after Red Guards threw him from a high window . After these experiences, Deng was committed to reforming the Chinese intelligence services. Deng first initiated a small but meaningful campaign to degrade Kang Sheng's legacy, which began with Hu Yaobang's speech. Next, Deng subordinated the Central Investigative Department into a minor political organ. Finally, Deng took all the "external intelligence expertise" from

2835-435: 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

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2970-663: Is going on outside the country. Li emphasized that MSS's most important mission is, "to control the Chinese people to maintain the rule of the Communist Party." In 2012, an executive assistant to MSS vice minister Lu Zhongwei was found to have been passing information to the CIA. Lu Zhongwei was not formally charged, but that incident was said to have infuriated Hu Jintao and led to a tightening on information dissemination and increased counterintelligence activities in Beijing and abroad. The Shanghai State Security Bureau (SSSB) of

3105-582: Is one of the four components of the People's Police . 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 patch on the right arm with the Chinese characters "国安" ("State Security"). Article 4 of the Criminal Procedure Law of the People's Republic of China gives the MSS

3240-655: The Washington Times in an interview that the MSS was engaged in counterintelligence, the collection of secrets and technology from other countries, and repressing internal dissent within China. The internal repression, according to Li, includes efforts against house churches , the underground church and the Falun Gong religious group, plus censoring the Internet to prevent China's population from knowing what

3375-690: The 28 Bolsheviks , who took control of the Party Politburo at the Fourth Plenum of the Sixth Central Committee on January 13, 1931. Kang allegedly demonstrated his loyalty to Wang Ming by betraying to the Kuomintang secret police a meeting convened on January 17, 1931, by He Mengxiong , who had been strongly opposed to Li Lisan and was disgruntled by Pavel Mif's high-handed role in securing the ascendancy of Wang within

3510-647: The Anti-Rightist Campaign that followed, marked a profound turning point in the history of the People's Republic of China. As Maurice Meisner wrote The period of the Hundred Flowers was the time when the Chinese abandoned the Soviet model of development and embarked on a distinctively Chinese road to socialism. It was the time that China announced its ideological and social autonomy from the Soviet Union and its Stalinist heritage. It

3645-737: The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) "with a lot more power and less subject to the constraints of the rule of law." According to sinologists Peter Mattis and Matthew Brazil, who have studied the MSS for many years: "The language Chinese intelligence uses reflects its Marxist–Leninist and revolutionary heritage. The lexicon suggests (as has been borne out in interviews with former officials who had routine contacts with their Chinese counterparts) that

3780-555: The Central Leading Group for Taiwan Affairs . Although the MSS maintains loyalty to party and ideology as a central mission, its founding represents the first time that a Chinese intelligence organ was placed under the State Council instead of the party. The 1st Bureau of the new MSS managed internal affairs and security in each of the provinces with the help of local and regional offices. The MSS also maintained

3915-543: The Commission for Science, Technology, and Industry for National Defense (COSTIND). The 11th Bureau managed computers , networks , and information technology equipment, and finally the 12th Bureau was responsible for liaising with foreign intelligence services under the name of the Office of Foreign Affairs. Officers of the 12th Bureau worked with the CIA's David Gries, BND 's Dr. Herms Bahl, MI6 's Nigel Inkster , and

4050-550: The DGSE 's Thierry Imbot while keeping them under surveillance. The so-called Office of Foreign Affairs also took up duties to surveil visiting tourists , diplomats, and journalists who began to enter the country after China's opening to the world. The MSS' first head announced "The intelligence agencies and secret services of some foreign countries have increased their spying activities against China's state secrets and are now sending agents to subvert and destroy our country." One of

4185-583: The Galwan Valley clash. Those bloggers had suggested that the death toll of the China-India border clash was 11   times higher than the official count of four. In late April 2021, the Ministry of State Security announced that it was introducing several new measures to fight alleged infiltration by "hostile forces" of Chinese companies and other institutions. These measures include drawing up

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4320-596: The Marco Polo Bridge Incident and the Japanese invasion of China, Stalin dispatched Wang and Kang to Yan'an on a specially provided Soviet plane. Kang had played a wily game in the complex and murky world of Stalin's Moscow, earning the following comment from Josip Broz Tito , who had met Kang in Moscow in 1935: It can be said without any shadow of a doubt that at that time Kang Sheng was playing

4455-852: The Red Army 's Political Protection Bureau (PPB) led by Dong Fa, the PPB focused entirely on counterintelligence meaning real intelligence collection would go largely dormant until the formation of the Social Affairs Department. In 1936, the CCP established the Social Affairs Department (often abbreviated as SAD in English) 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

4590-753: The Soviet Union , used Kang during this period as a valuable source of information about Soviet affairs. Mao was also suspicious of the Russians and, soon after aligning himself with Mao, Kang also began to speak out against the Soviet Union and its agents in China. Peter Vladimirov , the Comintern agent sent to Yan'an, recorded that Kang kept him under constant surveillance and even forced Wang Ming to avoid meeting him. Vladimirov also believed that Kang delivered biased reports of Soviet affairs to Mao. When Stalin shifted his support from Wang Ming to Mao Zedong,

4725-729: The United Front Work Department . Today the agency is estimated to have at least 110,000 employees, with 10,000 directly attached to MSS headquarters and 100,000 spread across its dozens of provincial branches. 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 (CIA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Australian author Clive Hamilton described it as being similar to an amalgamation of

4860-764: The death of Mao and the subsequent arrest of the Gang of Four , Kang Sheng was accused of sharing responsibility with the Gang for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution and in 1980 he was expelled posthumously from the CCP. Kang Sheng was born in Dataizhuang (大臺莊, administered under Jiaonan County since 1946), Zhucheng County to the northwest of Qingdao in Shandong Province to a landowning family, some of whom had been Confucian scholars. Kang

4995-425: 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

5130-466: 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 Social Affairs Department. Various rumors for the cause of his removal endure. One version claims that his paranoid purges made him

5265-599: 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

5400-691: The CCP Politburo assigned Kang to inspect land reform in his home province of Shandong. Early in 1948, he was appointed deputy chief of the Party's East China Bureau , under Rao Shushi . Some commentators speculate that the private humiliation of being placed under a former subordinate may be one reason why Kang "fell ill" and largely disappeared from view until after Rao's fall in 1954. Of course, Kang may really have been ill. Mao's personal physician, Li Zhisui , later recorded that doctors responsible for Kang's treatment at Beijing Hospital told him that Kang

5535-497: The CCP established its first formal intelligence service, with Zhou Enlai founding the Central Special Branch ( Chinese : 中央特科 ; pinyin : Zhōngyāng Tè Kē , often shortened to Teke; sometimes written Special Services Section (SSS)) 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

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5670-477: The Central Investigation Department (CID) who kept close watch on diplomats and embassy staff, often sitting in on meetings and reporting back to CID headquarters' Eight Bureau (known later as the "Institute of Contemporary International Relations"). On 9 February 1962, Li Kenong died after a period of illness from the residual effects of brain damage from a fall he had sustained three years prior. Kong Yuan, Kang Sheng's former secretary and friend of Zhou Enlai, ran

5805-407: The Central Investigative Department and consolidated it and all the CCP's espionage and counterintelligence functions into a new, "revolutionized" Chinese intelligence service, fitting of the new era of the Chinese "opening-up" to the world. Proposed by Premier Zhao Ziyang and Minister of Public Security Liu Fuzhi and approved at the first session of the sixth National People's Congress ( NPC ),

5940-547: The Central Investigative Department, and consequently PRC leadership, was caught by surprise by the Vietnamese invasion. Unable to contact the Khmer Rouge who, under the leadership of Ta Mok, had escaped into the jungles to organize a guerrilla resistance with only one Chinese agent carrying a defective satellite radio , a thousand Chinese military advisors fled Cambodia via Thailand and left 4,000 civilian advisors to

6075-436: The Chinese Communist Party. On the night of February 7, 1931, He Mengxiong and 22 others were executed by the Kuomintang police at Longhua, Shanghai. Among those murdered were five aspiring writers and poets, including Hu Yepin , lover of Ding Ling and father of her child, later canonized as a martyr by the Party. The April 1931 arrest and defection to the Kuomintang of Gu Shunzhang, former Green Gang gangster and member of

6210-455: The Chinese in Moscow had fallen victim to purges. Soviet authorities had made numerous arrests at Moscow Sun Yat-sen University during the late 1920s; students disappeared into the night, never to be seen again. But Kang worked his own variation: in the past, the Chinese had been purged by the Soviets; now, under Kang, they were liquidated by their fellow Chinese. Stalin was more tolerant of

6345-521: The Chinese in Moscow than he was of other foreign Communists, who were purged along with their Soviet comrades. This may have been motivated by a concern about the potential threat of a Japanese invasion of the Soviet Far East. In any case, at this time Stalin began to promote the idea of a united front of the Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang against the Japanese, a policy that Wang Ming and Kang quickly endorsed. In November 1937, following

6480-500: The Comintern, returning to China in 1937. While in Moscow, Kang was elected a member of the Politburo of the CCP, perhaps as early as 1931 but more probably in January 1934. As Byron and Pack put it, "Kang had no cause to regret working with Wang in Moscow. His own prestige and power grew ever greater, and his cocoon of privilege insulated him from the irritations of daily life. But being in Moscow also excluded Kang and Wang Ming from

6615-784: The Communist base in Jiangxi Province in August 1931, he left Kang in charge of the Special Work Committee, a position he held for two years. In this role, Kang was "in charge of the entire Communist security and espionage apparatus, not only in Shanghai but throughout KMT China." In July 1931, Wang Ming removed himself to Moscow and assumed the position of chief Chinese representative on the Comintern. Kang and his wife Cao Yi'ou followed two years later. Kang remained in Moscow for four years, acting as Wang's deputy on

6750-487: The Cultural Revolution. Kang's condemnation was bolstered by the investigation prepared by Luo Qingchang's Central Investigative Department which detailed how Kang had organized the Yan'an purges and named any of his opponents "counter-revolutionary". Deng Xiaoping was himself a victim of Mao's Cultural Revolution, the Gang of Four , and Kang Sheng's secret police. Deng's son, Deng Pufang , became paraplegic and needed to use

6885-686: The Department of Social Affairs of the regional CCP Committee (orig. Work Committee) was not abolished until 2 May 1961. Directors: Kang Sheng (October 1939 – 1948?), Li Kenong (acting dir. May 1948-?; - May 1951?) Deputy directors: Kong Yuan (October 1939-), Pan Hannian (October 1939-), Li Kenong (March 1941-), Chen Gang (November 1945-August 1949), Tan Zhengwen (June 1948-November 1949), Liu Shaowen (May 1948-) Kang Sheng Kang Sheng ( Chinese : 康 生 ; pinyin : Kāng Shēng ; 4 November 1898 – 16 December 1975), born Zhang Zongke ( simplified Chinese : 张宗可 ; traditional Chinese : 張宗可 ; pinyin : Zhāng Zōngkě ),

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7020-560: The Deputy Minister of State Security, Yanjun Xu , was charged with economic espionage by the United States prosecutors. On May 28, 2021, a federal grand jury in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California returned an indictment against four People's Republic of China (PRC) citizens for their alleged roles in a long running campaign of computer network operations targeting trade secrets, intellectual property, and other high value information from companies, universities, research institutes, and governmental entities in

7155-479: The ECCI Personnel Department memorandum] as his foes. He even tried to defend Kang Sheng in one of his letters to [Georgii] Dimitrov. "Kon Sin [Kang Sheng]," Mao wrote, "is reliable." While in Yan'an, Kang oversaw intelligence operations against the Party's two principal enemies, the Japanese and the Kuomintang, as well as potential opponents of Mao within the Party, including the campaign against Trotskyites. Chang and Halliday write that " Shi Zhe observed that Kang

7290-479: The FBI arrested Candace Claiborne, a State Department employee who had previously worked in the American Embassy in Beijing between 2009 and 2012. In April 2019 Claiborne pleaded guilty to one count of conspiring to defraud the United States. Prosecutors argued that she had passed sensitive information to the MSS. Companies such as Huawei , China Mobile , and China Unicom have been implicated in MSS intelligence collection activities. In 2017, MSS officials entered

7425-460: The Japanese army. This directive, which Kang later denied even existed, was resisted by some Manchurian leaders and later criticized by Mao Zedong as evidence of Wang Ming having stifled Manchuria's revolutionary potential. Following the assassination of Sergei Kirov in December 1934, Joseph Stalin commenced his great purges of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . Following this example, and with Wang Ming's support, Kang established in 1936

7560-436: 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

7695-403: 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,

7830-482: 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

7965-406: The MSS has repeatedly been involved in both failed and successful attempts to recruit foreign agents. In 2010, the SSSB directed US citizen Glenn Duffie Shriver to apply for a position at the National Clandestine Service of the CIA. In 2017, SSSB case workers were implicated in the recruitment of US Department of State employee Candace Claiborne who was charged with obstruction of justice. In 2013,

8100-547: The MSS. The MSS is active in industrial and cyber espionage , where it has replaced the People's Liberation Army (PLA) as the country's most sophisticated and prolific advanced persistent threat actor. It makes arrests through its own People's Police units and retains the authority to conduct extrajudicial court hearings. The ministry has also been known to be involved in transnational repression , surveillance and harassment of dissidents abroad and influence operations targeting overseas Chinese diaspora in collaboration with

8235-468: The MSS. In December 2020, 10 MSS Operatives of Xinjiang State Security Department (XSSD) were arrested in Kabul , Afghanistan by the National Directorate of Security . During questioning, one operative told the interrogators that they were gathering information about al Qaeda , the Taliban , and the Turkistan Islamic Party in Kunar and Badakhshan Provinces, and wanted to trap and assassinate high-level members of Turkistan Islamic Party. At least two of

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8370-489: The March 1927 worker's insurrection alongside Gu Shunzhang and under the leadership of Zhao Shiyan , Luo Yinong, Wang Shouhua and Zhou Enlai . When the uprising was put down by the Kuomintang with the crucial assistance of Du Yuesheng 's Green Gang in the Shanghai massacre of April 12, 1927, Kang was able to escape into hiding. Also in 1927, Kang married a Shanghai University student and fellow Shandong native, Cao Yi'ou  [ zh ] (born Cao Shuqing), who

8505-511: The Ministry of State Security (MSS) was approved on 20 June 1983 to be a merger between the Central Investigation Department and the Bureau of Investigating Counterrevolutionaries (or the First Bureau) of the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) to "protect the security of the state and strengthen China's espionage work". The following day, the NPC appointed Ling Yun to be the first Minister of State Security which would announce its establishment on 1 July 1983. There were serious political reasons behind

8640-412: The Office for the Elimination of Counterrevolutionaries and worked closely with the Soviet secret police, the NKVD , in purging perhaps hundreds of Chinese then in Moscow. As Byron and Pack put it: Kang gained great power from the Elimination Office, which he used to silence opponents and witnesses to any embarrassing episodes in his past, especially his arrest in Shanghai. … This was not the first time

8775-405: The Party's Intelligence Cell, led to serious breaches in Party security and the arrest and execution of Xiang Zhongfa , the Party's General Secretary. In response, Zhou Enlai created a Special Work Committee to oversee the Party's intelligence and security operations. Chaired by Zhou personally, the committee included Chen Yun, Pan Hannian , Guang Huian and Kang Sheng. When Zhou left Shanghai for

8910-424: The People's Republic of China (which succeeded the CID in 1983) both trace their institutional origins to the SAD. Worth noting in an institutional history context is the fact that some of the SAD's sub-national counterparts (e.g., the Department of Social Affairs of the CCP Committee of province X) continued to exist as party bodies for quite some time after the founding of the PRC. In the Tibet Autonomous Region ,

9045-458: The People's Republic of China , while the task of collecting political and military intelligence overseas was assigned to the Intelligence Department of the Central Military Commission . In 1955, the task of political intelligence work was transferred to a newly created Communist party body, the CCP Central Investigation Department (CID) with Li Kenong as its first director. Today, China's Ministry of Public Security and Ministry of State Security of

9180-468: The Personnel Department of the executive committee of the Comintern (the "ECCI") included Kang's name on a list of CCP cadres who should not be included in the leadership. According to Pantsov and Levine, Once again, the ECCI and, standing behind it, Stalin himself, helped Mao to consolidate his power. This time they even overdid it. Mao did not view Kang Sheng, who had already openly switched to his side, nor several of these other party officials [named in

9315-484: The Propaganda Department at the CCP's Sixth Congress, which for security reasons and proximity to the Comintern's congress was held outside Moscow in mid-1928. Several months after the Sixth Congress, Kang was named director of the Organization Department of the Jiangsu Provincial Committee, which controlled personnel matters. In 1930, while in Shanghai, Kang was arrested along with several other Communists, including Ding Jishi, and later released. Ding's uncle Ding Weifen,

9450-453: The Seventh Party Congress did not protect them permanently against Kang. During the Cultural Revolution, he searched many of them out, arrested them and charged them again with being traitors or renegades. A standard item of evidence used against them was a record of their arrest in Yan'an during the Rectification Movement—phony charges from the 1940s appeared twenty years later as "proof" of an individual's disloyalty. After his fall from

9585-478: The Social Affairs 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

9720-898: The State Department to avoid a diplomatic crisis. The FBI did, however, confiscate the Chinese officials’ phones before the plane took off. In 2019, according to a report released by the European External Action Service , there were an estimated 250 MSS spies operating in Brussels. In September 2020, a journalist, a Chinese MSS operative and her Nepalese informant were arrested in India for providing classified information about Indian army deployments in Doklam area and India's Ministry of External Affairs to two officers of Yunnan State Security Department (YSSD) of

9855-1079: The US was "decoupling and disconnecting at the economic level, ganging up at the political level, deterrence and containment at the security level, discrediting and disparaging at the public opinion level, and constraining and locking down at the rules level". In January 2024, the MSS published a list of "10 conditions", euphemistically referred to as "cups of tea" to its official WeChat channel; which would subject individuals to scrutiny and questioning by state security authorities, including but not limited to: endangering national security, illegally acquiring or holding state secrets, committing or assisting espionage, refusing to cooperate in an espionage investigation, leaking state secrets related to counter-espionage and intelligence works and "failing to take security precautions against spying". The MSS recruits new intelligence officers primarily from major universities, police and military academies. In March 2009, former MSS operative Li Fengzhi told

9990-500: The United States and abroad, as well as multiple foreign governments. The indictment alleges that Zhu Yunmin, Wu Shurong, Ding Xiaoyang, and Cheng Qingmin targeted the following sectors: aerospace/aviation, biomedical, defense industrial base, healthcare, manufacturing, maritime, research institutes, transportation (rail and shipping), and virus research from 2012 to 2018, on behalf of the PRC Ministry of State Security. Additionally,

10125-417: The United States on the pretense of transit visas as cultural officials. During the visit the officials made an attempt to persuade Chinese dissident Guo Wengui to return to China in order to face charges for prosecution. Guo Wengui accepted the meeting, out of apparent gratitude for one of the officials, named Liu Yanping, having previously assisted in bringing his wife to America. However, Guo Wengui recorded

10260-529: The apartment of Guo Wengui once more prior to leaving the country. While at the apartment the second time, the officials reportedly ate dumplings made by the wife of Guo Wengui, and Guo Wengui walked them out of the building after again declining their offer of clemency for silence. The FBI was aware of the second visit and agents were prepared to arrest the Chinese security officials at JFK Airport prior to their Air China flight on charges of visa fraud and extortion, but arrests were not made following pressure from

10395-466: The beginning of the end of international Communism." While Kang remained a member of the Politburo, he had no concrete role and no power base, which led him to take on a series of diverse assignments and to align himself as closely as possible with Mao, who was devising his response to de-Stalinization and its effects within the leadership of the CCP. His responses, in the Hundred Flowers and

10530-666: The border into Vietnam in February 1979 which was withdrawn four weeks later after heavy resistance by Vietnamese guerrillas bearing Soviet and American weapons. Nonetheless, head of the CCP Deng Xiaoping supported the Khmer Rouge for another ten years in exile limiting his criticism of the two million-victim genocide assessing "the domestic counterintelligence activities created a negative atmosphere, slowing down many activities and causing social problems as well as many other problems... A thorough study of this political aspect should be undertaken and concrete measures taken." At

10665-509: The calamitous red wave that overtook Mao's China would grow beyond his control. It wouldn't be until October 1978, after Mao's death in September 1976, that Hua Guofeng and Wang Dongxing would rebuild the Central Investigative Department which was officially reestablished on 28 July 1978. The organization still lacked experience or established tradecraft which would cause them a number of embarrassments. The most impactful embarrassment of

10800-482: The charges against Jiang Qing. Invoking his background as head of the Organization Department and as an expert on security and espionage matters, Kang vouched for Jiang Qing. She was a Party member in good standing, he declared, and had no affiliations that would bar marriage to Mao. Kang's personal knowledge of Jiang Qing's past was fragmentary and certainly insufficient to allow him to prove that she

10935-468: The combination of specialised groups, is a fine tradition of our Party and an effective magic weapon in our concealed front to counter traitors and prevent spies. We must carry forward this fine tradition and make new developments in the new situation. — Qiu Jin (邱进), Deputy Minister for National Security: Study and implement the anti-spy law with the overall national security concept as a guide, People's Daily (February 12, 2015) During January 2017,

11070-420: The communist bloc after Khrushchev's Secret Speech . Kang Sheng's emergence during the cultural revolution as one of the most important Maoist stalwarts suggests that…it is not unlikely that at the 8th Congress Mao saved Kang from even greater humiliation. Mao's own position was weakening, as evidenced by the decision of the CCP's Eighth Congress to delete the phrase "guided by the thought of Mao Zedong" from

11205-676: The control of the CCP and the intellectual leadership of Qu Qiubai . After about six months at the university, he joined the Communist Party Youth League. Kang then joined the Party itself. At the direction of the Party, Kang worked underground as a labor organizer. He helped organize the February 1925 strike against Japanese companies that culminated in the May 30th Movement, a huge Communist-led demonstration, and brought Kang into close contact with Party leaders Liu Shaoqi , Li Lisan and Zhang Guotao . Kang participated in

11340-590: The conversations and alerted the FBI. Subsequently, the Chinese officials were confronted by FBI agents in Pennsylvania Station , the Chinese officials initially claimed to be cultural affairs diplomats but ultimately admitted to being security officials. The Chinese officials were given a warning for their activities in New York and were ordered to return to China. Two days later, the officials again visited

11475-476: The deaths of Stalin and Beria since Kang had trained as an intelligence officer in Moscow . Li Kenong, the new head of the Social Affairs 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 . In an effort to disaffiliate the intelligence service from Kang Sheng's paranoia-driven legacy of purges,

11610-660: The department and restructured the organization that it took its final form in the merging of the preceding Special Branch, the Political Protection Bureau (which Kang Sheng had previously headed), 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

11745-426: The destructive influence of the revolution on his intelligence and security apparatus issuing in September the directive "Codes, telegrams , confidential documents , files, and secret archives are the essential secrets of the Party and State; the safeguarding of all of these elements is the responsibility of all cadres, revolutionary masses, students, and revolutionary teachers." Despite this, Kang Sheng soon found that

11880-549: The drama that was unfolding in China at the time." That "drama" included the epic retreat of the Communists from Jiangxi Province to Yan'an , which became known to history as the Long March , and the ever-growing power within the CCP of Mao Zedong . As the French military historian Jacques Guillermaz observed, The Long March helped the Chinese Communist Party to achieve a greater independence of Moscow. Everything tended in

12015-423: The end of the Cultural Revolution, as China struggled to regain its footing after a tumultuous decade, Deng Xiaoping and his fellow reformers Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang endeavored down the road of governmental reform. CCP general secretary Hu Yaobang decried Kang Sheng's destructive and paranoid legacy in a speech in November 1978 enumerating many of the crimes Kang Sheng had been found guilty of, up to and through

12150-540: The former branch of the Central Investigative Department called the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR) whose members denied any connections to the Chinese intelligence apparatus. The 9th Bureau managed the threat of enemy infiltration and MSS officer defections, the 10th Bureau worked with the State Scientific & Technological Commission and the intelligence section of

12285-435: The indictment alleges the use of front companies by the PRC Ministry of State Security to conduct cyber espionage. In July 2023, the MSS opened a WeChat account, where it wrote its first post that it wishes to popularize counterintelligence among the population and make such activity "normal" with systems of rewards. In another post in September, the MSS criticized the policies of the United States towards China, saying that

12420-445: The injustices and insults they had suffered, both real and imagined, at the hands of "the landlord bullies." Often these meetings would end with the masses, led by the land reform teams, shouting "Shoot him! Shoot him!" or "Kill! Kill! Kill!" The cadre in charge of proceedings would rule that the landlords had committed serious crimes, sentence them to death, and order that they be taken away and eliminated immediately. In November 1947,

12555-604: The intelligence departments of the Ministry of Public Security and of the People's Liberation Army . The Central Committee Investigation Department was formed in 1955 to integrate civilian intelligence services of China. In 1983, the Investigation Department and other relevant agencies were merged to form the Ministry of State Security (MSS) as its successor. The creation of the Central Social Affairs Department (SAD) followed

12690-403: The intelligence services are bastions of faith in the CCP. Although they may be practical in terms of techniques and methods to acquire intelligence, this information is filtered through a Marxist–Leninist lens. The implication is that foreign targets are viewed in the worst possible light." The MSS is a civilian agency that controls its own separate police force, the "State Security Police", which

12825-433: The invading Vietnamese army. Compounding the intelligence failure, as the invasion broke the Central Investigative Department expressed confidence to Chinese leaders that the invasion would be easily repelled and that the Chinese embassy in the capital, Phnom Penh , would be unharmed. Hoping to force a Vietnamese withdrawal from its ally Cambodia, the People's Republic of China launched their own southward invasion across

12960-497: The longest-serving Ministers of State Security was Jia Chunwang , a native of Beijing and a 1964 graduate of Tsinghua University , reportedly an admirer of the American Central Intelligence Agency ( CIA ). He served as Minister of State Security from 1985 until March 1998, when the MSS underwent an overhaul and Xu Yongyue , a former secretary of party elder Chen Yun was appointed the new head of

13095-502: The measure of Kang's psychology: a multifaceted game of mirrors was certainly his style, even in the 1930s." When Kang Sheng arrived in the Party's redoubt at Yan'an in late November 1937 as part of Wang Ming's entourage, he may have already realized that Wang Ming was falling out of favor, but he initially supported Wang and the Comintern's efforts to guide the Chinese Communists back into line with Soviet policy, especially

13230-520: The merger, as Luo Qingchang, who had been Director of the CID since 1973 and was a powerful player in Chinese Communist intelligence since the 1940s, was a fierce opponent of Deng Xiaoping. Although Deng had risen to supreme power in the late 1970s, he initially couldn't remove Luo from his post, until he finally succeeded in 1983. But even after this, Luo still remained influential as an adviser on

13365-516: 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

13500-562: The need to align with the Kuomintang against the Japanese. Kang also brought Stalin's obsession with Trotskyism to play in helping Wang defeat the efforts of Zhou Enlai and Dong Biwu to bring Chen Duxiu —then the informal leader of Trotskyists in China—;back into the Party. After assessing the situation on the ground in Yan'an, however, in 1938 Kang decided to re-align himself with Mao Zedong. Kang's motives are easy to imagine. For Mao's part, as MacFarquhar put it, Kang Sheng

13635-601: The neighboring communist party's notorious S-21 interrogation and extermination camp where around 20,000 Cambodians would be killed under Pol Pot's genocide . Within a month of Wang and Luo's return to China, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam launched a full-scale invasion of Kampuchea in response to a series of border attacks on the Liberation Army of Kampuchea . Perhaps by ideological closeness to Pol Pot and his followers, Chinese intelligence under

13770-608: The new Party constitution and by re-establishing the role of General Secretary, abolished in 1937. The dangers of exalting a single leader and the desirability of collective leadership had been perhaps the most direct point of Khrushchev's Secret Speech to the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (the "CPSU") in February 1956, in which he condemned Stalin, Stalin's methods and his cult of personality and which, according to Archie Brown, "was

13905-620: The newly reestablished Central Investigative Department (or Diaochabu ) was their inability to predict the Vietnamese invasion of the Republic of Kampuchea (today Cambodia ) in 1979. Following a visit to Democratic Kampuchea by Wang Dongxing in early November 1978, he and head of the new Central Investigative Department Luo Qinchang praised the ten-year friendship with the Khmer Rouge and helped Kaing Khek and Ta Mok to establish

14040-559: The operatives were also in contact with the Haqqani network for this job. After days of negotiations between Afghanistan and China, all of them were pardoned and were flown out of the country in a plane arranged by the Chinese government. In February 2021, The Daily Telegraph reported that Britain had expelled three MSS agents posing as journalists. In March 2021, at least six Chinese bloggers were arrested by MSS for 'insulting' People's Liberation Army Ground Force soldiers who died in

14175-544: The organization was renamed to the CCP Central Investigation Department ( Chinese : 中央调查部 ; pinyin : Zhōngyāng Diàochá Bù ) with only one SAD branch moved out to its own organization, the Legal and Administrative Work Department. In the 1950s, nearly every Chinese embassy abroad had an Investigation and Research Office, a cover for a group of intelligence officers belonging to

14310-656: The organization. Jia was largely responsible for the development of the MSS out of each of the provincial departments of state security, wherein many police officers found themselves intelligence officers the next day. Within the first year, Jia consolidated the security departments of Beijing, Fujian , Guangdong , Guangxi , Heilongjiang , Jiangsu , Liaoning , and Shanghai. Between 1985 and 1988 Jia had managed to incorporate those departments of Chongqing , Gansu , Hainan , Henan , Shaanxi , Tianjin , and Zhejiang . From 1990 to 1995, Jia incorporated security departments from Anhui , Hunan , Qinghai , and Sichuan provinces. Jia

14445-504: 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

14580-506: The patina of a theorist, and he was a fluent writer. At Yan'an, Kang was close to Jiang Qing , who may have been Kang's mistress when he visited Shandong in 1931. In Yan'an, Jiang became the lover of Mao Zedong, who later married her. In 1938, Kang earned Mao and Jiang's gratitude by supporting their liaison against the opposition of more socially conservative cadres, who were aware of her past and uncomfortable with it. Byron and Pack assert that Kang acted decisively to protect Mao and rebut

14715-486: The peasants to settle scores by killing landlords and rich peasants." In March 1947, Kang put his methods into practice in Lin County, Shanxi Province. These methods included special scrutiny and persecution of landlords known to have Communist sympathies and investigation of the backgrounds of the Party's land reform teams themselves. In April 1948, Mao singled out Kang for praise in his handling of land reform, with

14850-404: The result that Agrarian reform cut a bloody swath through much of rural China. Squads of Communist enforcers were sent to the most remote villages to organize the local petty thieves and bandits into so-called land reform teams, which inflamed the poor peasants and hired laborers against the rich. When resentment reached fever pitch, peasants at staged "grievance meetings" were encouraged to relate

14985-445: 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. In November 1927,

15120-549: The same direction—Mao Zedong's appointment as Chairman of the Party, happening as it did in unusual conditions, practical difficulties in maintaining contact, the Comintern's tendency to remain in the background to help the creation of popular fronts, under cover of patriotism or anti-fascism. In fact, after the Zunyi Conference , the Russians seem to have had less and less influence in the Chinese Communist Party's internal affairs. In light of more recent history, this

15255-421: The security interests of our country. We must take resolute measures and never allow any country or political force to infiltrate, subvert or sabotage us. But we will also never carry out infiltration, subversion, and sabotage against other countries because we are a socialist country led by the Communist Party of China, which is determined by the nature of our country.. ..The combination of public and secret, and

15390-525: The security posts, in December 1946 Kang was assigned by Mao Zedong, Zhu De and Liu Shaoqi to review the Party's land reform project in Longdong, Gansu Province. He returned after five weeks with the view that land reform needed to be more severe and that there could be no compromise with landlords. "Kang whipped up hatred for the landlords and their retainers. In the name of social justice, he encouraged

15525-456: The service with Zou Dapeng and Luo Qingchang as his deputies. Early in 1976, Mao Zedong and his defense chief Marshal Lin Biao plotted to overthrow army Chief of Staff and Deputy Prime Minister Luo Ruiqing who, despite being a lifelong supporter of the CCP and founder of the MPS, had opposed the political training in the military instituted at Mao's directive. Eager to thieve for the second time

15660-458: The time the Chinese Civil War flared up again after World War II, Kang had been replaced by his senior deputy Li Kenong as acting director. Li was officially department director in August 1949, when the SAD was dissolved and its tasks parceled out to other agencies. After the founding of the PRC, domestic counter-intelligence work was at the central level managed by the Ministry of Public Security of

15795-477: The war worsened in 1943, and the Communist area become more isolated, Kang stepped up the speed and ferocity of the purges. Kang was sufficiently brutal in his methods to arouse the opposition of senior cadres, including Zhou Enlai, Nie Rongzhen and Ye Jianying . At the same time, Mao was not keen to have a single man in such a position of power. Accordingly, following the CCP's Seventh Congress in April 1945, Kang

15930-538: Was a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official, best known for having overseen the work of the CCP's internal security and intelligence apparatus during the early 1940s and again at the height of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s and early 1970s. A member of the CCP from the early 1920s, he spent time in Moscow during the early 1930s, where he learned the methods of the Soviet NKVD and became

16065-536: Was a valuable catch for Mao as he strove to consolidate the power he had won at the Zunyi Conference in January 1935. Kang could betray all the secrets of Wang Ming and his supporters. He was au fait with Moscow politics and police/terror methods, and sufficiently fluent in Russian to act as a major contact with Soviet visitors. He had absorbed sufficient Marxism-Leninism and Stalinist polemicizing to affect

16200-477: Was behind, at Mao's behest, the attempt by Li Fuchun and Jin Maoyao to murder Wang Ming by means of mercury poisoning, although this claim remains controversial. Kang was deeply involved with the Yan'an Rectification Movement launched by Mao in February 1942, which was "central to Mao's mission of a thorough reinvention of Chinese society." As Rana Mitter writes, China's wartime existential crisis provided

16335-525: Was born Zhang Zongke but he adopted a number of pseudonyms—most notably Zhao Rong, but also (for his painting) Li Jushi—before settling on Kang Sheng in the 1930s. Some sources give his year of birth as being as early as 1893, but it has also been variously given as 1898, 1899 and 1903. Kang received his elementary education at the Guanhai school for boys and later at the German School in Qingdao. As

16470-547: Was head of the Kuomintang Central Party School in Nanjing , where he worked with Chen Lifu , head of the Kuomintang's secret service. Kang later denied he had ever been arrested, as the circumstances of his release suggested that he had, as Lu Futan alleged in 1933, "sold out his comrades" in order to secure his freedom. As Byron and Pack note, however, "Kang's arrest in itself is no proof that he

16605-515: Was listed below Peng Zhen . By the end of April he was reported in tenth place, even below Luo Fu , the only member of the 28 Bolsheviks who still held a Politburo seat. Yet on May Day of 1956—the international socialist celebration—Kang was suddenly back in sixth place. His position, at least going by public reports and official bulletins, remained unchanged from then until the Eighth Congress four months later. Kang suffered

16740-419: Was living in a state of deep fear of Mao in this period" because of his murky past, which had been raised with Mao in many letters from cadres and by the Russians, yet "[f]ar from being put off by Kang's murky past, Mao positively relished it. Like Stalin, who employed ex- Mensheviks like Vyshinsky , Mao used people's vulnerability as a way of giving himself hold over subordinates." Vladimirov believed that Kang

16875-448: Was mainly based on political calculation. Kang's familiarity with Wang Ming enabled him to provide Mao with valuable information about Wang's subservience to the Soviets. Although cadres such as Chen Yun , who had been in Moscow with Wang and Kang, were aware of Kang's previous slavish support for Wang, Kang strenuously sought to change that history and obscure previous affiliations. In addition, Mao, who in these years had not yet visited

17010-588: Was nominated Minister of State Security by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in 2016, partly as a reward for purging Zhou and his network, as well as replacing the prior minister Geng Huichang . Since CCP general secretary Xi Jinping assumed power in 2012, the MSS gained more responsibility over cyberespionage vis-à-vis the PLA, and has sponsored various advanced persistent threat groups such as Double Dragon . Starting in 2016, provincial and local state security bureaus were brought under centralized control. In October 2018,

17145-570: Was not a KMT agent, but he doctored her record, destroyed adverse material, discouraged hostile witnesses, and coached her on how to answer the probing questions of high-level interrogators who hoped to discredit Mao. This episode is believed by many to have been key to Kang's future success, which depended not only on his considerable talents but also on his relationship with Mao. In addition to politics, Kang and Mao also shared an interest in classical culture, including poetry, painting and calligraphy. Mao's relationship with Kang, in Yan'an and later,

17280-536: Was perhaps one of the major consequences of the Long March. Wang Ming's influence over the main Communist forces was minimal after Mao Zedong's emergence from the Zunyi Conference of January 1935 as the undisputed head of the Party. From Moscow, Wang and Kang did seek to maintain control over Communist forces in Manchuria , which were ordered by them to conserve their strength and avoid direct confrontation with

17415-537: Was replaced as head of both the Social Affairs Department and the Military Intelligence Department. Byron and Pack write that "In spite of Kang's decline, his influence on the security and intelligence system was visible for decades to come. The methods he popularized in Yan'an shaped public security work through the Cultural Revolution and beyond." Moreover, [f]or many victims of Rectification, release and rehabilitation in 1945 after

17550-555: Was reported during Congressional testimony that the FBI had informed Twitter of at least one MSS agent on its payroll. Central Social Affairs Department The Central Social Affairs Department ( Chinese : 中国共产党中央委员会社会部 ) was the intelligence and counter-intelligence agency of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee from 1939 to 1949, prior to the establishment of the People's Republic of China . Its successors include

17685-456: Was responsible for nearby areas the People's Republic of China wished to draw back into the CCP's control: Hong Kong , Taiwan, and Macau . The 4th Bureau focused on the technical aspects of espionage, the 5th Bureau for local intelligence, the 6th Bureau for counterintelligence, the 7th Bureau that conducted surveillance or special operations , and the 8th Bureau engaged in research through open sources ( OSINT ). The 8th Bureau took control over

17820-676: Was suffering from schizophrenia . Writing before Li's book was published, Byron and Pack offered other possible diagnoses based on symptoms Kang seems to have displayed, including manic-depressive psychosis and temporal lobe epilepsy. Kang's re-emergence on the political stage in the mid-1950s occurred at roughly at the same time as the Gao Gang -Rao Shushi Affair and the affair of Yu Bingbo . Faligot and Kauffer see these affairs as each showing signs of involvement by Kang Sheng, who they believe used them as means to return to power. In January 1956, Kang made his first public appearance in years at

17955-568: Was then appointed to the Minister of Public Security post, after 13 years as head of the MSS. After becoming the secretary of Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission in 2007, the MSS was under the command and influence of Zhou Yongkang until his ouster and conviction for corruption in 2014. One of the people responsible for "taking down" Zhou Yongkang was Chen Wenqing of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection , who

18090-453: Was to become a lifelong political ally. He entered the employment of Yu Qiaqing , a wealthy businessman with strong Kuomintang sympathies, as Yu's personal secretary. At the same time, Kang remained an active but secret Party organizer, and was named to the Party's new Jiangsu Provincial Committee in June 1927. In the late 1920s, Kang worked closely with Li Lisan, who had been made head of

18225-417: Was turned by his captors or forced into long-term cooperation with them. KMT [Kuomintang] prisons were notoriously chaotic and corrupt." After Li Lisan's adventurism and the failed Changsha operation of June 1930 lost Li the support of the Party, Kang moved adroitly to align himself with the Comintern's new favorite, Wang Ming , and Pavel Mif 's young students from Sun Yat-sen University , later known as

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