Origins of the CCP's Security Services (expanded) (original) (raw)
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Chinese Intelligence Work, an Abbreviated History
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) intelligence system is focused on technology acquisition, political and military intelligence, and counter-subversion, using some techniques familiar in the West but others that are less so. Chinese historical models, Soviet techniques, Western practices, and the recent evolution of work under the CCP have all shaped today’s intelligence and counterintelligence (CI) community, including the Ministry of State Security (MSS, Guojia Anquanbu), the smaller CI effort under the Ministry of Public Security (MPS, Gonganbu), and the specialized collection efforts of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and other government bodies. A striking characteristic of the Chinese system since 1979 is the broad “actuarial” tasking employed for technology acquisition.
This comprehensive volume traces the Chinese military and its experiences over the past 2,500 years, describing clashes with other kingdoms and nations as well as internal rebellions and revolutions. As the first book of its kind, China at War: An Encyclopedia expands far beyond the conventional military history book that is focused on describing key wars, battles, military leaders, and influential events. Author Xiaobing Li—an expert writer in the subjects of Asian history and military affairs—provides not only a broad, chronological account of China's long military history, but also addresses Chinese values, concepts, and attitudes regarding war. As a result, readers can better understand the wider sociopolitical history of the most populous and one of the largest countries in the world—and grasp the complex security concerns and strategic calculations often behind China's decision-making process. This encyclopedia contains an introductory essay written to place the reference entries within a larger contextual framework, allowing students to compare Chinese with Western and American views and approaches to war. Topics among the hundreds of entries by experts in the field include Sunzi's classic The Art of War, Mao Zedong's guerrilla warfare in the 20th century, Chinese involvement in the Korean War and Vietnam War, and China's nuclear program in the 21st century. Features •Approximately 300 A–Z entries covering China's military tradition over the past 2,500 years •Contributions from over 50 distinguished international scholars from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Great Britain, Canada, and the United States •Maps of China and Asia, depicting provinces and major cities, major battles and campaigns, and disputed borders •Photographs of military leaders, soldiers, weapon systems, and battle grounds •Selected multicultural bibliography of research materials from the field of military history, both in English and in Chinese •A helpful appendix of Chinese dynasties Highlights •Provides broad coverage of 2,500 years of Chinese military history, offering material with contemporary relevance consolidated in one convenient volume •Expands beyond the military perspective to describe the overall Chinese civilization, addressing a variety of political, economic, social, and foreign relations topics •Presents a uniquely Chinese perspective through cross-cultural comparison and explorations of untold stories from "the other side," including Communist doctrine and operational tactics
Chinese cryptography: The Chinese Nationalist Party and Intelligence Management, 1927–1949
Cryptologia, 2018
This paper is the first scholarly attempt to examine the history of Chinese cryptography and the role it played in building the intelligence network of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) from 1927 to 1949. Rather than investigating the institutional structure of intelligence, I focus on Chinese characters, the primary medium that made cryptology and intelligence possible. Given that the Chinese writing system is by nature nonalphabetic and thus noncipherable, how did cryptography work in Chinese? How did the state and its scientists reengineer Chinese characters for the purposes of secret communication? This paper argues that due to the Chinese writing system itself, Chinese cryptography was bound to the use of codebooks rather than ciphers; thus, “codebook management” was central to building intelligence networks in China.
The Origins and Growth of the Chinese Communist Movement
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History, 2018
When the origins and development of the Chinese Communist Movement before it seized the state power in 1949 are examined, while conventionally the movement is periodized according to its respective main task of struggle, it can also be divided into four distinct phases in reference to the dominant ethos and style in each phase. To avoid the movement-centric pitfalls, it can be shown how the structural circumstances and organizational ecologies in each phase conditioned the fashioning of its dominant ethos. In its earliest phase, a failing parliamentary politics with relatively strong civil society and weak state institutions thus shaped its ethos as a social movement led by intellectuals, with sprawling networks but loose coordination. After being purged and outlawed by the Kuomintang, the movement began to bifurcate into two segments, one dedicating to urban clandestine activities and the other capitalizing on the state devolution in the countryside. The KMT's incremental state building efforts narrowed the space of the movement, until it came almost to the brink of organizational extinction, even though its intellectual fellow travelers had helped score much success in ideological and cultural domains. The forced retreat of the Long March inaugurated a third phase of exploration and openness, when the movement regained its legal activities and attracted broadening support from a variety of social sectors. Yet, the scrambling of resources as a result of the structure of triadic conflicts with Japan and the KMT ended that phase of exploration and openness. A new phase of internal tightening and external softening cemented its hegemony yet also consolidated and institutionalized a leader-centric organizational culture that partly mirrored its competitor and partly borrowed from the Soviet template. Tracing its transformation from a social movement to an institution with its own organizational myths, rituals and rules, the teleological narrative gives way to an emphasis on the contingent interactions between its organizational environment and its internal evolution. Such a viewpoint also underscores the politics of interpretation in the formation of its organizational power and authority.