Global Watch | How Chinese spy agency MSS disrupts the world

China’s premier spy agency Ministry for State Security (MSS) has been on the forefront of setting up and running a ruthless global espionage and counter-espionage network.

MSS was set up in 1983 to bring together multiple agencies which were already functional so that Chinese spy networks could work more cohesively as well as ruthlessly.

Officially the proposal to set up this agency was brought by Zhao Ziyang at the first session of the sixth National People’s Congress (NPC) on June 20, 1983. The NPC can be broadly termed as the Parliament of China.

Ziyang proposed the establishment of a state security ministry “to protect the security of the state and strengthen China’s counterespionage work.” The NPC approved it and voted to appoint Ling Yun as the first minister.

The inaugural meeting of the MSS was held on 1 July, 1983 to announce the formal establishment of the. The opening speech was delivered by chairman Chen Pixian of the ‘Central Political-Legal Commission’ one of the key bodies of CCP. He categorically said, “Doing state security work well will effectively promote socialist modernisation and the cause of realising the unification of the motherland opposing hegemonism, and defending world peace.” The Chinese intent was clear: MSS would be its ace espionage and counter-intelligence agency.

Since President Xi Jinping took over the reins of the Chinese Communist Party(CCP) and the Chinese establishment in 2012, MSS has been endowed with even greater authority and its sphere of influence has increased significantly. In Xi Jinping’s scheme of things, Chinese espionage agencies, especially MSS, lead from the front to change the existing world order.

Since the remit of China’s intelligence agencies is much broader than those of Western nations, they need more resources, and Xi Jinping has made sure they receive them, say Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg in Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World.

Roger Faligot (Chinese Spies: From Chairman Mao to Xi Jinping) has written, there has been a “formidable increase in the authority of the Chinese intelligence apparatus, specifically since 2017”.

The MSS indulges in all kinds of dubious clandestine activities including sabotage, industrial espionage, theft of technology. It has created several fronts in the form of think tanks and trade and cultural bodies to carry out such activities. The prominent among them are China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, China Reform Forum and Chinese Association for the Promotion of Cultural Exchange and Cooperation.

Structure of MSS

Last known, MSS has 18 bureaus spread over at least four compounds in Beijing serving as their headquarters and then they have provincial and other local networks within China as well as a global network. The functions of many of them are not yet known. China Institute of Contemporary International Relations is the public façade of 11th bureau of MSS. Peter Mattis and Matthew Brazil have painstakingly gathered some details about these bureaus in ‘Chinese Communist Espionage: A Primer’ such as:

“• First Bureau: “secret line” operations by MSS officers not under covers associated with Chinese government organisations

• Second Bureau: “open line” operations by MSS officers using diplomatic, journalistic, or other government-related covers
• Fourth Bureau: Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau
• Fifth Bureau: Report Analysis and Dissemination
• Seventh Bureau: Counterespionage Intelligence

Bureau, gathers information and develops intelligence on hostile intelligence services inside and outside China

• Eighth Bureau: Counterespionage Investigation,

runs investigations to detect and apprehend foreign spies in China

• Ninth Bureau: Internal Protection and Reconnaissance Bureau, supervises and monitors foreign entities and reactionary organisations in China to prevent espionage
• Tenth Bureau: Foreign Security and Reconnaissance Bureau, manages Chinese student organisations and other entities overseas and investigates the activities of reactionary organisations abroad
• Eleventh Bureau: China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, performs open-source research, translation, and analysis. Its analysts also meet regularly with foreign delegations and spend time abroad as visiting fellows.
• Twelfth Bureau: Social Affairs or Social Investigation Bureau, handles MSS contributions to the CCP’s united front work System (also known as United Front Works Department-UFWD, which is another major espionage network of Chinese government and CCP)
• Thirteenth Bureau: Network Security and Exploitation (also knownas the China Information Technology Evaluation Center, manages the research and development of other investigative equipment
• Fourteenth Bureau: Technical Reconnaissance Bureau, conducts mail inspection and telecommunications inspection and control
• Fifteenth Bureau: Taiwan operations linked to the broader Taiwan Affairs work system. Its public face is the Institute of Taiwan Studies at the China Academy of Social Sciences.
• Eighteenth Bureau: US Operations Bureau for conducting and managing clandestine intelligence operations against the United States.”

There is hardly any information about the real work done by the third, sixth, sixteenth and seventeenth bureau of the MSS.

According to an online report by China Digital published in 2015, the MSS had a strength of one lakh ‘spies’. Around 60,000 of them worked within China while 40,000 of them were working in other countries for China.

Explaining this mammoth size and the massive expansion of MSS, Mattis and Brazil  elaborated, “The expansion occurred in four waves. The original departments (or those created within the first year) appeared to be the municipal bureaus or provincial departments of state security for Beijing, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Heilongjiang, Jiangsu, Liaoning, and Shanghai. A second wave appeared shortly thereafter between 1985 and 1988, including Chongqing, Gansu, Hainan, Henan, Shaanxi, Tianjin, and Zhejiang. The third wave from 1990 to 1995 completed the expansion of the ministry across the country at provincial levels, bringing in Anhui, Hunan, Qinghai, and Sichuan provinces.161 The fourth wave of MSS expansion was vertical. The provincial-level departments either took over local public security bureaus or established subordinate municipal or county bureaus. For many local PSB officers, they were police one day and state security the next. When MSS minister Jia left in 1998 for the MPS, the MSS was a nationwide organisation at every level.”

“From the national level to the local levels, the MSS and its subordinate departments and bureaus report to a system of leading small groups, coordinating offices, and commissions to guide security work while lessening the risk of politicisation on behalf of CCP leaders. At present, the two most important of these are the Political-Legal Commission and the Central State Security Commission.”

Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg have mentioned in Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World, “It was reported in 2005 that the FBI believed the MSS had set up around 3000 front companies to conceal its activities. The MSS has various arms engaged in economic espionage and it has ‘embedded itself deep in major financial and commercial organisations, particularly in Shanghai and Hong Kong’. Not all economic espionage is state-directed. Chinese nationals are known to set up firms that take orders from companies in China to obtain and supply specific pieces of intellectual property from their competitors in the West, usually by identifying an employee willing to provide such secrets.”

Bloody Purge within MSS

While MSS has successfully infiltrated a large number of spy agencies of other countries, it also suffered a major setback when in 2010, it was revealed that there are a number of Central Intelligence Agency(CIA) moles working in China and MSS for the American agency.

This led to a bloody purge within MSS. The CIA assets were exposed because of a botched-up communication system of the US spy agency. It reportedly used the same equipment in China which it was using to communicate with its operatives in the middle east. But the Chinese spy agency was much more efficient than the middle east and the CIA underestimated its tech capability. MSS was able to crack this communication network. According to various reports, anywhere between one dozen to two dozen operatives of the CIA were rounded up and executed over a period of two years by the MSS. The CIA did manage to take out many of its ‘assets’ but it had to suffer a major loss.

According to a report published in the journal Foreign Policy in 2018, “It was considered one of the CIA’s worst failures in decades: Over a two-year period starting in late 2010, Chinese authorities systematically dismantled the agency’s network of agents across the country, executing dozens of suspected US spies.”

Recruitment and working pattern

One of the key methods deployed by MSS is to use the Chinese diaspora to create assets in other countries. Its first bureau plays a significant role in this regard. A survey done by the US-based Centre for Strategic Studies gives an indication about MSS’ approach towards espionage. This survey listed 160 publicly reported instances of Chinese espionage directed at the United States since 2000. According to the survey report:

• 42% of actors were Chinese military or government employees.
• 32% were private Chinese citizens.
• 26% were non-Chinese actors (usually U.S. persons recruited by Chinese officials)
• 34% of incidents sought to acquire military technology.
• 51% of incidents sought to acquire commercial technologies.
• 16% of incidents sought to acquire information on U.S. civilian agencies or politicians.
• 41% of incidents involved cyber espionage, usually by State-affiliated actors.

According to Hamilton and Ohlberg, “Ego, sex, ideology, patriotism, and especially money are all exploited by China’s intelligence services to recruit spies. In 2017 an FBI employee, Kun Shan Chun (Joey Chun), was convicted of supplying information about the bureau’s organisation and operations to Chinese agents, in exchange for free international travel and visits to prostitutes. Among those who spy for China, ideology is a factor mainly for people of Chinese heritage (unlike during the Cold War, when Westerners spied for the USSR for ideological reasons). Beijing also deploys the threat of punishment of family members in China if a target refuses to cooperate.

(This is part 3 of the China Spy Games Series.)

Read part one- From ‘Guoanbu’ to Xinhua, how China’s espionage network operates in shadows   Read part two- George Soros and Chinese spy agency worked together as comrades  

The writer, an author and columnist, has written several books. He tweets @ArunAnandLive. Views expressed are personal. 

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