The historical dictionaries present essential information on a broad range of subjects, including American and world history, art, business, cities, countries, cultures, customs, film, global conflicts, international relations, literature, music, philosophy, religion, sports, and theater. Written by experts, all contain highly informative introductory essays of the topic and detailed chronologies that, in some cases, cover vast historical time periods but still manage to heavily feature more recent events.

Brief A–Z entries describe the main people, events, politics, social issues, institutions, and policies that make the topic unique, and entries are cross-referenced for ease of browsing. Extensive bibliographies are divided into several general subject areas, providing excellent access points for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more. Additionally, maps, photographs, and appendixes of supplemental information aid high school and college students doing term papers or introductory research projects. In short, the historical dictionaries are the perfect starting point for anyone looking to research in these fields.

HISTORICAL DICTIONARIES OF INTELLIGENCE AND COUNTERINTELLIGENCE

Jon Woronoff, Series Editor

British Intelligence, by Nigel West, 2005.

United States Intelligence, by Michael A. Turner, 2006.

Israeli Intelligence, by Ephraim Kahana, 2006.

International Intelligence, by Nigel West, 2006.

Russian and Soviet Intelligence, by Robert W. Pringle, 2006.

Cold War Counterintelligence, by Nigel West, 2007.

World War II Intelligence, by Nigel West, 2008.

Sexspionage, by Nigel West, 2009.

Air Intelligence, by Glenmore S. Trenear-Harvey, 2009.

Middle Eastern Intelligence, by Ephraim Kahana and Muhammad Suwaed, 2009.

German Intelligence, by Jefferson Adams, 2009.

Ian Fleming’s World of Intelligence: Fact and Fiction, by Nigel West, 2009.

Naval Intelligence, by Nigel West, 2010.

Atomic Espionage, by Glenmore S. Trenear-Harvey, 2011.

Chinese Intelligence, by I. C. Smith and Nigel West, 2012.

Historical Dictionary of Chinese Intelligence

I. C. Smith and Nigel West

The Scarecrow Press, Inc.

Lanham • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

2012

Published by Scarecrow Press, Inc.

A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

www.rowman.com

10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom

Copyright © 2012 by I. C. Smith and Nigel West

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Smith, I. C. (Ivian C.)

Historical dictionary of Chinese intelligence / I. C. Smith, Nigel West.

p. cm. — (Historical dictionaries of intelligence and counterintelligence)

Summary: “The Historical Dictionary of Chinese Intelligence covers the history of Chinese Intelligence from 400 B.C. to modern times. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, an extensive bibliography, and an index. The dictionary section has over 400 cross-referenced entries on the agencies and agents, the operations and equipment, the tradecraft and jargon, and many of the countries involved. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Chinese Intelligence”— Provided by publisher.

Summary: “historical dictionary in intelligence series (with index)”— Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8108-7174-8 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-8108-7370-4 (ebook)

1. Intelligence service—China—History—Dictionaries. 2. Military intelligence—China—History—Dictionaries. I. West, Nigel. II. Title. 

JQ1519.5.I6S65 2012

327.1251003—dc23

2012000920

™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

A hundred ounces of silver spent for information

may save ten thousand spent on war.

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

The Counterintelligence Community considers the

People’s Republic of China to be one of the most

aggressive countries targeting U.S. military, political,

and economic secrets as well as sensitive U.S. trade

secrets and technologies.

Dennis C. Blair, Director of National IntelligenceMay 2009 

China is stealing our secrets in an effort to leap

ahead in terms of its military technology but also the

economic capability of China. It is a substantial threat.

Robert Mueller, FBI DirectorJune 2007

Chinese actors are the world’s most active and

persistent perpetrators of economic espionage.

Office of the National Counterintelligence ExecutiveNovember 2011

The reason that it is always ethnic Chinese who seem

to be involved in Chinese intelligence matters is that

they typically are the only ones China asks for assistance.

Dr. Paul MooreNew York Times, September 1999

Acknowledgments

During the course of their research, the authors received support from numerous intelligence officers and their agents, and they owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Paul Moore, Richard Richardson, Colonel Mark Stokes, and T. P. Sym. In addition, the Historical Dictionary series editor, Jon Woronoff, has given unstinting assistance.

Editor’s Foreword

Chinese intelligence, as this book amply shows, is not quite like any other form of intelligence in other countries, East or West. First of all, China itself is “divided” in a sense, in that there is the Communist-dominated People’s Republic of China, the presently democratic but earlier Kuomintang-dominated Republic of China, better known as Taiwan, lesser bits like Hong Kong and Macao, which are being reintegrated in the motherland but were previously fairly autonomous, and a huge community of overseas Chinese located in many East Asian countries and now increasingly in Europe and the United States. These were all the source of espionage, sometimes against one another, as for Beijing versus Taipei, or against any number of other countries, including the Soviet Union, an earlier ally, which has since transmuted into the rival, Russia. Once this scenario was fairly simple, during the Cold War at least, when China was an opponent to Western countries, but now that it is supposedly a friend and even partner, it has become incredibly complex with the target being less military and more commercial. That it can make sense of all this is a great achievement of the Historical Dictionary of Chinese Intelligence.

In order to make sense of it all, it is necessary to embed the intelligence scene in the broader historical, political, and economic context, which is done to some extent in the chronology but then more painstakingly in the introduction, with both of these sections obviously also taking a good look at the many twists and turns of Chinese intelligence in the broader sense, namely intelligence regarding all of the many Chinas. The details are then provided in the dictionary section, with entries on numerous persons, including top politicians from the chairman or president on down, since intelligence was and is regarded as too important and sensitive to be left entirely to professionals. But professionals there were, many of them in the Chinas and their maze of security organizations, and of course in the target countries, primarily at present the United States but many others as well, with each of these getting a specific entry. Finally, the entries on numerous cases, many of them ending “successfully” for China’s opponents in the sense that the spies got caught . . . but not before they had managed to get masses of information and some crucial secrets. And, what is not said and could not be said but constantly occurs to the reader, if there were so many cases and the spies were so hard to entrap, how many more cases must there be in which they got away with or indeed are still getting away with it? This being said, do not forget that, devious and misunderstood though it may be, many useful books have been written on the topic, and they can be found in the bibliography.

This book was written by the fascinating team of I. C. Smith and Nigel West. I. C. Smith certainly knows the situation from inside, having worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation for a quarter-century, during which time he developed considerable familiarity with intelligence as practiced by the People’s Republic of China and was crucial in several major cases included in this book. After retirement, among other things, he became an analyst of and commentator on the broader threat to the United States of China’s growing presence and influence. To give his personal views, in 2004, he published his autobiography, Inside. His coauthor, Nigel West, has always been interested in Chinese intelligence as part of his ongoing study of intelligence in general, as reflected by a series of books he has written over the past several decades, including a half-dozen in this series. He is widely known as an experts’ expert on espionage, and this title fills one of the few remaining gaps. Between them, they provide a good deal of insight, which is of great interest to specialists and amateurs but also some food for thought, which could certainly be useful to all of us.

Jon Woronoff

Series Editor

 

Reader’s Note

China is the name of several different states, including Imperial China, the Republic of China (ROC), and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), but in these pages, the ROC will be referred to as Taiwan, and for brevity, China will be used for both Imperial China and the PRC. Similarly, South Korea will be used for the Republic of Korea (ROK), and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) will be referred to as North Korea.

On 11 February 1958, the Fifth Session of the First National People’s Congress in the PRC adopted the Hanyu Pinyin Romanization system for Standard Mandarin, replacing the Wade-Giles and other systems of Romanization. Hanyu means the “Chinese language,” and Pinyin literally means “spelling sound.” The PRC approved the changes to improve the literacy rate among adults and to remove the vestiges of China’s past, which had been dominated by foreign powers and the government of the defeated Koumintang (KMT). Overnight, officially, “Mao Tse-tung” became “Mao Zedong,” “Chou En-lai” became “Zhou Enlai,” “Canton” became “Guangzhou,” and “Peking” became “Beijing.” Some names remained the same, such as Kang Sheng and Shanghai. The authors herein will use the Pinyin Romanization, except for historical figures, such as Yan Shih-kai, and individuals associated with the KMT, like Chiang Kai-shek, Tai Li, and Sun Yat-sen.

We will also use the Chinese method of writing Chinese names beginning with family names (surnames) followed by given names. Again, using Mao Zedong as an example, Mao is the family name followed by the given name of Zedong.

This can be somewhat confusing as Overseas Chinese (those living outside China) frequently adopt Anglicized names and the Western practice of using given (or first) names followed by surnames with their Chinese names. For example, Larry Wu-tai Chin’s Chinese name is Jin Wudai. There is also an inconsistency among Overseas Chinese in how they use their names. For instance, Wen Ho Lee (Lee being his family name) adopted the Western method of writing his name while Min Gwo Bao did not, so Min is the family name. The authors will simply use the same names as practiced by the individuals themselves and, when necessary, cross-reference those names to ensure completeness. As Chinese names have the family name first and the given name last, Mao Zedong will appear under the letter M, and Chiang Kai-shek will be found under the letter C, not K.

To make the dictionary easier to use, there are plenty of cross-references, and any item that has its own entry is printed in bold. Any other related entries are mentioned as See also.

 

Acronyms and Abbreviations

 

ACSEJ	Association of Chinese Scientists and Engineers in Japan
AFSA	Armed Forces Security Agency
AFSS	Air Force Security Service
APT	Advanced persistent threat
ASA	Army Security Agency
ASIO	Australian Security Intelligence Organisation
BAAG	British Army Aid Group
BEW	Board of Economic Warfare
BfV	Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution)
BIIR	Beijing Institute of International Relations
BISE	Beijing Institute of Systems Engineering
CAC	China Aerospace Corporation
CAEIT	China Academy of Electronics and Information Technology
CAEP	China Academy of Engineering Physics
CAT	Civil Air Transport
CCP	Chinese Communist Party
CDIC	Central Discipline Inspection Commission
CDSA	Central Department of Social Affairs
CHICOM	Chinese Communist
CHIS	Chinese Intelligence Service
CIA	Central Intelligence Agency
CICIR	China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations
CID	Central Investigation Department
CIFE	Combined Intelligence Far East
CIG	Central Intelligence Group
CIISS	China Institute of International Strategic Studies
CITSC	China Information Technology Security Center
CMC	Central Military Commission
CNEIC	China Nuclear Energy Industry Corporation
CNNC	China National Nuclear Corporation
CNPC	China National Petroleum Company
COCOM	Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls
COSTIND	Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense
CP	Communist Party
CPSU	Communist Party of the Soviet Union
CPUSA	Communist Party of the United States of America
CSIS	Canadian Security Intelligence Service
CSS	China surface-to-surface missile
CSSA	Chinese Students and Scholars Association
CSTO	Collective Security Treaty Organization
CT	Chinese terrorist
DCI	Director of central intelligence
DCIS	Defense Criminal Investigative Service
DDO	Deputy director for operations
DF	Dong Fang
DGSE	Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure
DIA	Defense Intelligence Agency
DNC	Democratic National Committee
DO	Directorate of Operations
DoE	Department of Energy
DPRK	Democratic People’s Republic of (North) Korea
DSB	Director Hong Kong Special Branch
DSD	Defence Signals Directorate
EAGLE	Export and Anti-proliferation Global Law Enforcement
ECRIEE	East China Research Institute of Electronic Engineering
ELINT	Electronic intelligence
FBI	Federal Bureau of Investigation
FBIS	Foreign Broadcast Information Service
FECB	Far East Combined Bureau
FISA	Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, 1978
FISC	Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
FLI	Foreign Language Institute
FSB	Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti (Russian Federal Security Service)
FSO	Foreign Service officer
GC&CS	Government Code and Cypher School
GCHQ	Government Communications Headquarters
GRU	Glavnoe Razvedyvatel’noe Upravlenie (Soviet Military Intelligence Service)
GSD/PLA	General Staff Department of the People’s Liberation Army
HASP	High Altitude Sampling Program
HCUA	House Committee on Un-American Activities
HKP	Hong Kong Police
HVA	Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung (East German foreign intelligence service)
IAD	Istrebitel’naia Aviatsonnaia Diviziaa (Fighter Aviation Regiment)
IAPCM	Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics
IBMND	Intelligence Bureau of the Ministry of National Defense
ICBM	Intercontinental ballistic missile
ICE	Immigration and Customs Enforcement
IIR	Institute of International Relations
ILD	International Liaison Department
ILD/PLA	International Liaison Department of the People’s Liberation Army
INER	Institute of Nuclear Energy Research
IPR	Institute of Pacific Relations
IRBM	Intermediate-range ballistic missile
ISLD	Inter-Services Liaison Department
JSSL	Joint Services School for Linguists
KGB	Komitei Gosudarstevnnoi Bezopasnosti (Soviet intelligence service)
KIS	Kuomintang Intelligence Service
KMT	Kuomintang
KPD	Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (German Communist Party)
Legat	Legal attaché
LLVI	Low-level voice intercept
MCP	Malayan Communist Party
MEI	Ministry of Electronics Industry
MI5	British Security Service
MI6	British Secret Intelligence Service
MI9	British Escape and Evasion Service
MIB	Military Intelligence Bureau
MID	Military Intelligence Department
MIRV	Muliple Independent Reentry Vehicle
MoD	Ministry of Defence
MPAJA	Malayan Peoples’ Anti-Japanese Army
MPS	Ministry of Public Security
MRBM	Medium-range ballistic missile
MRV	Multiple reentry vehicle
MSS	Ministry of State Security
NASA	National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NATO	North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NCIS	Naval Criminal Investigative Service
NCIX	National Counterintelligence Executive
NCNA	New China News Agency
NIPRNET	Non-secure Internet Protocol Router Network
NIS	National Intelligence Service (South Korea)
NIS	Naval Investigative Service
NKVD	Narodni Kommisariat Vnutrennih Dei (Soviet Intelligence Service)
NOC	Non-official cover
NRSC	National Remote Sensing Center
NSA	National Security Agency
NSB	National Security Bureau (Taiwan)
NSCN	National Socialist Council of Nagalim
NSD	National Security Division
NWIEE	Northwest Institute of Electronic Equipment
OGPU	Obyeddinenoye Gosudarstvennoye Politischekoye Upravlenie (Soviet intelligence service)
OMS	Foreign Liaison Department of the Comintern
ONI	Office of Naval Intelligence
ORE	Office of Research and Estimates
OSO	Office of Special Operations
OSS	Office of Strategic Services
PDA	Personal digital assistant
PLA	People’s Liberation Army
PLAAF	People’s Liberation Army Air Force
PoW	Prisoner of war
PRC	People’s Republic of China
PVA	People’s Volunteer Army
PVDE	Polícia de Vigilância e de Defesa do Estado (Portuguese secret police)
QED	Quiet electric drive
RAF	Royal Air Force
RAT	Remote access tool
RATS	Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure
RAW	Research and Analysis Wing (Indian intelligence service)
RCMP	Royal Canadian Mounted Police
RHKP	Royal Hong Kong Police
RII	Resources Investigation Institute
ROC	Republic of China
ROK	Republic of Korea
RSM	Radio Squadron Mobile
SA	Sturmabteilung
SACO	Sino-American Cooperative Organization
SAM	Surface-to-air missile
SCO	Shanghai Cooperation Organization
SDS	Students for a Democratic Society
SIS	Secret Intelligence Service
SLBM	Submarine-launched ballistic missile
SLO	Security liaison officer
SOAS	School of Oriental and African Studies
SOE	Special Operations Executive
SRBM	Short-range ballistic missile
SRW	Strategic Reconnaissance Wing
SSD	State Security Department (North Korea)
SSTC	State Science and Technology Commission
SSU	Strategic Services Unit
STS	Special training school
SVR	Sluzhba Vnezhney Razvedki (Russian Federation intelligence service)
SWIEE	Southwest Institute of Electronic Equipment
SWIET	Southwest Institute of Electronics Technology
SWW	Sluzba Wywiadu Wojskowego (Polish foreign intelligence service)
TACAN	Tactical air navigation system
UAP	United Australia Party
UAV	Unmanned aerial vehicle
UFD	United Front Department
VLSIC	Very large-scale integrated circuit

 

 

Map of China, courtesy of the CIA’s The World Factbook, 2010

Chronology

400 BC Sun Tzu writes The Art of War.

625 Empress Wu Chao creates China’s first intelligence agency.

1839 First Opium War breaks out.

1856 Second Opium War results in foreign concessions granted in Shanghai and Kowloon opposite Hong Kong.

1894 The First Sino-Japanese War begins over control of Korea.

1895 The Qing Dynasty, defeated by Japan, sues for peace.

1898 The Boxer Uprising begins in an attempt to expel all foreigners from China.

1901 The Boxer Protocol signed with China paying huge indemnities to eight nations for damages incurred during the Boxer Uprising.

1902 Anglo-Japanese Alliance formed.

1904 Russo-Japanese War begins.

1905 Japan wins Russian concessions in South Manchuria. Sun Yat-sen forms the revolutionary Alliance Society in Tokyo.

1906 Ralph Van Deman visits Peking to collect intelligence about the city’s fortifications.

1908 Pu Yi, aged just 2 years and 10 months, named emperor of China.

1911 The Qing (Manchu) Dynasty collapses after 2,000 years of imperial rule. Sun Yat-sen returns from Hawaii to be first president of the republic.

1912 The First Chinese Republic is proclaimed with Sun Yat-sen as president when Pu Yi abdicates his imperial throne following nationwide elections. Founding of the Kuomintang (KMT) or Nationalist Party.

1913 Nationalist party leader, Song Jiaoren, assassinated in Shanghai as he boards a train for Peking to head a coalition democratic government.

1915 Xin Qingnian (New Youth) magazine founded by Chen Duxiu and becomes the focus of revolutionary youth, with Mao Zedong contributing articles under a pseudonym.

1916 The warlord era begins in China following the death of Yuan Shih-kai.

1917 Pu Yi installed as emperor for 12 days by warlord general Zhang Yun.

1918 Agnes Smedley indicted on espionage charges.

1919 The May Fourth Movement organizes widespread protests against the Japanese and the signing of the Versailles Treaty.

1920 Mao Zedong, while teaching in an elementary school, starts a Communist Party cell in Changsha, Hunan Province.

1921 The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) founded in Shanghai. Soviet agents establish a rezidentura in Peking.

1922 Kang Sheng flees to Germany and later meets Zhou Enlai in France.

1923 The Nationalist Party (KMT) is revitalized by Sun Yat-sen with guidance from Comintern agent Mikhail Borodin.

1924 Sun Yat-sen proclaims an alliance between the KMT and Communists. Already a Communist, Zhou Enlai returns to China from France to be appointed Dai Jitao’s deputy of the Nationalist Party’s political department.

1925 Sun Yat-sen dies, and his designated successor Liao Zhongkai is assassinated by the Green gang from Shanghai. Chiang Kai-shek succeeds him as head of the Nationalist Party.

1926 Deng Xiaoping returns to China after studying in Moscow.

1927 Peking police raid the Soviet consulate. Chiang Kai-shek breaks with Moscow and attempts to annihilate the CCP with a severe crackdown in Shanghai and other cities.

1928 Agnes Smedley travels to China. Tai Li appointed head of Chiang Kai-shek’s Clandestine Investigation Section.

1929 Mao Zedong creates first Chinese Soviet republic in Jiangxi Province. The Malayan Communist Party created. The Soviet consulate in Harbin raided by Chinese police.

1930 Richard Sorge posted to Shanghai.

1931 Hilaire Noulens arrested in Shanghai. HMS Poseidon sunk. Japan invades Manchuria. Nationalist Armies commanded by Chiang Kai-shek encircle the Jiangxi Soviet in an attempt to destroy the CCP.

1932 The Far East Combined Bureau (FECB) begins cryptographic operations on Stonecutter’s Island, Hong Kong. Pu Yi installed as ruler of Manchuko by the Japanese.

1933 Richard Sorge leaves Shanghai for Tokyo.

1934 The British Government Code and Cipher School intercepts and reads MASK, the Comintern’s wireless traffic exchanged between Moscow and Shanghai. Chiang Kai-shek’s German-trained officers drive the Communists out of Jiangxi, and the Long March to northwest China begins.

1935 Mao Zedong assumes leadership over the Red Army during the Long March. The U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence establishes a network with Tai Li to spy on the Japanese.

1936 Chiang Kai-shek abducted in the Xi’an Incident. Kang Sheng visits Paris for the Comintern.

1937 The MASK intercepts are terminated. Kang Sheng returns to China after four years in the Soviet Union. China signs a nonaggression pact with Moscow. The Second Sino-Japanese War begins as Japan invades Manchuria.

1938 Kang Sheng heads the Central Department of Social Affairs, the Shehuibu, the CCP’s security and intelligence arm. Tai Li persuades the Communist Zhang Guotao to defect to the KMT. Herbert Yardley employed to break Japanese ciphers.

1939 Yan’an students arrested on espionage charges.

1940 Agnes Smedley detained by the British in Hong Kong.

1941 Under Japanese threat, the FECB is evacuated from Hong Kong to Kranji, Singapore.

1942 Morris Cohen captured by the Japanese in Hong Kong as he attempts to rescue Madame Sun Yat-sen. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) sends a mission to China. The Malayan Communist Party begins a guerrilla campaign against the Japanese occupation. Tai Li heads joint Sino-American intelligence operations.

1943 Larry Wu-tai Chin recruited by the U.S. Army in China as an interpreter.

1944 Richard Sorge executed in Tokyo. The Dixie Mission arrives in China.

1945 Leaked OSS reports prompt an investigation of Amerasia. Pu Yi is captured by the Soviet Red Army.

1946 Tai Li is killed in an aircraft accident.

1947 Lai Tek is exposed as a mole by the Malay Communist Party leader Chin Peng and murdered. The Civil War continues in China with the Communists gradually gaining the upper hand. Martial law is established in Taiwan following a rising against the Nationalist government.

1948 Joan Hinton moves to China. Qian Xuesen returns to China after 10 years’ research in France. An emergency is declared in Malaya.

1949 Larry Chin joins the U.S. consulate in Shanghai as a translator. The CCP’s Central Department of Social Affairs is reorganized with many of its officers transferred to the newly established Ministry of Public Security, the Gong’anbu. KMT forces led by Chiang Kai-shek withdraw to Taiwan. The People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Zhonghonghua Renmin Gongheguo, is proclaimed by Mao Zedong. Mao holds talks with Josef Stalin in Moscow.

1950 The Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual assistance is signed in Moscow. The Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) Douglas Mackiernan is killed trying to enter Tibet, prompting the Chinese occupation. A Nationalist F-10 reconnaissance aircraft is shot down, killing the crew of six. North Korea invades the south. Zhu Chenzhi is executed in Taiwan. The Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA) predicts that Chinese troops will cross the Yalu River to fight United Nations forces in Korea. Josef Stalin repatriates Pu Yi to China. Colonel John Lovell is captured and later killed after his RB-45C is shot down over the Yalu River.

1951 Signal intercepts prove Chinese MiG-15 fighters are being flown by Soviet pilots. CIA officer Hugh Redmond is arrested in Shanghai. General Douglas MacArthur calls for an attack on China and is relieved of his command. Counterrevolutionary campaigns begin in China, and the Labor Reform Program (Laogai) is established.

1952 TROPIC aircrew is captured in China. Larry Wu-tai Chin joins the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) in Okinawa.

1953 Colonel John Arnold is taken prisoner near the Chinese town of Antung in Liaoning Province while dropping agents from a B-29. A British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) base is opened at Little Sai Wan on Hong Kong Island. A U.S. Navy P2-V Neptune is shot down near Shantou (formerly Swatow) in China’s Guangdong Province.

1954 The First Straits crisis breaks out with a conflict between Taiwan and the PRC. Diplomatic relations at chargé d’affaires rank is established between London and Beijing. Taiwan signs a mutual defense pact with the United States. A Cathay Pacific flight is shot down near Hainan Island, killing 10.

1955 Mao Zedong decides to develop a Chinese atomic weapon. A Sino-Soviet atomic energy collaboration agreement is signed. An Air India Constellation airliner is sabotaged in Hong Kong.

1956 Communist-inspired rioting in Hong Kong. Premier Zhou Enlai announces a 12-year plan to modernize Chinese technology. Qian Xuesen is deported to China. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) bombs Tibetan monasteries. U.S. Navy P4M-IQ Mercator is shot down over the Chengzu Islands near Shanghai with the loss of 16 crew.

1957 E. D. Vorobiev is appointed to head a Soviet nuclear technology transfer program to Beijing. The CIA commences U-2 overflights of the PRC from Peshawar in Pakistan. Malaya is granted independence. The Hundred Flowers Movement of relative intellectual freedom in the PRC is quickly followed by the Anti-Rightist Campaign, which results in the arrest of 300,000 intellectuals.

1958 A Taiwanese P4Y reconnaissance aircraft makes an emergency landing at Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong. A Taiwanese RB-57D is shot down over Shandong Province by a MiG-15. Soviet physicists are sent to the PRC to assist in the atomic weapons project. Second Strait crisis as the PLA shells the island of Quemoy. The Great Leap Forward, resulting in an economic collapse, is launched by Mao Zedong.

1959 Qian Xuesen meets Klaus Fuchs, just released from Wakefield Prison in England. Nikita Khrushchev withdraws technical support for the PRC’s nuclear program. A U.S. P4M-IQ Mercator is attacked off Wonsan in North Korea. A Taiwanese RB-57D is shot down near Beijing by an SA-2 Guideline missile. A famine caused by the Great Leap Forward begins that will kill an estimated 30 million over three years.

1960 TOPPER missions begin to insert remote sensors in the PRC. CIA U-2s withdrawn from Peshawar and Atsugi. Work stops at the plutonium-producing reactor at Jiuquan in Gansu Province and concentrates on uranium enrichment at Lanzhou, Gansu. Construction of a nuclear test center begins at Malan in northwest China. CORONA satellite imagery becomes available in the United States. A Black Cat U-2 overflies mainland China from Taiwan.

1961 Larry Chin joins the FBIS in Santa Rosa, California. Chan Tek Fei is arrested in Hong Kong. Professor Wang Minchuan defects in Greece. Two PLAAF pilots are reported to have defected to South Korea in September. Albania withdraws from the Warsaw Pact.

1962 Bernard Boursicot is posted to Paris. Taiwanese Colonel Chen Huai-sheng’s U-2A is shot down over Nanchang. Chao Fu defects in Bonn. Mao Zedong abandons the Great Leap Forward. The PRC attacks across the Sino-Indian border in the Himalayas.

1963 The Lanzhou nuclear facility begins production of enriched uranium. General Chiang Ching-kuo proposes an attack on the nuclear sites at Haiyan (Koko Nor, Qinghai Province) and at Lanzhou to the CIA. Major Yeh Chang-yi’s U-2C is shot down by a SA-2 missile. The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty is signed in Moscow but is not ratified by the PRC. Zhou Hongjin defects to the Soviet Union.

1964 The CIA flies U-2 missions over mainland China from Charbatia in India. The PRC tests an atomic bomb at Lop Nor. Taiwanese Colonel Nan Ping Lee’s U-2G is shot down over Fujian Province. President Charles de Gaulle recognizes the PRC. A Taiwanese U-2 photographs the Lanzhou uranium enrichment plant at night with an infrared camera.

1965 Taiwanese Major Wang Shi-chuen’s U-2C is shot down near Beijing by an SA-2 missile. Larry Chin becomes a U.S. citizen. The Chinese ambassador in Tanzania is implicated in a plot to overthrow Dr. Hastings Banda in Malawi.

1966 Kwame Nkrumah is deposed in a coup while visiting Beijing. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is launched in the PRC by Mao Zedong. The USS Banner is harassed by PRC fishing boats in the East China Sea. A New China News Agency (Xinhua) editor, Lau Yvet-sang, defects to Taiwan from Hong Kong. The plutonium reactor at Jinquan goes critical. Four PLA officers walk into India from Tibet and seek asylum.

1967 Two Taiwanese U-2s overfly Lop Nor from Taakhli in Thailand. Captain Huang Jung-bei’s U-2C is shot down by an SA-2 missile near Jiaxing. Riots paralyze Hong Kong. An SR-71 photographs the detonation of the Chinese hydrogen bomb. Former prime minister Harold Holt disappears in Australia while swimming near his home. Pu Yi, the last emperor of China, dies in Beijing after being severely criticized by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. PRC State Chairman Liu Shaoqi dies in obscurity in a makeshift prison.

1968 Purge of PRC security organs by Kang Sheng. Mao Zedong denounces the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. A U.S. Navy Skyraider is shot down over Hainan Island.

1969 Wang Yuncheng and Lu Fu-tain are executed. PRC and Soviet troops clash along the border at the Ussuri River. Liao Ho-shu defects in the Netherlands. The PRC conducts its first underground nuclear test. A D-21 drone overflies Lop Nor and crashes in Siberia.

1970 Larry Chin joins the FBIS headquarters in Rosslyn, Virginia. The PRC puts its first satellite, the Dong Fang Hong-1, into orbit. A U.S. Navy SK-5 drone lands accidentally on Hainan. CIA officer Hugh Redmond dies after 19 years’ imprisonment in Shanghai.

1971 Lin Biao killed in a plane crash in Mongolia. A nuclear weapons development program begins in Taiwan. U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger makes a secret trip to Beijing. A PRC mission arrives at the United Nations in New York.

1972 Katrina Leung makes contact with PRC intelligence officers. Taiwanese U-2 overflights terminated by President Richard Nixon, and he visits Beijing in February.

1973 Paul Yu commits suicide on an airliner en route from Taipei to Honolulu. James Lilley opens a CIA station at the U.S. Liaison Office in Beijing, and the PRC opens a liaison office in Washington DC. Greg Chung joins the Rockwell Corporation. Two Taiwanese analysts employed by GCHQ at Little Sai Wan defect to the PRC. Two KGB illegals are arrested in Hong Kong.

1974 A Soviet Mil Mi-4 Border Guard helicopter strays into the PRC, and three crewmen are arrested in the Altai Krai. The PRC seizes the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea from Vietnam. The CIA withdraws from Taoyüan in Taiwan.

1975 Bernard Boursicot rejoins the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The PRC’s first ELINT satellite launched from Jiuquan. Three Soviet Border Guard helicopter crewmen released by the PRC.

1976 Zhou Enlai dies in January. The death of Mao Zedong in September ends the Cultural Revolution. Hua Guofeng assumes the post of CCP chairman and orchestrates the arrest of the Gang of Four, including Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing. Zhou Shaozheng appointed head of the Central Investigation Department.

1977 Hua Guofeng is pushed aside by Deng Xiaoping with support from the PLA.

1978 The Gang of Four put on trial in Beijing by Deng Xiaoping. Thousands of ethnic Chinese expelled from Vietnam. Two atomic-powered remote sensors found on Nanda Devi in the Himalayas.

1979 U.S. diplomatic recognition is transferred from Taipei to Beijing. The PRC attacks and occupies the northern part of Vietnam for 29 days. Deng Xiaoping suppresses the Democracy Wall Movement in Beijing, and dissident Wei Jingsheng is imprisoned. The PRC opens an embassy in Washington DC and consulates in New York and San Francisco. The U.S. moves into its embassy in Beijing, which was constructed under total Chinese control.

1980 Jock Kane complains about poor security at Little Sai Wan. Nikolai Zhang convicted of espionage in the PRC. Last atmospheric nuclear test is conducted by the PRC. Stanislas Lunev is posted to the GRU rezidentura in Beijing.

1981 The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) initiates TIGER TRAP, a surveillance operation on an aeronautical engineer, Min Gwo Bao. Yue Zhonglie is convicted of spying for the Soviets.

1982 Larry Chin receives an award in Beijing. TIGER TRAP is extended to Wen Ho Lee. Deng Xioping approves nuclear proliferation policy. GCHQ’s base at Little Sai Wan closes down, with operations moved to Chung Hum Kok. Min Gao-Bao resigns from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

1983 The chief of the Shenyang City Justice Bureau, Hao Guangsheng, defects in Toronto. FBI is granted authority to electronically monitor Larry Wu-tai Chin. The PRC establishes the Ministry of State Security (MSS), the Guojia Anquanbu. Chi Mak begins to pass U.S. Navy research documents to the MSS. The PRC contracts to build the El Salam reactor in Algeria.

1984 Henry Liu is murdered in Daly City, California. Da Chuan Zheng is convicted of the illegal export of embargoed radar equipment.

1985 PLANESMAN defects to the United States. Larry Wu-tai Chin is arrested. Greg Chung makes an unreported visit to the PRC. Admiral Wang Hsi-ling of the KMT’s National Intelligence Service is convicted of Henry Liu’s murder.

1986 Gu Weihao of the PRC’s Ministry of Aviation Industry travels to the United States to visit Greg Chung, a Boeing engineer. Roland Shesu Lo is sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment in Beijing for espionage. Hu Yaobang is replaced as the CCP’s general secretary by Zhao Ziyang.

1987 Greg Chung passes information through Chi Mak. Two Chinese diplomats are expelled after being caught in an FBI double-agent operation. The Cabinet Office in London establishes an interdepartmental working party to study Chinese espionage. Hou Desheng is arrested in Washington DC. End of martial law in Taiwan. Colonel Chang Hsien-yi compromises Taipei’s nuclear bomb project.

1988 Larry Engelmann meets Xu Meihong in Nanjing. The China National Nuclear Corporation is formed.

1989 Hu Yaobang dies in Beijing. In response to demonstrations, Deng Xiaoping imposes martial law. Thousands of Chinese students are massacred in Tiananmen Square, and demonstrators are killed in Chengdu, Sichuan, by the PLA. Hu Simeng is exposed as a source in Berlin for the CIA, MSS, and the East German Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung. Wen Ning is recruited by the FBI as a source inside the PRC consulate in Los Angeles.

1990 A Pakistani nuclear weapon is tested at Lop Nor. A PLAAF MiG-19 lands accidentally at Knivechi near Vladivostock and is released five days later. The CIA learns an M-11 training missile and erector launcher have been supplied to Pakistan by the PRC.

1991 Admiral Wang Hsi-ling is granted clemency and released from prison in Taiwan.

1992 Wu Bin is arrested by U.S. Customs and charged with illegally exporting night-vision goggles to Hong Kong. Diplomat Wen Ning defects from the PRC consulate in Los Angeles. The PRC signs the 1968 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran test fires a Shahab-3 MRBM. North Korea test fires the Taepo Dong-2 ballistic missile over Japan. Stanislas Lunev defects to the United States.

1993 Amgen discovers an attempt by a Chinese agent to steal a vial of patented drug cultures. North Korea tests the No Dong missile. The PRC sells M-11 road-mobile short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) components to Pakistan.

1994 Chin Peng travels to Australia. Kim Il-sung dies in North Korea and is replaced by his son Kim Jong-il.

1995 The PLA occupies islands claimed by the Philippines in the South China Sea. Two U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency officers are expelled from the PRC for monitoring PLA exercises in southern China. The GCHQ base at Chung Hum Kok is transferred to Geraldton in Western Australia. A technical surveillance operation on the PRC’s embassy in Canberra is terminated.

1996 The Economic Espionage Act is passed by the U.S. Congress. Hughes Aircraft and Loral missile technology is stolen.

1997 Hong Kong is returned to the PRC. Death of Deng Xiaoping in Beijing.

1998 Peter Lee admits to selling classified information. Pakistan conducts an underground nuclear test. Won Chong-hwa is recruited by the North Korean State Security Department.

1999 The PLA establishes a signals intercept site in Cuba. The Cox Committee investigates the theft of U.S. neutron bomb technology. The PRC embassy in Belgrade is bombed by accident during a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) air raid. The Falun Gong movement is banned and persecuted in the PRC after holding a silent vigil in Tiananmen Square. Wen Ho Lee is dismissed from Los Alamos and indicted on 59 felony counts.

2000 The Canadian Security and Intelligence Review Committee criticizes the joint Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) / Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Sidewinder report, which revealed links between Triads and the PRC’s intelligence service. Wen Ho Lee pleads guilty to one felony and is sentenced to 10 months’ imprisonment.

2001 A U.S. Navy EP-3A Aries II reconnaissance aircraft is damaged in a midair collision and makes an emergency landing on Hainan Island.

2002 Chinese cyber attacks codenamed TITAN RAIN in the United States. The FBI opens a legal attaché’s (legat) office in Beijing with responsibility for liaison with the PRC and Mongolia.

2003 Lee Lan and Ge Yuefie are charged with theft from NetLogic Microsystems. Brian Regan is sentenced to life imprisonment after having been arrested at Dulles Airport in August 2001. Special Agent William Liu is appointed the FBI’s legat in Beijing.

2004 The PRC puts Nanosatellite-1 into orbit. The MSS’s Li Fengzhi defects in the United States. Computer hackers traced to the PRC attack the U.S. Army’s Information Systems Engineering Command at Fort Huachuca, Arizona; the Defense Information Systems Agency in Alexandria, Virginia; the Naval Ocean Systems Center in San Diego; and the Space and Strategic Defense Installation at Huntsville, Alabama.

2005 Chi Mak is arrested in Los Angeles. Chen Yonglin defects in Australia, and Hao Fenging defects to Canada. Zhao Ziyang dies while under house arrest in Beijing. The PRC tests an antisatellite missile. Wen Ning is charged with exporting embargoed technology to the PRC.

2006 Li Fangwei is identified as a weapons proliferator supplying Iran with banned aircraft parts. Former Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) analyst Ronald Montaperto is convicted of espionage for the PRC. North Korea attempts to conduct an underground nuclear test. Wen Ho Lee awarded $1.6 million in compensation. The U.S. State Department reports that Chinese intruders have penetrated its computer system. The Pentagon’s NIPRNET system is attacked from mainland China.

2007 Zhang Jiyang defects in Ottawa. U.S. State Department official Donald Keyser is convicted of passing secrets to a Taiwanese agent, Isabelle Cheng. A Song-class submarine penetrates the USS Kitty Hawk’s protective screen while on exercises. Chi Mak is sentenced to 24 years’ imprisonment. Laura Wang-Woodford is arrested in San Francisco. Xiadong Sheldon Meng is convicted of exporting fighter training software to the PLA Navy.

2008 A member of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s entourage is honeytrapped in Beijing. Greg Chung is arrested in California. Won Chong-hwa is arrested in South Korea. Qi Hanson delivers MicroPilot aircraft controls to the PRC. Dr. John Reece Roth is convicted of passing plasma data to the PRC. FirmSpace is indicted on conspiracy charges relating to the illicit export of carbon fiber. Taiwanese agents Guo Wanjun and Wo Weihan are executed in the PRC for espionage. The United States moves into a new embassy in Beijing.

2009 USNS Impeccable is harassed by five PRC boats. Yan Zhu is arrested in New Jersey on charges of software theft. Lu Fu-tain is charged in Oregon with the illegal export of microwave amplifiers. David Yen Lee is arrested in Chicago and charged with the theft of trade secrets. MI5 circulates The Threat from Chinese Espionage. Germany expels a diplomat from the Munich consulate for spying on local Uighur refugees.

2010 Google experiences an AURORA cyber attack. The National Security Council downgrades the PRC as a threat to U.S. security. The CIA screens Extraordinary Fidelity as a training aid. Glenn Shriver is arrested after attempting to join the CIA. The Xinhua propaganda chief Wan Wuyi is reported to have defected while studying at Oxford University. Death of Andrew Roth in London. Huang Kexue is charged with economic espionage. Colonel Lo Chi-cheng is arrested in Taiwan and charged with espionage.

2011 Wang Qing is arrested in India and deported. Glenn Shriver is sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. General Lo Hsien-che is arrested in Taiwan and charged with espionage. American geologist Xue Feng sentenced in Beijing to eight years’ imprisonment. Matthieu Tannenbaum is suspended from Renault with two other senior managers. Xian Hongwei and Li Li are indicted in Alexandria, Virginia, on charges of defense export. The U.S. National Counterintelligence Executive identifies the PRC as using proxy systems to conduct cyber-espionage.

 

Introduction

Although China’s intelligence activities may not have been well documented, they can be traced back to the ancient writings of Sun Tzu, and espionage has been a characteristic of Chinese domestic politics and international relations ever since.

The tangled relationship between Taiwan and mainland China has meant that both governments have created alliances on the basis of their mutual hostility, sometimes with unlikely partners, and the adversarial nature of some of those links with third nations can have more to do with their attitude to an opponent than any perceived mutual foreign policy goals or interests. Thus, the Nationalist Party or Kuomintang (KMT), having fought the Japanese, developed close ties with Tokyo in the postwar era, and the Soviet Union, having nurtured the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), would become intensely hostile during the lengthy Sino-Soviet split, just as the United States, having supported anti-Communist guerrillas in Tibet and on the mainland, reversed its course during the administration of Richard Nixon. Equally complicated has been Hong Kong’s anomalous role, both as a British colony and then as a Special Administrative Region of the PRC. When it comes to policy made in Beijing, nothing is quite what it seems.

China is an ancient civilization, and there have been many Chinas, from the first dynasties of the Shang and Zhou, through the imperial era to the period of feudalism and warlords, to the dominance of the KMT and finally the Civil War, which led to the creation of the Republic of China (ROC), leaving the mainland under Communist control and called the “People’s Republic of China” (PRC).

OVER THE AGES

Following Qin Shi Huangdi, the first emperor of a unified China, who was born in 259 BC, there have been 156 successors, many of them brought to power by rebellion, plots, assassinations, and political maneuvering. Some tried to emulate the perceived success of the Qin state, a proto-totalitarian regime that built the Great Wall and created a vast security apparatus to perpetuate a reign, which lasted a mere 14 years, by conquering its neighbors and rivals, thereby establishing a bureaucracy that exercised near total control over the population in an area that covers much of modern China, including all the land between the Yangtze and the Yellow rivers. The Qin Empire succumbed to a coup mounted in 208 BC by a minor official, Liu Bang, who founded the Han Dynasty, which would rule the empire for a further 400 years. However, the first secret intelligence institution was probably established by the Empress Wu Chao in AD 625, when a textbook of interrogation techniques was compiled for her very extensive security apparatus, which ruthlessly removed or executed all who threatened her during 45 years of rule.

With a bloody history of war and invasion, culminating in the Manchu establishment of the Qing dynasty in 1644, China’s military supremacy reached its zenith under Qianlong, who reigned from 1736 to 1793 and resisted Lord Macartney’s blandishments to open the country to foreign trade. There followed the First Opium War in 1839, a conflict that resulted in concessions granted to the European powers, including Hong Kong Island to the British in perpetuity, and, then in 1851, the Taiping Rebellion in which an estimated 70 million Chinese died.

In 1856 comes the Second Opium War, which left Kowloon, opposite the island of Hong Kong, in British hands and foreign embassies established in Peking, marking the final phase of the empire. The 1895 defeat of Emperor Guangxu’s imperial army and navy by the Japanese over control of Korea effectively spelled the end of the Manchu Empire, which subsequently suffered the humiliation of the collapse of the Boxer Uprising against foreign intervention in China, backed by the Empress Dowager Cixi.

Much of the Qin emperor’s innovations, including a merit-based civil service, would endure until 1912, when Sun Yat-sen’s Republic of China was declared, by which time the Han sphere of influence had extended to Vietnam, Burma, Cambodia, and Thailand. With a history of expansionism and resistance to periodic invasion from the north by Mongols, the determinedly centralized Chinese political and cultural system was rooted in authoritarianism.

THE STATE ACTORS

The pages that follow concentrate on the principal players in the two Chinas in what might be described as the drama of international espionage. At center stage in the PRC is the omniscient Ministry of State Security (MSS) and the domestically ubiquitous Ministry of Public Security; while in Taiwan (ROC), the National Security Bureau fulfills the dual role of internal security and foreign intelligence collection. The other members of the cast include the United States, with branches of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), National Security Agency (NSA), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) fully engaged, together with Great Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, managing a station in Beijing, and the Security Service (MI5), represented in Hong Kong where Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) previously maintained a large electronic intelligence collection facility throughout the Cold War. In addition, the Soviet KGB and GRU attempted to run operations in Beijing, as did the French Direction Générale de Securité Extérieure. All of these organizations, including their forerunners, such as the British Inter-Services Liaison Department (ISLD) and Combined Intelligence Far East (CIFE), the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and the NKVD were active participants in the region, with the Australian and New Zealand signals intelligence agencies taking supporting roles.

While the Western agencies tended to concentrate their resources on technical collection, relying on aerial reconnaissance flights, remote sensors, and satellites to monitor China’s development into a world superpower, Beijing took advantage of its vast diaspora to penetrate overseas targets, acquire embargoed technology, steal proprietary software, and transfer the research needed to save the decades of expensive investment usually associated with the production of thermonuclear weapons, sophisticated missile guidance systems, an aerospace industry, advanced lasers, and an indigenous computer manufacturing capability.

MODERN ESPIONAGE

Although the PRC has long engaged in espionage, relatively little is known about Chinese techniques, methodology, personnel, and organizations in comparison with what the West has learned about other more conventional intelligence agencies that conduct operations across the world. Whereas most intelligence services have suffered damaging defections, the number of MSS professionals who have switched sides is relatively small. And if conditions for clandestine operations in Moscow were challenging during the Cold War, the hostile environment in Beijing has continued to be next to impossible. Indeed, the Second Chief Directorate of the Komitei Gosudarstvennoi Bezopastnosti (KGB), notorious for maintaining continuous, ubiquitous surveillance on foreigners, could have learned a few lessons from the MSS counterparts who had fewer visitors to follow, with their targets easier to identify, in a capital where all embassies are concentrated inside a single compound, a diplomatic ghetto with just one entrance, making conventional tradecraft virtually redundant.

In spite of these difficulties, the West has learned that the MSS behaves in a very different way to its adversaries and does not rely on clandestine contact, dead-drops, cut-outs, sophisticated communication systems, and the other conventional ways of engaging in espionage. Instead, the MSS prefers a more relaxed, casual approach, often exploiting a social contact to extract information rather than documents and without the usual, incriminating exchange of recognizably classified data. The evidence of a dozen espionage cases suggests that the MSS concentrates on individuals of ethnic Chinese heritage and cultivates them over a long period, sometimes many years, developing a friendship with their individuals. Appeals for technical help will then be made, and though they may only succeed in a tiny number of cases, the results are clearly beneficial to Beijing. The principle appears to be that, if enough targets are asked for help, one or two may respond. The plea, typically to assist “the higher kingdom” and implicitly not to inflict damage on the United States, taking a positive rather than a negative stance, occasionally is rewarded, and gradually an individual, who has perhaps acknowledged the universal nature of scientific knowledge, may be drawn into conduct that would fall into the criminal category, compromising classified information.

Thus, at the outset, the request for assistance may be modest and unthreatening and perhaps calculated to be in the form the target is likely to know and perhaps consider relatively unimportant. The common characteristic is the length of time devoted to such activities; although, the Chinese always take a long view in preference to short-term advantage. Perhaps this is not surprising for a civilization that built 5,000 kilometers of the Great Wall 200 years before the birth of Christ and for a culture that enjoyed whole libraries of printed books decades before Johannes Guttenberg developed a printing press in Europe.

The MSS seems to like working on people with a shared culture, language, and history, and when one considers the disproportionate representation of scientists of Chinese origin in the American research arena, at a time when only 1 percent of the population in the United States has this ethnic background, the organization’s strategy makes practical sense. A graduate student on a visit to mainland China may well have a future in a sensitive area of interest to his PRC counterparts, and a light “pitch” may pay dividends in the future. Nor is the MSS embarrassed by a refusal. Its personnel are nothing if not persistent and will renew a request for assistance as if none had been made previously.

That is not to say that the MSS handlers lack subtlety. One characteristic of their management of cases is their preference for individuals whom they regard as reliable and trustworthy, devoid of the personality flaws that the KGB liked to exploit during the Cold War. Whereas the Soviets were always keen to accommodate the financial demands of their sources, the Chinese regard indebtedness as a poor motive for espionage. The KGB often found itself responding to requests for money from divorcees undergoing a cash crisis or others who had made poor investments and sought to capitalize on their access to classified material, but the MSS prefers to deal with sources who have no such obvious problems. It may be that they are ambitious, but their cooperation is based on a perceived mutual advantage, not exploitation. Any study of Chinese espionage cases reveals that, unlike the Soviets, the MSS does not seek to acquire information by bribery or extortion and indeed rarely even pays for what it receives. In the Chi Mak example in 2005, he admitted that his only reward for more than 20 years of espionage had not been vast riches, nor promises of a numbered bank account in Switzerland, but an assurance that his sister-in-law’s ailing mother in Guangzhou would be “taken care of” by his MSS handler, David Pu Pei-liang. However, there have also been a few cases where trusted, long-term sources have been paid handsomely, among them Larry Wu-tai Chin and Katrina Leung.

By concentrating on targets in good financial standing and eschewing those with poor credit ratings, the MSS also neatly avoids individuals who may attract unwanted attention during routine security screenings. Typically, individuals cooperating with the Chinese intelligence services are considered hard working, frugal, and solid citizens, and their usually high standing in the community makes discreet investigation more difficult and often serves to encourage investigators to contemplate the innocence of a quarry instead of working from an assumption of guilt.

Because the Western experience of hostile intelligence operations was accumulated mainly during the Cold War, counterintelligence experts invariably fall back on the Soviet bloc model as the way to monitor an adversary and detect the distinctive patterns of espionage. However, the Chinese have opted for an entirely different strategy and one that often falls below the radar screen of counterintelligence vigilance. The conventional approach during the period of superpower confrontation was to establish an opponent’s order of battle, place the identified active intelligence officers under physical and technical surveillance, and then wait for the handlers to lead the watchers to their agents or their operating areas. Once a contact had been spotted, the trick was to catch the person in an illegal act, and this coup would open numerous possibilities, perhaps of running a spy back as a double agent or entrapping the handler.

For decades, this was how the counterintelligence game was played, but it does not work with the Chinese who do not run formal rezidenturas, or stations, and do not rely on dead-drops or clandestine meetings. The Chinese espionage model is based on providing a safe environment in which potentially willing participants can be encouraged to contribute helpful information at their own pace. Absent is the more usual pressure to grab material before the source, through his or her own folly, attracts the security authorities. While a Western counterpart will be in a hurry to accomplish a recruitment before a routine rotation elsewhere, the MSS will be content to let nature take its course, sometimes waiting years to seize the right opportunity. In one case in Canada, the Chinese appeared content to leave an agent for 24 years before activating him.

They subscribe to, and practice, the theory that recruitment is a process, not an event. If the West can be said to rely on the sniper’s rifle to find precisely the right person to pitch, the Chinese prefer the scattergun, sponsoring thousands of students and scientific delegations, confident that someone of interest will eventually emerge. There are estimated to be 300,000 Chinese undergraduates in the United States alone, with more than 30,000 official groups visiting sensitive sites. While the idea of employing students as agents would strike most Western intelligence officers as a very risky stratagem, the MSS refer to them as chen di yu (bottom-sinking fish) and regard them as a useful resource that perhaps one day will reward them with dividends.

Chinese intelligence collection is also markedly different in its reliance on what is termed in the West “natural cover.” The MSS relies heavily on genuine journalists, academics, students, and businessmen, who really are what they seem; whereas for years, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and its allied agencies have employed its own professional personnel under non-official cover, the so-called NOC. But there is a great difference between the amateur, who collects whatever comes his way and then undergoes a debriefing upon his return home, and the trained officer, who manifests all the usual telltale signs of a career collector, routinely engaging in countersurveillance measures, searching his hotel rooms for covert devices, and applying standard tradecraft. In contrast, the Chinese journalist really is a writer, and the Chinese academic’s credentials are absolutely authentic. Neither needs the expensive backstopping associated with American and British operations. The result is that Chinese students and businessmen both look and behave authentically because their covers really are their occupations, and they have no need of clandestine communications systems or a covert rendezvous on a park bench. Culturally, the Chinese have a huge advantage here as the CIA is banned from employing American clerics and journalists, whereas any Chinese granted permission to travel abroad will know the price may be a relationship with the MSS. As for a ban on occupations, the Chinese spent years developing a Roman Catholic priest with absolutely watertight credentials to act as a contact and courier for Larry Wu-tai Chin. Indeed, considering that one of the MSS’s more recent targets is the Falun Gong movement, the agency can be said to be entirely devoid of religious scruples.

The practice of ensuring their personnel can withstand outside scrutiny also extends to the front companies that the Chinese utilize to collect technology. These firms engage in actual business and are expected to be economically self-sufficient. Indeed, the businessmen in charge of the companies are allowed to make as much personal profit as they are capable of so long as they continue to funnel the needed technology back to the PRC. Since these traders and merchants appear to be legitimate and run genuine firms and not shell companies, their illicit activities are often hard to detect. The American response to this is to bring criminal charges for whatever offenses have been committed, irrespective of whether espionage can be proven. Accordingly, there are plenty of investigations conducted that result in convictions for money laundering, breaches of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and violations of the export regulations that invariably have an underlying intelligence dimension. Unspoken is the certainty that anyone dealing with a Chinese state-owned enterprise inevitably will have some kind of link to the MSS, another factor that blurs the distinction between espionage and routine commerce.

Another challenge for Western authorities, principally in the United States, France, Australia, Great Britain, and Germany, seeking to engage in business partnerships while protecting themselves from hostile penetration, is the reluctance of many firms to declare incidents of cyber attack or internal fraud for fear of undermining public confidence and company stock values. Plenty of security consultants have an interest in promoting anxieties about the vulnerabilities of the West’s computer infrastructure, yet reliable statistics of specific incidents are hard to gather, and victims are reluctant to file reports, even when legally required to do so. Nevertheless, mainland China is consistently identified as being the source of much of the world’s malicious software and the origin of concerted hacking and cyber-spying.

Being a totalitarian state, the PRC exercises control over its own population and its visitors. The MSS is naturally suspicious of all tourists, foreign residents, students, and anyone engaged in any kind of research, and this natural antipathy dates back centuries to previous dynasties that for generations closed China to all foreigners and back in more recent times to the privations endured during foreign occupation. The Stalin-like paranoia extends far beyond those who might be approaching the very low threshold of what is termed a “state secret,” which could be a bridge, railway line, or manufacturing plant, and includes social contacts that might be deemed as subversive or intended to undermine the Party. Thus, a very large number of potential suspects come to the attention of the MSS, whose functions are considered a priority by the Party, a status reflected in the almost unlimited resources available to the security organs. What a difference when compared to the relative handful of Chinese specialists fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese available to MI5 and the FBI. Furthermore, these two agencies enjoy minimal relative political influence, and their operations and resources are curtailed by budget considerations and other sensitivities. No director-general of MI5 or FBI director has ever sat on, or even attended, cabinet meetings, whereas the minister of state security in Beijing, currently Geng Huichang, is not just a member of the Central Committee but is a highly influential figure in the overall government structure.

This exalted status is reflected on both social and political levels. MSS personnel are respected within their community and form part of an elite. The same can hardly be said of FBI special agents or their British Security Service counterparts. Although Rudy Guerin claimed that the FBI’s China Squad had tripled in size in 2001, the FBI’s assistant director for counterintelligence, David Szady, remarked that, although the exact number of FBI manpower devoted to China was classified, he would have welcomed an additional 1,500 special agents. Considering that some 1,900 Chinese diplomats are accredited to the United States, with many more just over the border in Canada, this seems a modest ambition. Keith Riggin, a CIA officer who retired in 2006 after a career spanning 24 years, protested that “if the American people knew the number of officers going against the Chinese, they would be appalled” and cited “frustration” as one of his reasons for leaving the agency.

The arrest of an ethnic Chinese in the United States on espionage charges instantly prompts complaints of racism and racial profiling, and several counterintelligence careers can be seen to have perished in such an adversarial environment. Not so in the PRC, where the detention of students, journalists, and academics is practically routine if not an occupational hazard. A complaint of racism in a Western liberal democracy is considered a serious charge with potential implications up and down the chain of command in any organization. In contrast, ill-disguised contempt for foreigners is a fact of life, as is the openly racist behavior endured daily by African students in the PRC.

The United States in particular has paid a heavy price for the long-time practice of essentially opening its borders to the Chinese without any semblance of reciprocity. Many Chinese students, both privately sponsored (holding F-1 visas) and government-sponsored (J-1), remain in the country after the completion of their studies and act as sources that the PRC can exploit to gather sensitive technology. The Chinese also have been most successful in obtaining the cooperation of first-generation immigrants and their offspring, and by allowing students, business people, and others to remain in the United States, they constantly replenish the most fertile area of their success.

The Beijing authorities do not just hope or expect that Overseas Chinese will cooperate with the motherland but simply assume that immigrants from China will retain their allegiance. After all, they are ethnically Chinese first. The Chinese do not accept that an ethnic Chinese can have an allegiance to any country but to Zhongguo, translated literally as the “Middle Kingdom,” for they are, in their minds, the geographical center of the universe and the cultural center of the world.

Thus it can be said that the Chinese approach to intelligence collection and counterintelligence is quite unique, wholly unlike the Western or Soviet model. It may seem to have some very distinct disadvantages, but when one considers the country’s objectives, focused principally on technology transfer, the offensive would appear to be sustained, relentless, and effective.

It may be that gathering intelligence in mainland China is somewhat easier now than during the era of the “bamboo curtain” when little was known about events inside that vast country, and the current regime’s expanded interests, requiring a need to support a burgeoning economy by securing the supply of raw material such as oil and ore from Latin America and Africa, has provided new opportunities to study the MSS. Previously insular and espousing little interest in other countries apart from Albania and North Korea, the PRC now recognizes a demand, driven by modernization and industrialization, to expand its horizons and make new alliances overseas so as to fuel the new economic giant. And, just as in previous centuries, Chinese trade has not been in the form of colonization, but barter and tribute, the modern merchants emphasize their disinterest in local politics and pledge never to interfere in domestic issues, such as respect for human rights. In many countries, such terms look very attractive to the Western competition where, increasingly, there are potentially inhibiting strings attached to the most ostensibly innocuous trade deals. Gone are the days when Western countries or multinational companies could ruthlessly exploit their Third World partners or rely on murky subcontractors to evade minimum standards in pay and conditions. Instant global communications mean that politicians and companies are vulnerable to complaints of any dubious practices, but the Chinese make a virtue out of a policy of noninterference in countries like Tanzania, Somalia, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, and Zimbabwe, where their activities are not subject to external, independent scrutiny. For regimes reluctant to adopt Western-imposed values and standards, the Chinese commitment to noninterference amounts to a guarantee that would never be forthcoming from other rival nations and is therefore perceived as mutually beneficial. The Chinese cast a blind eye, and a despotic or corrupt regime remains free to retain some control of its own future, immune to the lobbying of activists and the carping of media critics.

The burgeoning Chinese economy and the need to secure foreign sources of essential raw materials and energy have transformed the country and the Chinese Communist Party from adopting a fundamentally isolationist stance to taking on the role of a world player committed to international trade, globalization, and the Internet. In consequence, those two pillars of the state, the MSS and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), have been obliged to make a significant adjustment. Having previously been preoccupied with domestic security, protection of the country’s closed frontiers, and separatist pressures from Tibet and Taiwan, the party has relied on these two organs to play their part in modernization. With the entire military-industrial complex in the hands of the party, it was inevitable that the MSS and the PLA would become immersed in the need to achieve the leadership’s new objectives.

For external intelligence analysts, familiar with the symbiotic relationship between the KGB and the Kremlin, the course taken by Beijing looks very novel, as the gray area perceived between intelligence agencies and commercial enterprises seems hard to delineate. However, in the Chinese example, no such distinction can be made, with hundreds of research institutes operating under the PLA’s sponsorship while being closely associated with ostensibly independent commercial enterprises. From Beijing’s perspective, attempting to make such distinctions is wholly futile, for the party is the state, and the MSS and the PLA are committed to the party. And when the party owns, manages, and directs industry, it is entirely logical that other party agencies should be deployed in support of an objective identified as a priority by the leadership.

In this scenario, Deng Xiaoping and Hu Jintao redefined the party’s goals, stressing modernization and technology. But, in the absence of fraternal support from Moscow, the development of an indigenous aerospace industry—producing stealth equipment, phased-array radars, photoreconnaissance satellites, computer networks, and sophisticated guided weapons—was not easy to accomplish without the essential building blocks of skilled personnel, integrated circuitry, and advanced research facilities. Even when the COCOM restrictions on sensitive exports evaporated in 1994, to be replaced by uncoordinated, fragmented, and often unenforced individual bans on specific technologies, Beijing was obliged to resort to subterfuge, and especially to the MSS and PLA, to bridge the gap.

However, the ability of Western analysts to grasp the full nature of challenge varies greatly, and a proposal in October 2009 from the U.S. National Security Council to downgrade the threat posed by the PRC to “Priority 2” was opposed by the director of national intelligence, Admiral Dennis C. Blair, and the CIA director, Leon E. Panetta. The very fact that the White House could have made such a suggestion was a reflection not only of the attitude of Barack Obama’s administration but also of the extent of the debate among analysts studying Beijing.

In a Western context, it would be inconceivable that the CIA could be tasked to steal industrial secrets for Lockheed or that the British Government Communications Headquarters would intercept commercially sensitive conversations for BAE Systems, but in the PRC, the party’s interests are best served by expedient exploitation of MSS’s resources to assist in the need of a particular technical research institute to acquire a special chip or some embargoed item of equipment so it can be reverse-engineered to the benefit of a subordinate manufacturing plant. Since all these entities are part of the state and have a duty to serve the party, the Chinese logic is obvious, even if it is utterly alien to Western practice.

In these circumstances, the Chinese intelligence establishment behaves very differently from its Western counterparts and poses special challenges to counterintelligence analysts who spent a lifetime during the Cold War learning to develop countermeasures appropriate for a Soviet and Warsaw Pact adversary. As can be seen in the pages that follow, the Chinese evolution has been very, very different.

 

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AA-2 ATOLL. On 24 September 1954, a major dogfight took place between MiG-17s and Taiwanese F-86 Sabres armed with AIM-9B Sidewinder air-to-air heat-seeking missiles. Although 11 MiG-17 Frescos were shot down in the engagement, one managed to return to base, having been hit by a Sidewinder that failed to detonate. The missile was removed from the airframe and delivered to the Toropov design center, where it was studied by Soviet analysts and used to reverse engineer the AA-2 Atoll. See also SOVIET UNION.

ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. The prestigious Chinese Academy of Sciences is listed by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission as a civilian research and development organization that routinely engages in the collection of sensitive technology. See also TECHNOLOGY ACQUISITION.

AFGHANISTAN. A neighbor of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and a source of regional instability, Afghanistan is a major focus of Beijing’s security and intelligence apparatus, which, having consistently ruled out armed intervention, is anxious to protect a significant state-sponsored economic investment. Major aid projects include the Karakorum Highway, which links Xinjiang Province to Pakistan, built by the China Road and Bridge Corporation in partnership with Pakistan’s National Highway Authority and financed by the Export-Import Bank of China. By 2008, Chinese companies had invested an estimated $580 million in some 33 different infrastructure improvement schemes that benefited from North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) protection. In addition, the China Metallurgical Group Corporation has also committed itself in 2007 to copper mining at Aynak in Logar Province, south of Kabul, which is intended to employ up to 10,000 Afghans and provide the central government with an income of $400 million a year. With deposits valued at $88 billion, the Aynak mine represents the largest foreign investment in Afghanistan’s troubled history. Other Chinese interests include partnership between the Afghan Ministry of Communications and the Chinese-owned companies Huawei and ZTE to install a digital telephone network linking a planned 200,000 subscribers.

Western intelligence analysts presume the Ministry of State Security (MSS) is well represented among personnel employed by the PRC’s commercial investments in Afghanistan, but the Afghan National Directorate of Security, sponsored and trained by the United States and preoccupied with domestic terrorism, has not registered the MSS as a significant adversary or target.

AGEE, PHILLIP. A Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer formerly based in Mexico, Agee volunteered his services to the KGB in Mexico City following his divorce and a refusal from the CIA to his request for financial assistance, but he was turned away by a Soviet security officer who did not believe such a scruffy individual could really be an authentic CIA officer. Allegedly, he was also rejected by Colonel Krepkogorsky, a KGB officer in the United States who suspected a provocation. Agee subsequently flew to Cuba where his offer was accepted with alacrity, and he was subsequently handled by Directorate K’s Oleg Nichiporenko. Under his guidance, Agee wrote Inside the Company: A CIA Diary and disclosed details of the CIA’s operations conducted against the PRC.

It is unclear if Agee had direct contact with the Chinese, but given the historically close relationship between the Chinese and their Communist counterparts in Cuba, it is highly likely that the Chinese received information provided by Agee. Later, during the Vietnam War, Agee reportedly volunteered to help in the interrogation of American prisoners of war, and while it is uncertain if his offer was taken up, he definitely had the opportunity to extend the cooperation he had provided the Cubans to the Chinese. Agee is known to have divulged virtually all the information he had at his disposal, and that included details of operations conducted against the Chinese.

The son of a wealthy businessman from Tampa, Florida, Philip Agee studied at Notre Dame University but left the law school before graduating and, in 1956, was drafted into the U.S. Army. While undergoing his military training, he volunteered to join the CIA, and in 1960, he was sent on his first overseas assignment, under diplomatic cover to Ecuador and then Uruguay, during which time he married and had two sons. In 1967, having returned to Washington DC, he was sent to Mexico City, where he began an affair with an American divorcée with strong Leftist political sympathies, and under her influence, he resigned from the CIA in the autumn of 1968 but remained in Mexico, working for a local company. In early 1970, more than a year after he had left the CIA, Agee started work on the book that was to make him notorious.

Agee acquired a Nicaraguan passport, which he used to maintain his residency in Hamburg and later to enter Canada and slip back into the United States, before settling in Cuba to run a travel agency. He died in Havana in February 2008 following a medical operation for a perforated ulcer.

AIRBORNE COLLECTION. Throughout the postwar and Cold War eras, mainland China has been the target of airborne intelligence collection operations conducted by aircraft operating from Taiwan and from U.S. Air Force bases in Japan. From 1950, photo reconnaissance missions were undertaken by the 91st Strategic Reconnaissance Wing (SRW) from Yokota, Japan, flying RB-29 Superfortresses equipped with the K-30 100-inch focal plane camera designed to capture imagery obliquely, and one flew over Shanghai on 25 August 1951. Electronic and signals intelligence flights were also undertaken by a 91st SRW detachment of RB-45C Tornados. When the U-2 and then the SR-71 Blackbird high altitude aircraft became operational, they also participated in clandestine overflights. See alsoCIVIL AIR TRANSPORT (CAT); UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (USA).

ALBANIA. The trenchant criticism of Josef Stalin by Nikita Khrushchev at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) held in Moscow in February 1956 served to alienate the Communist leadership in both the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Albania. Khrushchev’s secret speech, which quickly leaked to Western intelligence analysts, caused deep resentment in Tirana and Beijing, where Enver Hoxha and Mao Zedong felt considerable loyalty to the Soviet dictator.

For 19 months, Tirana came under intense pressure from the Kremlin to adopt Khrushchev’s new policy, and some discreet economic sanctions were applied, such as a restriction on Soviet travel to Albania, the withdrawal in August of East German technicians, and the hasty closure of the Pashaliman Red Banner Fleet naval base at Vlorë, leaving behind four Whiskey-class diesel-electrics. Khrushchev’s original donation, of 12 submarines, had been intended to put strategic pressure on the southern flank of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), but that policy had to be abandoned.

However, as the Eastern Bloc advisers departed, they were replaced by personnel from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which supplied Albania’s navy with 45 Type 025 Huchuan-class fast motor torpedo boats armed with up to four 533 mm torpedoes and some Shanghai-class coastal antisubmarine warfare patrol vessels. The People’s Liberation Army Navy also took over the management of the submarines, but they were rarely operational up until their official decommissioning in 1998.

An increasingly stubborn and paranoid Hoxha came to fear a Moscow-inspired uprising or even a coup d’état, suspecting that Khrushchev was attempting to regain Josip Broz Tito by offering him the chance to absorb Albania into a greater Yugoslavia. Hoxha’s rift with Moscow offered the Chinese an opportunity to exercise influence in the Balkans and provide a convenient military and intelligence base in Europe at a time when the mainland was effectively closed to Europeans and travel overseas by Chinese officials was very unusual. Although Albania effectively became the PRC’s surrogate client state, there is no evidence that, at a time when the Ministry of Public Security was preoccupied with domestic security issues, the opportunity was taken to establish wider intelligence networks in Europe.

Relations between Hoxha and the Kremlin continued to decline until October 1961, when Khrushchev made a speech at the 22nd CPSU Congress, criticizing Albania, which was an undisguised and unexpected attack on Beijing, prompting the Chinese delegation, led by Zhou Enlai, to return home prematurely. The dramatic walkout, which included Tao Zhu, the influential Guangdong first secretary, took place at a moment of economic crisis in the PRC, along with the threat of food shortages, crop failure, and mass starvation, when Tao had privately advocated reaching an accommodation with the Soviets for reasons of expediency, despite differences of opinion over Yugoslavia, Laos, and Albania. This view was not shared by two other more militant members of the delegation, Kang Sheng and Peng Zhen. Kang had already criticized Khrushchev at a Warsaw Pact meeting early in 1960, and there had been other manifestations of Mao’s unwillingness to accept Khrushchev’s leadership of the international Communist movement or to adopt the increasingly liberal Soviet interpretation of Marxism-Leninism.

Both sides of the dispute adopted the tiny state of Albania as a surrogate, leaving support or criticism of Tirana as implicit attacks on the leadership in Beijing and Moscow; although, the true depth of the schism would not become apparent until the end of 1961, when the Chinese republished, in mid-November, Hoxha’s accusations of “anti-Marxist conduct,” of “lies, pressure, threats, slanders and inventions,” of “opportunism,” “revisionism,” and “treachery,” made nine days earlier on the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. To reinforce the message, the Chinese sent Hoxha a message of congratulation on the Albanian Party’s 20th anniversary. The Kremlin then broke off diplomatic relations with Tirana in early December, and the TASS news agency circulated a comprehensive critique of the Albanian ideology, which had previously been published in the theoretical journal Kommunist. In February 1962, at the Albanian Party’s Fourth Congress, there were defiant attacks on the “revisionists,” predicting that an economic blockade would fail because “socialist Albania is not alone.” As predicted, in that same month, the PRC signed an agreement to provide equipment and loans to build 25 chemical, metallurgical, and power plants, worth 112.5 million rubles, amounting to much the same aid that had been received from Moscow over the past four years. The divide became more apparent when Hoxha failed to attend the Warsaw Pact meetings in Moscow in March and August and stayed away from the 40th anniversary celebrations of the Czech Party held in Prague in May. Meanwhile, the PRC gained influence in Tirana and became a major purchaser for the country’s sole strategic export of chromium.

Hoxha’s relationship with Moscow was never restored, leaving Tirana as a strange and unique Chinese ideological outpost in Europe, albeit isolated in the Balkans and surrounded by the Sigurimi, Hoxha’s xenophobic security apparatus. The PRC’s ambitions to extend its influence further from Tirana never materialized; although, Albania played a significant role in assisting Beijing to accomplish a key foreign policy objective: membership in the United Nations in 1971. Then, following President Richard Nixon’s visit to Beijing, interpreted by Hoxha as an act of betrayal, the Sino-Albanian relationship soured, deteriorating further (when Tito accepted an invitation of the PRC in September 1977) until July 1978, when the PRC terminated all aid programs.

AMERASIA. In August 1945, Philip Jaffe, the editor of Amerasia, a fortnightly periodical devoted to American policy in the Far East, was the subject of an urgent investigation conducted by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)following the leakage of classified information published in the January 1945 edition. An article entitled “British Imperial Policy in Asia” drew on a secret report written by OSS’s Southeast Asia chief, Kenneth Wells, and after a complaint from the British, OSS’s security division conducted a covert search in March of Amerasia’s editorial offices in New York, an operation that proved that Jaffe had retained thousands of official documents, and in June, Jaffe and his coeditor Kate Mitchell were arrested, together with a U.S. Naval Intelligence officer, Andrew Roth, and two State Department officials, John Service and Emmanuel Larsen, and charged with conspiracy to commit espionage. Jaffe pleaded guilty and received a fine and a suspended sentence, but although indicted, charges against his codefendants were dropped when they became aware that they had been the subject of illegal searches and wiretaps.

Concerned that the legal principle of “the fruit of the poisoned tree” would compromise any prosecution, the case was abandoned; although, many commentators believed influence had been exercised to avoid political embarrassment, allegations that were later pursued by the Congressional Tydings Committee. At the time, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) believed that the Amerasia case had been an example of Jaffe and other Communist sympathizers attempting to exercise influence in favor of the China lobby, but later study of the VENONA decrypts revealed that one of his contacts, Joseph M. Bernstein, was an active Soviet illegal codenamed MARQUIS, which put an altogether more sinister interpretation of the entire episode and on the motives of Service and Roth who had supplied Jaffe with the secret documents.

Bernstein only came under suspicion as a Soviet spy in 1949, when another mole, Judith Coplon, was asked to report from her section in the Department of Justice any interest in him from the FBI. Born in Connecticut and educated at Yale and the Sorbonne, Bernstein was a gifted linguist and traveled widely in Europe, working for a time as a newspaper reporter in Bucharest, before he returned to the United States in 1938. He then worked for Julio Álvarez de Vayo, formerly the foreign minister of republican Spain, and then for the Czech journalist Otto Katz, helping him write J’Accuse in 1940 under the pen name André Simon. Pretending to be a well-informed Frenchman who could not reveal his true identity because his family lived under the Nazi occupation, Katz’s bestseller was not much more than a tract of Communist propaganda based on newspaper research assembled by Bernstein.

During the war, Bernstein attempted to obtain a government job but was rejected because he omitted much of his prewar career on his application, so the Civil Service Commission branded him lacking “loyalty or morality.” In 1946, he attracted the FBI’s attention when he was spotted meeting another espionage suspect, Mary Jane Keeney. A single VENONA text from the GRU rezident in New York, Pavel Mikhailov, dated 16 August 1944 and attributed to Bernstein, contained details of conversations held between Chiang Kai-shek and General “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell in China, sourced to Thomas A. Bisson.

1.     Information of MARQUIS [Joseph Bernstein]:

1.      After unsuccessful conversations with the Communist party about the role of the 8th Army, CHIANG KAI-SHEK sent an extra five divisions to strengthen the army blockading the SHENSI–KANSU–NINSIA areas (ARTHUR’s [Thomas Bisson] information).

2.      For a while in government circles the question of sending their representatives for direct contact with the government of the areas indicated was urgently discussed. This intention is explained by the desire of the American command to establish air bases on the territory of those regions.

3.      In the Lend-Lease Division of the War Department among the commissioned personnel there is increasing resistance to fulfilling shipments for the USSR (particularly in connection with the Red Army line). The most vehement advocate of curtailing shipments is Major A. PEABODY (information of RHODES, and employee of the Division and an old acquaintance of FARLEY).

4.      Military circles are also resisting Lend-Lease consignments to the Chinese government, insisting along with this on increasing consignments to General STILWELL (the same source).

2.     Information of SMITH [Leonard Mins]:

1.      Beginning on 13th August the Russian Division of the O.S.S. has been working night and day on the compilation of some kind of urgent report (SMITH could not find out the details—he supposes the report is being for ROOSEVELT’s conference with CHURCHILL).

Never charged with espionage, Bernstein was subpoenaed to give evidence to a grand jury in 1953 but, nevertheless, continued to contribute articles to Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) publications until his death in 1975.

The other VENONA evidence consisted of three messages sent by Mikhailov to Moscow. Two were very fragmented, but the text dated 16 June 1943 was explicit and served to incriminate Bernstein and one of his sources, Thomas Bisson.

1.     MARQUIS [Joseph Bernstein] has established friendly relations with T. A. Bisson (in future ARTHUR) who has recently left BEW [Board of Economic Warfare]; he is now working in the Institute of Pacific Relations and in the editorial offices of MARQUIS’s periodical. ARTHUR is evidently well informed and has agents in government institutions.

2.     ARTHUR passed to MARQUIS, so that as his colleague in the editorial office he might get acquainted with them, copies of four documents:

1.      his own report for BEW with his views on working out a plan for shipments of American troops to China;

2.      a report by the Chinese embassy in Washington to its government in China about the dimensions and means of trade between the Japanese in the occupied territories and Chinese industrialists in free China territory;

3.      a brief BEW report of April 1943 on a general evaluation of the forces of the sides of the Soviet-German front and the prospects of the German summer offensive;

4.      a report by the American consul in Vladivostok, WARD, on the economic and political situation in the Vladivostok area.

3.     The reports are in translated form. We will pass on valuable points by telegraph.

4.     A check on ARTHUR’s personal connections will be undertaken on the spot. At the same time make use of the Centre’s opportunities for checking. 

Like China Today, Amerasia was published by the China Aid Council, a CPUSA front, but the extent to which it was also engaged in espionage remains moot. Jaffe came to believe that he had been tricked into reaching a plea bargain with the authorities, and Andrew Roth fled abroad to begin a new career as a journalist in London, never to return to the United States. Roth died in July 2010.

AMGEN. In 1993, the Amgen biotechnology company, based in Thousand Oaks, California, discovered that a Chinese agent had penetrated the company and had attempted to steal a vial of patented cell cultures for Epogen, a drug used for treating anemia worth $1.2 billion in annual sales. An investigation conducted internally revealed that the suspect had made more than 70 calls to the People’s Republic of China and had used intermediaries to offer the drug, used in kidney dialysis, for sale. Caught as he entered a laboratory illicitly, the suspect confessed and was fired. As no criminal offense had been committed, the matter never came before the courts. See also TECHNOLOGY ACQUISITION.

ANUBIS. Ning Wen, given the codename ANUBIS by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), was a diplomat who worked at the People’s Republic of China (PRC) consulate in San Francisco from 1986 and then in Los Angeles from 1988 as the science and technology attaché.

Born in Shanghai in 1949, Wen was educated at Tsinghua University and studied as a graduate student at Berkeley, earning a PhD in engineering, having married Lin Hailin. In 1989, apparently disillusioned by the Tiananmen Square massacre, Ning Wen was recruited by the FBI’s Steve Johnson and kept him supplied with information until he defected in March 1992, when he was scheduled to return to the PRC. He was then accommodated in an FBI safe house in the San Fernando Valley until he was resettled, with his wife and daughter, in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. There he was handled by the FBI’s Melvin Fuqia, who was unaware that, as well as working for a local manufacturer, the Manitowoc Company, the defector had set up his own firm, Wen Enterprises, which had a thriving business buying embargoed computer chips and reselling them to Beijing Rich Linscience Electronics, an importer run by Qu Jianguo and his wife Wang Ruoling. The suspicious nature of these sales was reported to the U.S. Department of Commerce in 2001, a year after Wen had acquired American citizenship and had been posted by his employer to Hangzhou to manage the Manitowoc Company’s refrigeration plant. According to the tip, Wen’s consignments were destined for the 54th Research Institute, a well-known front for the People’s Liberation Army.

An investigation was launched, and in September 2004, Wen and his wife were arrested on the day Qu Jianguo and his wife arrived in Wisconsin from Beijing to stay with them. In May 2005, Qu pleaded guilty to one charge of conspiring to export electronics without the required license and was fined $2,000 and 46 months’ imprisonment. His wife received 6 months and a $1,500 fine for deliberately undervaluing chips to evade export controls. Lin Hailin pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 42 months’ imprisonment and a $50,000 fine, while her husband went to trial, was found guilty, and sent, in January 2006, to the minimum security federal prison at Duluth for 5 years and fined $50,000. See also FOURTH DEPARTMENT; MINISTRY OF ELECTRONIC INDUSTRIES.

ARMED FORCES SECURITY AGENCY (AFSA). The principal American cryptographic organization before and during the Korean War, having been created in May 1949, the AFSA achieved considerable success in reading North Korean encrypted communications, but after the armistice in July 1953, the traffic available for interception reduced dramatically as the enemy switched to landlines, and the newly created National Security Agency (NSA), established in November 1952, reduced its coverage of the region, transferring its limited resources to Soviet targets.

The AFSA monitored plaintext transmissions and employed signals analysis techniques to build an accurate order of battle for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and report, from July 1950, a growing concentration of troops in Manchuria. Within two months, six of the nine field armies that would join the war were identified, and there were other clues. Intercepts showed that ferries at Anshan were reserved for military use, and the PLA was ordering maps of Korea in large quantities. Eventually, on 16 October, the 372nd Regiment, under radio silence, crossed the Yalu River and engaged United Nations forces. The AFSA was the only Allied intelligence agency to accurately predict the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) intervention.

Prior to the Chinese entry into the conflict on 16 October 1950, the AFSA relied upon diplomatic reporting from the Burmese and Indian embassies in Beijing for political information about the PRC’s intentions, apparently shared with selected foreign ambassadors by Zhou Enlai. In one example, on 25 September 1950, Dr. Kavalam Madhava Panikkar informed New Delhi that the Chinese intended to deploy Chinese troops in Korea if United Nations forces advanced beyond the 38th parallel. Even though the AFSA had monitored PLA movements from Shanghai toward Manchuria for some weeks, analysts at Arlington Hall failed to make the right interpretation, and the arrival of 260,000 infantrymen of the 42nd Army over the Yalu River came as a surprise to the remainder of the U.S. and Allied intelligence community.

Some limited NSA work on Chinese signals continued from Okinawa, with a young New Yorker, Milton Zaslow, concentrating on the PRC’s Ministry of Railways, a useful window on the country’s transport and logistical infrastructure. After November 1950, when regular PLA divisions were advancing toward Seoul, the AFSA planned to establish intercept stations at Sinanju to cover North Korean traffic and one in Pyongyang to concentrate on Chinese and Soviet communications. The deteriorating military situation forced the AFSA to cancel any deployment to Sinanju and withdraw the entire detachment to Pyongyang, operating under 15th Radio Squadron Mobile (RSM) cover. By February, the AFSA was picking up plenty of tactical Chinese voice channels, and to exploit this source, a Nationalist Chinese general in Tokyo was persuaded to recruit native speakers from Taiwan for the Army Security Agency (ASA), where they were employed on low-level voice intercept (LLVI) as civilians but paid officers’ salaries.

By the end of hostilities, the ASA had expanded its operations, usually conducted close to the frontline, to 22 LLVI stations, which produced the overwhelming majority of communications intelligence during the conflict. One unexpected bonus was the discovery, in September 1952, that sound detection systems, designed to warn of the approach of enemy troops, were picking up Chinese telephone conversations transmitted on tactical landlines. This accidental breakthrough was exploited by the ASA and the 25th Infantry Division, deploying small teams of linguists and analysts to LLVI units. The resulting information was both timely and accurate and enabled local commanders to bring down artillery barrages and air strikes whenever the intelligence indicated a concentration of enemy troops. The AFSA also developed a working relationship with South Korea’s embryonic military cryptographic organization and shared information using the BACCHUS electromechanical cipher system and DIANA one-time pads.

With the AFSA concentrating on Chinese signals, the AFSA achieved considerable success with traffic analysis and gradually developed an accurate order of battle for the entire People’s Volunteer Army (PVA) and, by monitoring its radio nets, predicted the offensive of 15 July 1953, which resulted in a significant defeat for the 46th Army. It also made a significant contribution to the battle for the Pusan perimeter. According to the NSA’s official history, “in the first month of the war the AFSA read more than one third of all North Korean cipher messages received, and by December AFSA was reading more than 90 percent.”

Following a review of what was perceived to be the AFSA’s poor performance by the Brownell Committee, the organization was replaced in November 1952 by the National Security Agency. See also AIRBORNE COLLECTION; UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (USA).

ARNOLD, JOHN. On 12 January 1953, a United States Air Force B-29 of the 581st Squadron was illuminated by radar-guided searchlights and then shot down by Chinese MiG-15s from Antung airfield while on a night mission to drop an agent over Liaoning Province. Of the aircrew, 3 were killed, and 11 were taken prisoner, including the pilot, Colonel John Arnold. They were tried on charges of espionage, their cover story of a leaflet drop having been disbelieved, and in November 1954, Radio Beijing announced their conviction. They were freed in August 1955 in Kowloon as the Geneva Conference on Indochina opened. See also TROPIC.

AUSTRALIA. From the end of World War II, Australian security and intelligence agencies have regarded China as a significant regional target for collection, with the Defence Signals Directorate taking the lead in collaborating with Allied communications intercept sites in Hong Kong and Singapore. In addition, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) monitors the diplomatic missions of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and occasionally attracts a well-informed asylum seeker. These defectors, usually regarded as reliable in providing local insights into the activities of the ubiquitous Ministry of State Security (MSS), enable ASIO to maintain a watch on the PRC’s efforts to exercise influence over the increasing Asian immigrant community. ASIO has assessed local MSS personnel as being more interested in supporters of Taiwan, Tibet, Falun Gong, and the democracy movement than in engaging in conventional espionage against Australian interests. See also CHEN YONGLIN; CYBER ESPIONAGE; INDUSTRIAL ESPIONAGE; RIO TINTO ZINC (RTZ).

AUTUMN ORCHID. The Second Department operation codenamed AUTUM ORCHID was responsible for collecting intelligence and monitoring political developments in Hong Kong and Macao before the hand over of the territories by Great Britain and Portugal.

AVOCADO. Codename for precautions taken to protect U.S. computer systems against cyber attacks originating in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), AVOCADO was introduced in November 2008 following a series of intrusions traced to computers located in the PRC. Among the targets has been the Pentagon’s Non-secure Internet Protocol Router Network (NIPRNET), which, in August 2006, lost 20 terabytes of data. Three months later, the U.S. Naval War College closed down its internal systems for two weeks after Chinese hackers had penetrated them. Then in June 2007, the Department of Defense took 1,500 terminals offline when the secretary of defense’s private office was targeted. Soon afterward, in October, some 1,100 members of staff at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory received suspicious e-mails containing a malicious attachment that a few opened, thereby contaminating a database at the nuclear weapons facility. Other sites that have attracted attacks are the White House’s internal information network, which was hit in November 2008, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) shuttle support systems at the Kennedy Space Center and the Goddard Space Flight Center. See also INFORMATION WARFARE; INFORMATION WARFARE MILITIA; TITAN RAIN.

B

BANDA, DR. HASTINGS. In 1965, a plot to assassinate Dr. Hasting Banda, the autocratic ruler of Malawi, was exposed, and the People’s Republic of China’s ambassador to Tanzania was implicated. Previously Nyasaland, and part of the Central African Federation, Malawi’s security had been MI5’s responsibility, but when the federation was dismantled in 1964, Banda had declined MI5’s offer to have the security liaison officer (SLO) in Salisbury accredited in Blantyre too but accepted an SLO in Zambia.

Malawi had received independence from Great Britain in July 1964, but almost immediately, Banda, who had been the country’s prime minister since February 1963, was challenged by four cabinet ministers, whom he promptly dismissed. They fled the country, and in July 1966, Banda was the only candidate in the newly declared republic’s presidential election. He remained president for life until he was removed from office in a 1993 referendum. He died in November 1997, aged 101.

BANNER, USS. A U.S. National Security Agency signals intelligence platform, the USS Banner undertook regular patrols off the coast of the Chinese mainland until November 1966, when the ship was the subject of intensive harassment from Chinese fishing vessels. At only 176 feet long, the Banner had been operational for only a year when it was deployed to intercept Chinese traffic in the East China Sea off Shanghai.

BEIJING ELECTRONIC SPECIALIST SCHOOL. Technicians destined for the Ministry of State Security (MSS)invariably undergo training at the Beijing Electronic Specialist School before graduating as technical support officers for the MSS Investigation Department or as specialists in classified communications.

BEIJING INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS (BIIR). The Beijing Institute of International Relations (Guoji Guanxi Xueyuan) has long been associated with the Ministry of State Security (MSS) and has been described as a “School of Spies.” Subordinate to the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, with which it shares its academic staff, the BIIR prepares students for international assignments, some with MSS sponsorship but others for the Foreign Ministry and news organizations reporting business and international affairs. The BIIR’s relationship with the MSS is intended to be covert, and no documents circulate internally that suggest the BIIR is anything other than a legitimate educational facility, but in reality, it prepares training manuals, offers intelligence-related courses, and conducts external conferences attended only by MSS staff.

BEJUCAL. In 1999, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) established a signals intelligence station at Bejucal, south of Havana, Cuba, with several satellite radomes that U.S. intelligence agencies assessed could be deployed to intercept American military and civilian communications. At a second site, northeast of Santiago de Cuba, the PLC built another facility, and reportedly China also provided Fidel Castro’s regime with sophisticated antennas to block Radio Martí broadcasts.

BERGERSEN, GREGG W. A weapons systems policy analyst employed by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the Department of Defense agency responsible for supervising the sale of defense equipment to foreign buyers, Gregg Bergersen was arrested in February 2008 and charged with passing classified information to Tai Shen Kuo, a Taiwanesewith a furniture manufacturing business in New Orleans.

Apparently the victim of a classic Chinese “false flag” operation, Bergersen was led to believe that Kuo was working for Taiwan when in fact he had been recruited by a Ministry of State Security contact in Guangzhou. Accordingly, he supplied Kuo with information and documents that were supposedly intended to assist him in developing defense exports to Taiwan. Among the items passed were details of the Po Sheng (Broad Victory) project, which was designed to upgrade existing Taiwanese command-and-control systems; blueprints of the Defense Department’s Global Information Grid communications network; and pages of the secret 2007 Javits report, which listed Defense Security Cooperation Agency sales planned over the next five years. In July 2008, Bergersen was sentenced to 57 months’ imprisonment. See also UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (USA).

BLACK BAT SQUADRON. The Black Bat Squadron (hei bianfu zhongdui) was the name applied to the Taiwan Air Force’s 34th Squadron, which was equipped by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with reconnaissance aircraft and Taiwanese pilots at the height of the Cold War between 1953 and 1967. The squadron routinely overflew the mainland to drop agents and collect signals intelligence.

The squadron was supplied with the Douglas A-26C/B-26C, P2V-7/RB-69As, C-54s, C-123, C-130, the P-3A armed with Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, and the unarmed B-17G. Their mission was to fly at low altitude to evade hostile radar and air interception, while the P-3A was restricted to international airspace, at least 40 miles off the coast, to monitor signals traffic. Most flights took place at night from Hsinchu in northern Taiwan, earning the squadron its black bat symbol.

The squadron flew 838 missions with a loss of 148 crew, or two-thirds of the original squadron’s strength, and 15 aircraft. Some crewmen were captured in mainland China and eventually returned to Taiwan, and the unit’s last overflight took place on 25 January 1967. Nevertheless, the Black Bats remained operational and conducted missions over Vietnam, participating between 1971 and 1972 in the CIA’s MAIN STREET project, which monitored North Vietnamese communications.

In March 2010, the ashes of five missing aircrew were interred at the Martyr’s Shrine near Taipei.

BLACKBIRD. From January 1966, the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird was the principal airborne platform deployed along the periphery of mainland Chinese airspace. This astonishing aircraft, 107 feet long and 56 feet wide, built mainly of a heat-resistant titanium alloy, flew at a speed of up to 2,600 mph at an altitude of over 100,00 feet and during 20 years of operational service proved invulnerable to attack, despite more than 1,000 attempts, most of them during the Vietnam War.

Equipped with long-range sensors and an oblique camera with a 30-inch focal length, the SR-71 produced an ultra-thin 10,500-foot Kodak film strip containing 1,600 frames with a ground resolution of 12 inches. Each frame measured 73.3 inches by 4.5 inches, covering 72 nautical miles and giving a panoramic view of the ground below. In addition, the Blackbird carried side-looking airborne synthetic aperture radar capable of collecting imagery from between 10 and 80 miles away in any weather, with a ground resolution of 10 feet. When configured for signals intelligence collection, the aircraft could hoover up traffic from a radius of 390 nautical miles.

Operated by the 9th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing at Beale Air Force Base near Marysville, California, but deployed to Kadena on Okinawa, Japan, the Blackbird, of which 32 were built, made a major contribution to intelligence collection operations conducted against mainland China, often without infringing the country’s airspace. In June 1967, when the first hydrogen bomb was tested at Lop Nor, the event was photographed by an SR-71.

Almost as soon as SR-71 flights were detected, the People’s Liberation Army began researching countermeasures, concentrating on advanced laser weapons developed at the China Academy of Sciences’ Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, where laser nuclear fusion was studied by Deng Ximing and an alternative weapon effective at high altitude was pursued by Wang Zhijiang. However, by the time the aircraft was withdrawn from operations in 1998, no SR-71 had ever been lost to hostile action; although, 12 crashed in accidents. See also AIRBORNE COLLECTION; SENIOR BOWL.

BLACK CAT SQUADRON. Taiwan’s Air Force’s 35th Reconnaissance Squadron was known as the Black Cats (hei mao zhongdui) and flew a total of 102 U-2 surveillance flights over the mainland between January 1962 and February 1972, while purporting to be undertaking high-altitude weather research.

Some 26 Taiwanese pilots completed training in the United States and completed 220 missions, some over North Korea and North Vietnam. Altogether, five U-2 aircraft were shot down over the mainland, with three aircrew killed and two taken prisoner. Another pilot was killed while flying a mission off China’s coast, and a further six were killed in training accidents that claimed seven aircraft. The flights were terminated shortly after President Richard Nixon’s visit to Beijing in February 1972.

BOEING 767-300ER. In September 2002, technicians from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) discovered 27 listening devices installed in a Boeing 767-300ER that had been ordered by the China Aviation Supplies Import and Export Corporation as President Jiang Zemin’s personal aircraft and delivered the previous month. The plane, at a cost of $120 million, included a large bedroom suite with a shower room and sitting area complete with a large television. The miniaturized, satellite-controlled equipment had been installed while the aircraft was undergoing a $15 million custom refit in San Antonio, Texas, by Dee Howard Aircraft Maintenance, Gore Design Completions, Rockwell Collins, and Avitra Aviation Services, supervised by 75 PRC security officials.

The investigation into how the Chinese found the sophisticated hardware, so quickly retrieved from the presidential bathroom and bedroom, led to a leak enquiry, which would implicate a Los Angeles–based agent of the Ministry of State Security, Katrina Leung. The subsequent mole hunt, codenamed PARLOR MAID by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), would conclude that Leung had compromised her FBI handlers and passed classified information to Beijing. See also AIRBORNE COLLECTION; UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (USA).

BOURSICOT, BERNARD. A French diplomatic service officer, Bernard Boursicot was identified by a defector, Yu Qiangsheng, as the victim of a bizarre honeytrap in Beijing, where he had been posted to the French embassy in 1964, at the age of 20, as an accountant and had formed a relationship with an actor, Shi Peipu, a male impersonator who later claimed to have borne him a child. She said the baby boy, Bertrand, had been sent to live with relatives in the north so as to avoid persecution during the Cultural Revolution. To maintain the illicit relationship, Boursicot was persuaded to bring embassy papers to Shi Peipu’s home, where they were copied by Ministry of State Security personnel. He was eventually introduced to the child in 1973 while on a visit to the People’s Republic of China, having resigned from the foreign service the previous year.

In 1975, Boursicot rejoined the foreign service and was posted to the consulate in New Orleans and then was transferred to the French embassy in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, where he resumed his espionage so he could continue his affair with Shi Peipu. Eventually, he brought both to Paris in 1983, and Shi Peipu found work as an opera singer.

When Yu identified Boursicot, he was placed under observation by the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire and found to be living with his son and the actress, who actually turned out to be a man. Under interrogation, he admitted that the child had been bought from a family of Uighurs, an ethnic group from northeast China with Caucasian features. Boursicot, whose strange story was to become the subject of a book, Liaison, a play, M. Butterfly, and a movie, was sentenced in May 1986 to six years’ imprisonment but was released after having served four years. See alsoDIRECTION GÉNÉRALE DE LA SÉCURITÉ EXTÉRIEURE (DGSE).

BOXER UPRISING. The first modern example of foreign intelligence collection in China, the Boxer Uprising of 1899 was suppressed by a large international force, which relied on information supplied by missionaries, mining engineers, and businessmen working in the north of the country. The U.S. forces, deployed from the Philippines and led by Admiral Adna Chaffee, a veteran of the American Civil War and the American Indian Wars, relieved the siege of Peking by entering the city through a weakly defended route identified by a network of agents. Because of a perceived lack of detailed knowledge of the Chinese military, Ralph Van Deman, one of the first graduates of the U.S. Army War College, began a series of visits in 1906 to sketch Peking’s fortifications and defenses. Upon his return to Washington DC, having been withdrawn because of protests over his activities, Van Deman was appointed head of the U.S. General Staff’s mapping section and later was responsible for the creation of a military intelligence branch within the War Department.

BRITISH ARMY AID GROUP (BAAG). Operating from Hong Kong, the British Army Aid Group was established in March 1944 to give humanitarian aid to prisoners of the Japanese, under the command of an Australian doctor, Lindsay Tasman Ride, who had escaped from Hong Kong and joined MI9, the Escape and Evasion Service. By May 1945, BAAG had provided assistance to 130 British and American personnel, 350 Indians, and several thousand Chinese and sent missions deep into China to construct medical clinics, distribute rice, and offer famine relief. The BAAG also collected intelligence about the Japanese on the mainland for the local British Secret Intelligence Service station (the Inter-Services Liaison Department) and circulated pro-Allied propaganda until the conclusion of hostilities.

C

CALDWELL, OLIVER J. One of the first representatives of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in China and fluent in Mandarin, the Foochow dialect, and Japanese, Oliver Caldwell acted as a liaison officer with the Kuomintang but found his organization rejected by General Joseph Stilwell’s staff in India. Upon his return to Chungking, he was to develop a close relationship with Tai Li, as he later documented in his 1972 memoirs, A Secret War: Americans in China, 1944–1945. See also DIXIE MISSION.

CAMPCON. In 1996, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) conducted an enquiry codenamed CAMPCOM into political campaign contributions to the Democrat Party from the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The investigation, assisted by Katrina Leung, codenamed PARLOR MAID, had been prompted by events that had followed inaccurate political forecasting made about the 1980 election by Cao Quisheng, then first secretary of the political section of the PRC’s embassy in Washington DC. Having assured Beijing that the incumbent, President Jimmy Carter, would be reelected, Cao had been embarrassed when Carter was defeated in a landslide by Ronald Reagan.

Following this failure, the PRC made a concerted effort to compete with Taiwan for influence on Capitol Hill and at the White House and, by 1996, had begun to make cash donations to the Democrats and to President Bill Clinton, who had been befriended by Yah Lin “Charlie” Trie, the owner of a Chinese restaurant in Little Rock, Arkansas. Born inTaiwan, Trie had immigrated to the United States in 1974 and eventually acquired citizenship. After making a large donation to Clinton in 1996, Trie wrote to the president expressing concern about American policy and tensions arising from the PRC’s military exercises being conducted near Taiwan. In response, Clinton directed a National Security Council staffer to reply.

Another Chinese who attempted to exercise influence over the Clinton White House, investigated during CAMPCON, was John Huang, who had been born in China but raised in Taiwan after the Communist takeover in 1949. He immigrated to the United States in 1969 and became a citizen seven years later. After graduating from college, Huang met two Indonesians, Mochtar and James Riady, who headed the Lippo Group, and he later worked for them when they bought out a local bank in Arkansas. He later moved to Los Angeles but, after Clinton’s election in 1992, lobbied for a post in the administration on the basis of his links to Clinton and his wife Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In 1993, Huang was appointed deputy assistant secretary for international economic affairs, having received a $750,000 severance package from the Lippo Group. Two years later, Huang moved to a fund-raising position at the Democratic National Committee (DNC). When he was later interviewed by Department of Commerce investigators, Huang refused to answer questions 2,000 times, citing his Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate himself, when asked if he was acting as an agent of the PRC military.

Another suspect interrogated during CAMPCON was Ng Lap Seng (the Cantonese Romanization, used in Macao instead of the Mandarin Romanization, Wu Lixing), who owned extensive real estate holdings in Texas, Hong Kong,and Macao and was the business partner of Wang Jun, chairman of one of the PRC’s largest financial conglomerates and who also headed a leading arms firm. Ng also became a political contributor after Charlie Trie first helped him purchase and renovate an old hotel in Little Rock. Ng gave the DNC $15,000 shortly after he had formed a company, Sin Kin Yip Inc., and later said that he believed that giving contributions to Clinton and the Democrats would ensure he would have access to U.S. markets. Later, Trie introduced Wang Jun to President Clinton at the White House. At the time, Wang was chairman of Poly Technologies, a front for the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (COSTIND). His father, Wang Zhen, was a hardliner in Beijing who advocated crushing the pro-democracy movement during the Tiananmen Square demonstrations of 1989.

The FBI later established that, between 1994 and 1996, Trie received more than $900,000 in wire transfers from Ng and that there was a correlation between the wire transfers and Trie’s contributions to the DNC. On one occasion, Trie showed up with $460,000 in $1,000 contributions, some on sequentially numbered money orders made out in different names but the same handwriting. On another occasion, Trie sat at a fund-raising event with Ng at the same table as President Clinton, after Trie had made a $100,000 contribution.

Another suspect was Johnny Chung, who was found to have made 49 visits to the Clinton White House between 1994 and 1996 and to have donated $366,000 to the DNC. Chung later told federal investigators that $35,000 of the money he donated came from the PRC’s military intelligence, and he testified to a U.S. House of Representatives committee that he had been introduced to the then head of the Second Department of the People’s Liberation Army General Staff, Major-General Ji Shengde. According to Chung, Ji promised to give $300,000 for Clinton’s reelection, an assertion later denied by the PRC.

In June 1999, Ji was removed from his post after being involved in a smuggling scandal in Fujian Province and was sentenced to death but later received a commuted sentence of 20 years’ imprisonment.

In total, 22 suspects, including Huang, Trie, and Chung were convicted of various crimes relating to CAMPCON, and some others fled abroad. Several congressional committees pursued the issue, among them the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, chaired by Republican Senator Fred Thompson. See also PARLOR MAID; UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (USA).

CANADA. Responsibility for investigating and countering Chinese espionage in Canada lies with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS); although, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police pursues any criminal matters concerning the theft of industrial and commercial secrets. The task of monitoring the 120 People’s Republic of China diplomats accredited to the embassy in Ottawa is a substantial burden for CSIS, and in April 2007, the organization’s director, Jim Judd, told the Canadian Senate Standing Committee on National Security and Defence that “just about” 50 percent of his staff’s time was taken up by Chinese espionage. See also CHEN YOGLIN; FALUN GONG; HAN GUANGSHENG; HANSON, HAROLD DEWITT; HAO FENGJUN; INDUSTRIAL ESPIONAGE.

CANBERRA EMBASSY. In April 1995, after five weeks of litigation over a government injunction to prevent publication of a story alleged to have national security implications, the Australian media revealed that a long-term technical surveillance operation had been conducted against the People’s Republic of China’s newly constructed embassy in Canberra and had provided the West’s signals intelligence community with a hugely valuable source of information. Reportedly, some 30 linguists had been employed to process the recorded conversations, and the access included a clandestine video feed that had been inserted into the building during construction. Premature disclosure instantly terminated the project.

CATHAY PACIFIC. On 22 July 1954, a Cathay Pacific DC-4 flying from Bangkok to Hong Kong was attacked by a La-9 Fritz fighter near Hainan Island, killing 10 of the 18 passengers and crew. When the USS Philippine Sea launched two U.S. Navy AD-4 Skyraiders from VF-54 to search for survivors, they were attacked by a pair of La-7 Fins. More carrier-borne planes were then launched, which shot down the mainland Chinese fighters. See also AIRBORNE COLLECTION; UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (USA).

CENTRAL BUREAU 610. According to the testimony of a defector, Chen Yonglin, formerly the first secretary at the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) consulate in Sydney, the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee created a special office in July 1999 to supervise the Falun Gong issue, which later became the Department of External Security Affairs and then Central Bureau 610.

Evidence related to the bureau’s activities was released by the federal German Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), following an investigation conducted in the recruitment in 2005 by the Ministry of State Security (MSS) of an academic, a Chinese emigrant who had been a German citizen since the 1990s. The individual had applied for a visa at the Berlin embassy to visit his sick father but instead had been questioned about his Falun Gong membership and invited, in March 2006, to a further meeting at a Berlin hotel with PRC officials named only as “Xiaohua Zapatero” and “Bin C.” In October 2009, the academic’s home in Lower Saxony was raided by the BfV seeking evidence that, since September 2008, he had forwarded all material distributed to Falun Gong’s mailing list to an e-mail address located just outside Shanghai. Although the academic pleaded innocence, he was informed that the two men he had met in Berlin were not researchers but senior MSS officials working for Central Bureau 610 who were under BfV surveillance at the time. He was also accused of having opened a GMX e-mail account in January 2009 to receive Falun Gong circulars and having shared the password access with the MSS.

CENTRAL CASE EXAMINATION GROUP. During the Cultural Revolution, the Central Case Examination Group, headed by Kang Sheng, conducted investigations into individuals who had been denounced and recommended for reeducation. See also MINISTRY OF STATE SECURITY (MSS).

CENTRAL DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL AFFAIRS (CDSA). The intelligence branch of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the CDSA was headed initially by Kang Sheng and provided the party leadership with information largely drawn from foreign news agencies and open sources.

During the Yan’an period, the CDSA provided the CCP leadership with reports on the world situation and on the major events and issues taking place abroad. These efforts were based on news reports from foreign press agencies and a limited number of foreign newspapers and books. During the conflict with the Kuomintang between 1946 and 1949, the CDSA’s intelligence was considered pivotal to the final victory. After the CCP had consolidated state power, the intelligence system played an increasingly important role, and the CDSA’s head, Li Kenong, was appointed head of the renamed Central Investigation Department, formed in 1953. Li also held several other leadership positions, including deputy chief of general staff and vice minister of foreign affairs and attended meetings for the Politburo as an observer.

CENTRAL DISCIPLINE INSPECTION COMMISSION (CDIC). The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) most powerful investigatory agency, the CDIC is responsible for eliminating corruption within the CCP’s 76 million membership and is not externally accountable to the police, the judiciary, or any other institution. Created in 1949, on a model established in 1927, the CDIC was dormant during the period of the Cultural Revolution but was reconstituted in 1978 and headed by Chen Yun, Qiao Shi, Wei Jianxing, and Wu Guanzheng. Since 2007, the CDIC, which enjoys the widest powers of detention and interrogation, has been run by He Guoqiang and is based in an anonymous, walled compound, which accommodates two 10-story buildings in Beijing’s Ping’anli district. The compound is protected by a high wall and armed guards. 

The CDIC consists of 20 departments, 8 of which conduct investigations in specific parts of the economy, including the ministries and state-owned business, and the government. Each of the eight principal directors has the power to authorize telephone and e-mail intercepts and relies on the Ministry of State Security to provide the technical resources required. Previously, the CDIC had depended on the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) to conduct wiretaps, but this arrangement had led to too many leaks. It is rumored that many suspects taken into indefinite custody, or shuang gui(double rule), commit suicide.

Theoretically, He Guoqiang is directed by a CCP committee, which sets priorities and targets. Once an enquiry has been initiated, a review is performed three months later to determine whether further investigation is warranted. According to the CDIC, in February 2007, 46.2 percent of its cases the previous year had come from complaints from the public, made directly or through the Ministry of Supervision.

The CDIC has a reputation for exercising independence and pursuing individuals, such as those known as the princelings, thought to enjoy high-level protection. Although some princelings enjoy immunity in Beijing, that privilege does not always extend to the other cities and provinces, and some parents have endured incarceration for the crimes of their children.

In January 2009, the CDIC arrested an assistant minister (10th in the national police hierarchy), Zheng Xiaodong, in his office at the MPS in Beijing. Originally from Shantou, Zheng had established a reputation with the Guangdong Criminal Investigation Department, where he had supervised the prosecution of Cheung Tze-keung, a notorious Hong Kong gangster, who kidnapped and ransomed Victor Li, son of Li Ka-shing. Zheng was then promoted to head of Beijing’s economic crime bureau and, in April 2005, became assistant minister and a member of the ministry’s Communist Party committee. However, after the arrest of the Gome chairman, Huang Guangyu, in November 2008, it was learned that Zheng had been bribed by Huang and had been involved corruptly with other gangsters. The case had been passed to the CDIC, and after an interrogation lasting a year, Zheng attempted suicide.

Some CDIC investigations are extraordinarily large, such as the case against Chen Liangyu, the Shanghai party chief who was dismissed in September 2006 and sentenced in Tianjin to 18 years’ imprisonment, having been convicted of accepting $340,000 in bribes. The CDIC team responsible for prosecuting Chen amounted to 260 officers, some of them drafted from Jilin, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang and from the military. Other notable corruption cases include those of Yang Xiuzhu, the vice-mayor of Wenzhou, who defected in 2003 to escape criminal charges, and Yang Xianghong, the 52-year-old deputy party chief of a district in Wenzhou, who defected while on a business trip to France in 2008. In his absence, Yang was stripped of his party membership, and in July 2010, Chen Shaoji, the former top political adviser of Guangdong province, was sentenced for embezzling nearly $4 million between 1992 and 2009.

In recent years, the CDIC itself has been accused of corruption, including Zeng Jinchun, the organization’s most senior officer in Chenzhou, Hunan Province, between 1997 and 2006, who was accused with his wife and children of having received 31.5 million yuan in bribes from the construction and mining industries and failing to explain the source of assets worth another 28.77 million yuan. In August 2009, he was sentenced to death in Changsha. Also implicated was Li Dalun, the local party chief in Chenzhou, who received a suspended death sentence, and 158 other officials and businessmen. Similarly, Wang Huayan, the CDIC leader in Guangdong and Zhejiang provinces between 1998 and 2009, where he had also been the CDIC’s influential party secretary, also was accused of having abused his power to amass a fortune. To save his life, he has cooperated with the authorities, expressed public remorse, and publicly urged people to denounce corruption, saying “transparency is the best method of fighting corruption.”

Details of the CDIC’s activities are rarely publicized; although, Black Box, written anonymously by three authors describing themselves as “no ordinary Chinese” and published in Hong Kong, has documented high-echelon corruption and the CDIC’s interventions.

CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY (CIA). Created in 1947 by the National Security Act in succession to the Office of Strategic Services and the Central Intelligence Group, the CIA fulfilled its mission to collect intelligence about mainland China, principally from stations in Hong Kong and Taipei, Taiwan. After the Communist victory in 1949, the CIA relied upon personnel operating under non-official cover, but in April 1951, the danger of this strategy was demonstrated when Hugh Redmond was arrested in Shanghai and endured 19 years of harsh imprisonment before he died, protesting his innocence to the end.

With limited resources in the Far East, largely because of the hostility of General Douglas MacArthur, the CIA’s reporting after the outbreak of the Korean War was very poor; although, George E. Aurell, the station chief in Tokyo, relayed a warning from a Chinese Nationalist officer in Manchuria that 300,000 People’s Liberation Army (PLA)troops were concentrated close to the Korean border. One of Aurell’s subordinates in the three-man station, Bill Duggan, based in the U.S. Navy Seventh Fleet base at Yokosuka, predicted that the Chinese would cross the Yalu River and intervene, but he was ignored. Similarly, a CIA officer in Taiwan, Bob Myers, relayed reports from his Nationalist contacts that the PLA was moving north to the Manchurian border, but they were ignored by MacArthur’s intelligence staff.

On 20 October 1950, four days after the first Chinese troops had joined the conflict, the CIA concluded that the soldiers had been deployed to protect local Chinese hydroelectric plants and, on 28 October, insisted that the forces were merely “scattered volunteers.” Two days later, as hundreds of thousands of PLA troops engaged American ground forces, a CIA assessment suggested a major Chinese invasion was unlikely.

Increasingly allied with the Kuomintang, the CIA established a large station in Taiwan, which would be headed by the formidable Dr. Ray Cline and staffed by some 600 personnel, some of whom worked under semitransparent Western Enterprises commercial cover. Through Chiang Kai-shek’s son Chiang Ching-kuo, the CIA attempted to develop a “third force” on the mainland during the Korean War by sponsoring Nationalist guerrilla groups and frequent raids intended to harass the Communists. In parallel, the CIA also monitored Taiwan’s clandestine nuclear bomb project and recruited an agent, Colonel Chang Hsien-Yi, within it.

As part of a plan to support Tibetan nationalists, the CIA sponsored and trained a guerrilla force, having established a training facility at Camp Hale in Colorado, but the campaign was suppressed with ruthless efficiency by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and eventually was abandoned because of political expediency and concern about hostile penetration of the groups of volunteers.

The CIA’s first station in Beijing was opened in 1973, following the appointment of Jim Lilley as station chief, and thereafter the relationship prospered with a formal agreement to exchange intelligence collected about the Soviets from intercept sites established in Xinjiang.

As well as collecting information about the PRC’s military capability, the CIA monitored Beijing’s activities as a major weapons proliferator, supplying nuclear and missile technology to other countries, including North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan. In 1997, the CIA reported that

During the last half of 1996, China was the most significant supplier of weapons of mass destruction goods and technology to foreign countries. The Chinese provided a tremendous variety of assistance to both Iran’s and Pakistan’s ballistic missile programs. China also was the primary source of nuclear-related equipment and technology to Pakistan and a key supplier to Iran during this reporting period.

That the CIA was considered an important target by the Ministry of State Security is demonstrated by the very considerable investment made in the skilled cultivation and management of the Directorate of Intelligence analyst Larry Wu-tai Chin. The CIA’s traditional answer to the Chinese challenge has been to adopt a generous, open-door policy toward defectors to encourage other potential line-crossers to seek asylum in return for supplying information. See alsoCIRCUS; CIVIL AIR TRANSPORT (CAT); NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY (NSA); SINO-SOVIET SPLIT; TIBET; UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (USA).

CENTRAL INVESTIGATION DEPARTMENT (CID). Headed by Li Kenong during the 1950s, the CID expanded overseas by sending representatives to embassies under cover of the Investigation and Research Office. Li Kenong, who died in 1962, was succeeded by Luo Qingchang, who worked under the direction of Kang Sheng. The CID would be abolished during the Cultural Revolution and its responsibilities absorbed by the Second Department of the People’s Liberation Army’s General Staff. However, it would be reestablished in 1972, but under pressure from Deng Xiaoping, the CID failed to expand its activities into embassies overseas. In 1976, Zhou Shaozheng was appointed head of the CID, but he was purged in 1982, having been falsely accused of plotting against Premier Zhou Enlai. The following year, the CID was absorbed into a new Ministry of State Security under Lin Yun, but he would be replaced by Jia Chunwang following the defection in 1985 of Yu Qiangsheng.

CHANG, THERESA. On 21 June 2007, Theresa Chang pleaded guilty to one count of making false statements related to the export to Taiwan of nickel powder, a commodity controlled because of its nuclear application, without an export license. On 11 October 2007, she was sentenced in the Northern District of California to three years’ probation and fined $5,000. See also CHINESE NUCLEAR WEAPONS; TECHNOLOGY ACQUISITION; UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (USA).

CHANG FEN. The alias of a defector from the Soviet KGB, Chang Fen was granted political asylum at John F. Kennedy Airport in late December 1982. Born in China, he had escaped to Alma Ata, where he had been imprisoned for having crossed the frontier, but was recruited while in captivity by the KGB as an illegal. Sent on a mission to Mauritius with a Canadian passport, Chang took a TWA flight to New York, without any luggage, and surrendered to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He spent Christmas with Ed Worthington, an FBI special agent, at his home in Pennsylvania and then was flown to Florida for a lengthy debriefing in a warm climate. 

His defection was kept secret, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) arranged for another Chinese agent to maintain contact with the KGB and appear at a rendezvous in Nairobi. This ploy was intended to identify Soviet intelligence personnel and expose KGB activities in the region.

When eventually the deception was terminated, the KGB assigned a senior security officer, Vitali Yurchenko, the task of determining what had happened to the illegal who had disappeared. As Yurchenko admitted while being debriefed in the United States in September 1985, following his defection, he had concluded that the agent had been compromised in Kenya because of a passport problem but had not actually defected. In 1988, the Reader’s Digest writer John Barron published a sanitized account of the case, “The Spy Who Would Be Free,” omitting details of the CIA’s lengthy double agent stratagem.

CHANG HSIEN-YI. In December 1987, the deputy director of Taiwan’s Institute of Nuclear Energy Research (INER) sought political asylum in the United States and disclosed details to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the country’s clandestine nuclear weapons development program. According to Colonel Chang, the INER, an ostensibly civilian organization, had been diverting plutonium into a military project for years and had evaded inspection by the International Atomic Energy Authority. Colonel Chang had been recruited by the CIA when he was a military cadet and had supplied information to his handlers for more than 20 years. His documentation provided absolute proof of Taiwan’s covert bomb project, which had been monitored by the CIA’s Rob Simmons during the early 1970s.

Under intense diplomatic pressure, the Taipei government undertook to suspend the program permanently, while Beijing declared that possession of nuclear weapons would be a legitimate reason for an attack on the island.

CHAN TEK FEI. Employed as a linguist at the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) signals intelligence base at Little Sai Wan on Hong Kong, Chan Tek Fei was arrested in 1961, following an ostensibly routine customs search, and charged with espionage on behalf of the People’s Republic of China. Allegedly, he was found to be carrying classified documents, lists of GCHQ personnel with descriptions of their vulnerabilities, and details of an affair between his wife and a senior GCHQ officer, who was promptly transferred. See also GREAT BRITAIN.

CHAO FU. Formerly a security officer at the People’s Republic of China embassy in Stockholm and married with a child, 27-year-old Chao Fu became increasingly disillusioned with the contrast between his life in China and the comparative wealth and freedom of Sweden and tried to defect to the local American embassy but could not find anyone who spoke Mandarin. He had already decided that the neutral Swedes would not help him, so he planned to leave the country. However, after he had come under the suspicion of colleagues and was confined to his room, he managed to slip away and take the keys to the embassy Chrysler. He then drove into the Swedish countryside, and following a series of misadventures, he walked and hitchhiked to the U.S. embassy in Bonn, where, in August 1962, he applied for political asylum. By Christmas, Chao had been resettled in the United States.

CHAO TAH WEI. In March 2008, Chao Tah Wei, a 53-year-old resident of Beijing and naturalized U.S. citizen, ordered 10 thermal imaging cameras from FLIR Systems Inc. and paid $53,000 and the following month was arrested, along with Guo Zhgong, a Beijing resident aged 49, as they attempted to smuggle them onto a China Airways flight from Los Angeles International Airport to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Under interrogation by the Export and Anti-proliferation Global Law Enforcement (EAGLE) team, he admitted having smuggled three other cameras to the PRC in October 2007 for Guo, a director of a Beijing engineering company. Chao pleaded guilty to charges of violating the export ban on the equipment and gave evidence at the week-long trial of Guo, who was convicted in February 2009. Chao was sentenced to 20 months’ imprisonment, and Guo received 60 months. See alsoTECHNOLOGY ACQUISITION; UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (USA).

CHARBATIA. In 1962, following border clashes with the People’s Republic of China, the Indian government, having been refused help from the Soviet Union, appealed to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for assistance in monitoring People’s Liberation Army movements across the frontier. Agreement was reached for the temporary deployment of U-2 aircraft at Charbatia, near Cuttack, having been flown in from Cubi Point in the Philippines. Between May and December 1964, several missions were flown successfully over the People’s Republic of China and Tibet. See also UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (USA).

CHENG, PHILIP. On 3 December 2007, Philip Cheng, aged 60 of Cupertino, California, was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment and fined $50,000 for illegally exporting a night-vision camera and related technology to the People’s Republic of China. Cheng originally was indicted in 2004 for violations of the federal Arms Export Control Act and three counts of money laundering, and his guilty plea on 31 October 2006 followed trials in February and March 2006, which had ended in hung juries.

According to the prosecution, Cheng conspired with Martin Shih, the owner of Night Vision Technology, who died shortly before the indictment. Documents seized from Cheng’s home and his trash bins revealed that the two men had entered into agreements to export thermal imaging and infrared technology to the PRC. During an interview with federal agents in June 2003, Cheng had acknowledged that he had acted as Night Vision Technology’s agent with PRC entities and that he was “probably wrong” to have transferred a Panther I camera to the North China Research Institute of Electro-Optics and the China National Electronics Import and Export Corporation. See also TECHNOLOGY ACQUISITION; UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (USA).

CHEN YONGLIN. On 26 May 2005, Chen Yonglin, the 38-year-old first secretary of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) consulate in Sydney, Australia, defected and was followed a few days later by Hao Fengjun, described as a “low ranking” Chinese intelligence officer. Formerly a university student in Beijing during the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations, Chen had joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1991 and later claimed that his father had died after having been tortured during the Cultural Revolution.

Before his defection, Chen had been in covert contact with the Central Intelligence Agency and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. Chen claimed that his duties included the monitoring of Chinese dissidents in Australia, especially members of the Falun Gong. Chen and Hao insisted that the Ministry of State Security had hundreds of spies and informants in both Australia and Canada, whose responsibility was to both harass Falun Gong members as well as steal commercial and scientific secrets. However, Hao’s assertion that the Chinese had 1,000 spies in Canada was disputed by Michael Juneau-Katsuya, a former Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) officer, who drew a distinction between agents and sources, saying Hao’s claim was likely referring to paid informants and that he found that figure to be entirely plausible. This retiree also said that CSIS had estimated Canada lost $12 billion annually due to Chinese industrial espionage.

Fearing his abduction, Chen, his wife, and six-year-old daughter went into hiding, but he emerged briefly to address a rally in Sydney to commemorate the 16th anniversary of the June 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. He was granted a permanent protection visa about six weeks after his defection, together with Hao, on 21 July 2005. Chen appeared before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations to give evidence on Falun Gong and China’s Continuing War on Human Rights. Chen testified that “I am aware there are over 1,000 Chinese secret agents and informants in Australia, and the number in the United States should not be less” and revealed the existence of Central Bureau 610 and produced an internal consular document, Five Poisonous Groups, which identified Falun Gong members, Tibetan separatists, Uighur activists, Taiwanese independence supporters, and pro-democracy campaigners as targets for surveillance and harassment. Later the same year, he gave further evidence to parliamentary committees in Brussels and London about human rights in the PRC. See alsoTAIWAN; TIBET.

CHEUNG, MARK. Identified as a Ministry of State Security officer, Mark Cheung was a theology graduate and Roman Catholic priest who had run a parish in Southeast Asia before he began working at the Church of the Transfiguration on Mott Street in New York’s Chinatown in 1972. Alleged to have had a wife and child in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Cheung was thought to have been sent to the United States to act as a case officer for Larry Wu-tai Chin. When Chin was arrested, Cheung quickly left New York for Hong Kong, but soon after, he was interviewed there by Pat Dolley and Larry Goff, special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He disappeared into the PRC and has not surfaced since. See also ILLEGALS.

CHIANG CHING-KUO. Born in 1910, the eldest son of Chiang Kai-shek, Chiang Ching-kuo was educated in Shanghai and then at the newly established Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow, where he denounced his father’s April 1927 White Terror in Shanghai, when the Communists were purged. In exile in the Soviet Union, he attended a military academy and married a Russian before becoming a manager of a heavy machinery factory in Sverdlovsk. In 1937, he returned to Nanking via Hong Kong, gradually gained his father’s trust within the Kuomintang (KMT), and, in August 1949, was appointed head of the KMT’s intelligence services. He merged the notorious Central Bureau of Investigation and Statistics with Tai Li’s Military Bureau of Investigation and Statistics to create the Reference Group of the Presidential Palace’s Confidential Office, an organization that he headed for 25 years. “CCK,” as he was known to his Western friends, cultivated a relationship with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), on whom he came to rely, as a lifelong diabetic, for his supply of insulin.

Elected prime minister in succession to his father, Chiang became president six years later but was implicated in the murder in October 1984 in California of his biographer, Henry Liu, and the following year announced the dynasty was over by posting his son Alex to Singapore as Taiwan’s trade commissioner. Chiang died in January 1988, aged 77. His son died in July 1991, aged 46.

CHIANG KAI-SHEK. Born in Zhejiang in 1887, Chiang pursued a military career and embraced the politics of Sun Yat-sen and his Kuomintang (KMT) party in its attempts to overthrow the imperial dynasty that ruled China. In 1912, when the Republic of China was established, Chiang became Sun’s close confidant and was appointed head of the Whampoa Military Academy after Chiang, Sun, and Soviet agent Mikhail Markovich Grusenberg, who used the nom de guerre of Borodin, had returned from Moscow. This academy provided him with a base of support that remained loyal to him throughout the remainder of his leadership of the KMT, a political movement that was largely dependent on rigid discipline, a ubiquitous security apparatus, and an extensive intelligence organization.

Chiang married Soong Mei-ling, the youngest of the three daughters of the wealthy and influential Soong family, while Sun married the middle daughter, Soong Ching-ling. After Sun’s death in 1925, Chiang assumed the mantle of the leadership of the KMT, which split with the Communists, prompting a civil war. When the Japanese invaded Manchuria in 1937, Chiang’s KMT forces reestablished a relationship with the Communists, then led by Mao Zedong.Chiang was regarded as the leader of China by the Allies during World War II, but the defeat of the Japanese in 1945 reignited the civil war. By 1949, Chiang’s forces were forced to withdraw to the island of Taiwan, where he established himself as head of a Republic of China government-in-exile. His rule of Taiwan was characterized by martial law until his death in 1975, never having made good on his vow to return to the mainland. See also CHIANG CHING-KUO.

CHIANG KEWILIN. Formerly the New China News Agency (NCNA) chief in Cairo, Chiang Kewilin defected to Taiwan after 12 years of experience with the organization and denounced his colleagues, claiming that most of the NCNA’s military section were professional intelligence officers who had attended the NCNA’s own language school for three years. All, he said, had more than 10 years’ party membership and had been recruited straight from high school.

CHI MAK. In October 2005, a 66-year-old retired power engineer, Chi Mak, was arrested at his home in Los Angeles and charged with having passed defense secrets to the PRC for the past 20 years. A naturalized U.S. citizen of Chinese origin, Chi Mak worked for a defense contractor, Power Paragon, and was charged with having compromised thousands of documents, including plans of the new DD(X) warship and developments in the sensitive field of quiet electric drive (QED). Also arrested were his wife, Rebecca Liu-wa Chu; brother Tai Wang Mak; his brother’s wife, Fuk Heung Li; and his nephew Billy. Chi Mak, a lead engineer on QED research, had been under surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) since June 2004, an operation that accumulated transcripts of 20,000 telephone calls and recordings of conversations held in Chi Mak’s 1998 Oldsmobile and videos of his office in Anaheim and two rooms in his home. 

Among the evidence seized was a CD-ROM containing 200 restricted documents encrypted and hidden beneath music tracks. The topics covered by the documents included QED applications for the new Virginia-class submarines, kinetic energy missiles for submarines, torpedo design, electromagnetic launch systems for aircraft carriers, and missile detection equipment. Of particular concern to the investigation was the apparent loss of details concerning the Aegis radar system, technology that had been supplied to several North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) navies, as well as to Japan and Taiwan. In his confession, Mak admitted that, prior to 2001, he had regularly traveled to Hong Kong to deliver material to his brother Tai Wang Mak, who then had been living in the PRC.

Found guilty at his trial in May 2007, Chi Mak was sentenced to 24 years’ imprisonment and a fine of $50,000. The following month, Billy Mak and Fuk Li pleaded guilty and were deported, with Billy receiving credit for the 11 months he had spent in prison awaiting trial, while Tai Wang Mak received 10 years’ imprisonment.

During Chi Mak’s trial in May 2007, the FBI revealed that a search of his Los Angeles apartment had revealed a letter written by Gu Weihao, an agent of the Chinese Ministry of Aviation Industry, to a former Boeing engineer, Greg Chung, asking him to collect data on commercial airliners and the Space Shuttle and then pass the information to Chi Mak, who would relay it to China. Gu was related to Chi Mak’s wife and supplied her with letters to Chung. Also found in Mak’s apartment were documents relating to the F-16 Falcon fighter and the Space Shuttle, items which were out of Mak’s field of expertise and most likely had been provided by Chung. See also CHINA NATIONAL NUCLEAR CORPORATION (CNNC); CHINESE NUCLEAR WEAPONS; TECHNOLOGY ACQUISITION; UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (USA).

CHIN, LARRY WU-TAI. Born in Peking in 1924, Larry Chin (Jin Wudai) worked for the U.S. Army’s liaison office at Fuchou in southern China in 1943 and joined the U.S. consulate in Shanghai as an interpreter, and although it was never established precisely when he had been recruited by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as a mole, he was actively engaged in espionage for the Communists by 1948. In 1952, having become a naturalized American citizen, he was recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Chin’s early career, which had included a stint as an interrogator in 1952 for the State Department (questioning Chinese prisoners of war in Korea) and work with the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) in Okinawa, had led to an FBIS posting in California and finally to an appointment as a CIA case officer based in Virginia. With access to the CIA’s National Intelligence Estimates on China, he had met his Ministry of State Security (MSS) handlers on trips to London, Macao, Hong Kong, and Toronto and compromised not only thousands of classified documents but also betrayed the sources upon which the CIA had depended for information from inside the PRC. At his trial for 17 counts of espionage, the prosecution intended to show, with the aid of color charts, that Chin had influenced almost every facet of Sino-American relations over several decades. The sheer volume of the material he sent to Beijing required the MSS to take up to two months to translate and process it.

Although Chin retired from the CIA as a senior analyst in July 1981, he appears to have concealed the exact date from his MSS handler and soon afterward had been feted at a banquet held at the MSS headquarters in Beijing, where he was appointed an honorary MSS officer. Chin tried to cover up the fact that he had lost access to classified information and maintained contact with CIA colleagues so he could pick up additional information. He also bought a copy of The Puzzle Palace by James Bamford to give the impression that he was also closely involved with the National Security Agency.

Chin had most recently kept a rendezvous with the MSS in East Asia in March 1985 and was arrested in November 1985 after a defector revealed the veteran CIA translator had been supplying the CIA’s secrets to the PRC and was believed to have sold information for more than $1 million over a period of 33 years, longer than any other spy known to have worked against the United States. Decorated for his distinguished service, Chin had been so highly valued by the CIA that, after his retirement, the agency had tried to persuade him to come back to work full-time. While under surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), it was learned that Chin maintained an office in the Watergate building in Washington DC and often stayed there in preference to living with his wife in their apartment at Duke Street, Alexandria. He also conducted several affairs, was a heavy gambler, and was twice the subject of complaints that he had molested young girls in his neighborhood. The full extent of his real estate investments was never revealed, but they were substantial, and a financial audit of his assets revealed that he owned some 30 rental properties in the Baltimore area, made regular trips to casinos in Las Vegas, and had his gambling debts paid off by bank transfers from Hong Kong.

At his trial, Chin claimed that his additional income was derived from a successful blackjack method, but he was found to have maintained meticulous records and was challenged about his travel to the PRC, in particular being questioned about a specific hotel room in which he had stayed that was known to have been under the MSS’s control. Confronted with what appeared to be incontrovertible evidence against him, Chin offered to act as a double agent and was then invited to describe the extent of his contacts with the MSS. For just over an hour, Chin elaborated on his espionage, mentioning that he had supplied the Chinese with sensitive CIA material relating to Henry Kissinger’s historic visit to Beijing in 1971 in preparation for President Richard Nixon’s momentous change in U.S. foreign policy. When Chin had completed his exposition, he was arrested, and his confession was the basis of his prosecution.

Chin was indicted on 17 espionage and tax evasion charges, but rather than face a long prison sentence of up to 133 years and a $3.3 million fine after he was convicted by a federal jury in February 1986 of espionage, conspiracy, and tax evasion, Chin suffocated himself in his cell in the Prince William County jail with a plastic garbage bag. His widow, Cathy, suspicious that Chin should have had access to the shoelaces he used to secure the bag around his head, later claimed in The Death of My Husband: Larry Wu-Tai Chin, a book printed in Chinese in Taiwan and published privately, that he may not have taken his own life; although, not all versions of the book contain this allegation. Chin’s son, a physician, was allowed to examine his father’s body and found no reason to challenge the coroner’s verdict of suicide.

Those who knew Chin well were sure that he anticipated two life terms but was most frightened of losing all his rental properties and killed himself before he had been sentenced to forfeit his assets, thus preventing the Internal Revenue Service from taking any action that would impoverish his family. An alternative view, held by Dr. David L. Charney, the renowned psychiatrist who has interviewed numerous defendants convicted of espionage, suggests that Chin committed suicide due to remorse but not because of his espionage, rather because he failed his long time PRC handler, Ou Qiming, noting Ou was his sole handler throughout his espionage career, an unprecedented manner of handling a source. According to Charney, Chin had retained confidence in Ou during a sustained relationship over the decades of his clandestine work for the PRC, and the fact that he was caught and arrested was, in Chin’s eyes, a personal failure, convinced he had let Ou down.

Although never disclosed publicly, Chin’s arrest had taken place as a consequence of a tip from PLANESMAN,actually Yu Qiangsheng, who had been responsible for compromising the French diplomat Bernard Boursicot.

Chin is considered a great hero by many in the PRC, credited with having made a major contribution to the normalization of relations between the United States and mainland China. When the first overtures were made to the Chinese, Mao Zedong initially thought the approach was probably a provocation that could lead to embarrassment. However, Zhou Enlai, who had a considerably broader worldview and experience than Mao, thought it was something that warranted further inspection, so he had turned to Shen Jian to authenticate the overture. It was Shen’s initiative that led to Chin being able to provide confirmation and thereby allow the negotiations that led to normalization. Thereafter, Chin was able to provide the Chinese with the positions to be taken by the Americans in the negotiations. See alsoCHEUNG, MARK.

CHINA, REPUBLIC OF. See TAIWAN.

CHINA ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING PHYSICS (CAEP). Originally known as the Ninth Institute, the CAEP is located in Science City, a purpose-built enclave four miles north of Mianyang, Sichuan Province, and is subordinate to the General Armament Department of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Although ostensibly a semi-independent organization, the CAEP is fully integrated into the PLA’s intelligence structure and supervises the design, development, and construction of the country’s nuclear weapons and acts as an umbrella for 11 affiliated establishments, most of them in the vicinity of Science City: the Institute of Fluid Physics; the Institute of Nuclear Physics and Chemistry; the Institute of Chemical Materials at Zitong; the Institute of Chemical Engineering; the Institute of Structural Mechanics; the Institute of Structural Materials, near Pingtong; the Institute of Machinery Technology, also near Pingtong; the Institute of Applied Electronics; the Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics at Beijing; the Institute of Laser and Plasma Physics at Jiading in northwest Shanghai; and the Institute of Fine Mechanics, also at Jiading.

CHINA AEROSPACE CORPORATION (CAC). Staffed by an estimated 270,000 employees, the CAC is a major sponsor and beneficiary of state-supported industrial espionage. The CAC’s headquarters consists of the Comprehensive Planning Department to develop policy; the Scientific Research and Production Department, which plans the country’s space launches; the Science and Technology Department to supervise research; the International Cooperation Department, responsible for liaison and negotiations; and the Security Department to protect sensitive information.

Because the CAC is at the heart of the aerospace research conducted by the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC), it is the recipient of Beijing’s intelligence collection efforts in the technology field and, of course, is also a target for foreign espionage and counter-proliferation operations. The CAC and its many subordinate organizations have received considerable advantages from the transfer of research undertaken abroad and, in a comparatively short period of time, have developed sophisticated missile systems capable of delivering nuclear warheads, built rockets to insert payloads into orbit, and exported the technology required to do both. In at least one case, the PRC has also exported to Pakistanthe means not just to assemble but also to independently manufacture road-mobile short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM).

As well as attracting the attention of foreign agencies concerned with counter-proliferation, the CAC’s development of satellite and antisatellite systems has potentially profound strategic implications for the PRC’s capacity to engage in technical intelligence collection and prevent others from running similar programs. Since the PRC placed its first satellite, the Dong Fang Hong-1, into orbit in April 1970, an entire launch industry has been established that, over the next three decades, put another 54 satellites in the same series into space. In 2011, the PRC controlled approximately 70 satellites, of which 57 were assessed as fulfilling military rather than commercial roles. Among them are three Ziyuan and nine Yaogan reconnaissance vehicles.

In July 2005 and February 2006, partial tests of an antisatellite system were held, culminating in a launch from Xichang in January 2007 of a kinetic kill vehicle, which destroyed its target in a head-on collision in space, thereby creating a major debris field as a hazard to other satellites.

The CAC’s subsidiaries include the China Great Wall Industry Corporation, which sells satellite launch services; the China Precision Machinery Import/Export Corporation, which markets missiles overseas; the 701st Research Institute or Beijing Institute of Aerodynamics, which conducts wind tunnel tests; the 707th Research Institute or Institute for Astronautics Information, which collects, analyzes, and distributes aerospace information; the 708th Research Institute of Space Standardization; the 710th Research Institute of Computer Systems; the 307 Factory or Nanjing Chenguang Machine Factory, which assembles solid-fueled missiles and employs a staff of 7,800; the Science and Technology Committee; the China Resource Satellite Application Center, which liaises with the remote sensing community; the Beijing Simulation Center, the largest facility of its kind in Asia; the Beijing Space Technology Test Center; the Shenyang Xinguang Dynamic Machinery Company; the Shenyang Xinle Precision Machinery Company; and the Xinyang Company.

The CAC also supervises the 1st Academy, also known as the China Academy of Launch Technology in Nanyuan, close to the People’s Liberation Army Air Force base in southern Beijing. The 1st Academy conducts rocket research and develops liquid-fueled surface-to-surface missiles, solid-fueled surface-to-surface, and submarine-launched missiles. Employing a staff of over 27,000 personnel, it operates as the Beijing Wanyuan Industry Corporation and consists of 13 research institutes and 7 factories, including the 1st Planning Department, or Beijing Institute of Astronautical Systems Engineering, working on liquid Systems; the 4th Planning Department, or Beijing Institute of Electromechanical Systems Engineering, working on solid systems engineering; the 11th Research Institute of Beijing Institute of Liquid Rocket Engines, also known as the Beijing Fengyuan Machinery Company, which employs over 900 staff and operates 067 Base liaison office and test site in southwest Beijing; the 12th Research Institute, or Beijing Institute of Automatic Control, which was established in 1958 and is located with the 2nd Academy on Yongding Road in western Beijing, employing a staff of over 800 researching missile-guidance technology; the 13th Research Institute, or Beijing Institute of Control Devices, which researches gyros and accelerometers and employs over 700 staff; the 14th Research Institute, or Beijing Special Electromechanical Institute, which develops warheads and employs 800 staff; the 15th Research Institute, or Beijing Institute of Special Engineering Machinery, which manufactures ground control equipment; the 702nd Research Institute, or Beijing Institute of Structure and Environmental Engineering; the 703rd Research Institute, or Beijing Research Institute of Materials and Technology; the 704th Research Institute, or Beijing Research Institute of Telemetry, which, since 1991, has developed missile avionics and guidance systems, employing over 1,000 staff; the 200 Factory, or Guanghua Radio Factory, which makes electronic components; the 210 Factory, or the Beijing Jianhua Electronic Instrument Factory, in Nanyuan, making inertial navigational components, staffed by more than 1,200 and closely associated with the 13th Research Institute; the 211 Factory, or Capital Space Machinery Corporation, a general assembly plant in Nanyuan producing liquid systems; the 230 Factory, or Beijing Xinghua Machinery Factory, on Yongding Road; the 7107 Factory, or Inertial Devices Factory, in Baoji, which was associated with the 230 Factory, the Beijing Experimental Electronic Factory (in Muxidi, West Beijing), and the Beijing Wanyuan Sealing Factory.

The 2nd Academy, or the Changfeng Electromechanical Technology Design Academy, based on Yongding Road in Beijing’s western suburbs, undertook research and development of air and missile defense systems with a staff of 12,800. Its extensive organization included the 2nd Planning Department, or Beijing Institute of Electronic Systems Engineering, with 700 engineers working on missile defense engineering; the 17th Research Institute, or Beijing Institute of Control and Electronic Technology, in Muxidi, West Beijing; the 23rd Research Institute, or Beijing Institute of Radio Measurement, on Yongding Road, with 1,300 personnel researching radar systems; the 25th Research Institute, or Beijing Institute of Remote Sensing Equipment, working on optical terminal guidance systems; the 203rd Research Institute, or Beijing Institute of Radio Metrology and Measurement, employing more than 250 engineers; the 204th Research Institute, or Beijing Institute of Computer Applications and Simulation Technology, developing computer software and simulation technology; the 206th Research Institute, or Beijing Institute of Mechanical Equipment, with a staff of 570 working on launchers and ground equipment; the 207th Research Institute, or Beijing Institute of Environmental Features, developing microwave, optical, and laser environmental engineering; the 208th Research Institute, or Information Center, which publishes the 2nd Academy’s journal, Systems Engineering and Electronics Technology; the 210th Research Institute, or the Xian Changfeng Electromechanical Institute, working on electromechanical systems and employing over 1,500 staff; the 706th Research Institute, developing advanced computers; the 112 Factory, or Xinfeng Machinery Factory, which assembles SAMs; the 123 Factory, which builds air defense missile warheads; the 283 Factory, building ground control systems; the 284 Factory, or the Xinjiang Power Machinery Plant on Yongding Road, making control systems; and the 786 Factory, making radar and guidance systems.

The 3rd Academy, or Haiying Academy of Electromechanical Engineering Technology, in Yungang, southwest Beijing, employs 14,500 staff in 10 research institutes and 2 factories engaged since 1961 on researching and producing antiship and land attack cruise missiles and associated systems. The 3rd Academy includes the Science and Technology Commission; the 3rd Design Department, also known as the Beijing Institute of Electromechanical Engineering, responsible for missile design and engineering and employing over 1,200 staff; the 31st Research Institute, or Power Machinery Research Institute, engaged since 1957 in the development of missile propulsion systems with more than 1,300 personnel; the 33rd Research Institute, or Beijing Institute of Automated Control Equipment, which produces missile inertial navigational systems in Yungang; the 35th Research Institute, or Huahang Institute of Radio Measurement, in Hepingli, Beijing; the 310th Research Institute, which collects, analyzes, and distributes information; the 8357th Research Institute, or Jinhang Institute of Computing Technology, making computerized missile control systems in Tianjin with a staff of 470; the 8358th Research Institute, or Jinhang Institute of Technical Guidance, in Tianjin, which publishes Infrared and Laser Engineering; the 8359th Research Institute, or Beijing Special Machinery (Tezhong Jixie) Institute, making cruise missile launch equipment; the 119 Factory, making autopilots; the 159 Factory, or Xinghang Electromechanical Factory, in Yungang; the 239 Factory, or Beijing Hangxing Machine Building Factory, on Hepingli Street, Beijing, employing over 3,000 staff assembling cruise missiles; the 558 Factory, working on autopilots and altimeters; the 781 Factory, or Terminal Guidance System Plant; the 786 Factory, or Ground-Tracking Radar Factory; and the 5013 Factory, making warheads.

The 4th Academy, founded in 1965, employs 3,500 researching and producing solid-fueled motors for ballistic missiles and satellite kick motors and is known as the Hexi Chemical Machinery Company. Also associated with the 4th Academy are the 41st Research Institute, or Shaanxi Institute of Power Machinery, which designs and builds solid rocket motors near Hohhot; the 42nd Research Institute, or Red Star Chemical Institute, of Hubei; the 43th Research Institute, or Shaanxi Institute of Non-Metallic Materials and Technology, which makes filament winding machines; the 44th Research Institute, or Shaanxi Institute of Electronics; the 46th Research Institute at Hexi; the 47th Research Institute, or Xiangyang Chemical Machinery Corporation; the 7414 Factory, or Shaanxi Hongchuan Machinery Factory; the 7416 Factory, or Shaanxi Changhong Chemical Plant; the 7422 Factory, or Xi’an Space Factory; and the 7424 Factory, or Shaanxi Xianfeng Institute of Machinery.

The Hexi Corporation includes the Synthetic Chemical Engineering Institute, the Inner Mongolia Hongguang Machinery Plant, the Inner Mongolia Hongxia Chemical Plant, and the Inner Mongolia Power Machinery Plant.

The 5th Academy, or China Academy of Space Technology, on Baishiqiao Road in Haidian, northeastern Beijing, researches and produces communications systems and weather satellites and was established in 1968. Employing a staff of 10,000 personnel, the 5th Academy supervises the work of 14 research institutes and factories, including the 501st Research Institute, or Beijing Institute of Spacecraft Systems Engineering, responsible for satellite systems engineering; the 502nd Research Institute, or Beijing Institute of Control Engineering, established in 1956, researching attitude control systems and employing a staff of over 1,400; the 503rd Research Institute, or Beijing Institute of Satellite Information Engineering, founded in 1986, developing satellite communications technology with a staff of more than 300; the 504th Research Institute, or Xian Institute of Space Radio Engineering, developing space communications and remote sensing systems with 1,200 staff; the 508th Research Institute, or Beijing Institute of Space Machinery and Electronic Engineering, based in a building next to the 1st Academy in Nanyuan, working on remote sensing and recoverable data; the 510th Research Institute, or Lanzhou Institute of Physics, researching optical cryogenics, microgravity, and radiation effects; the 511th Research Institute, or Beijing Institute of Environmental Test Engineering, based in Beijing and Huairou; the 513rd Research Institute, or Yantai Telemetry Technology Institute; and the 529 Factory, or Beijing Orient Scientific Instrument Factory, assembling satellite systems with a staff of 1,200.

The 8th Academy, or Shanghai Academy of Space Technology, created in 1961, employs 30,000 personnel at 17 institutes and 11 factories and builds satellites, having developed the LM-2, LM-3, LM-4, and Fengyun meteorological satellites. Associated facilities include the 8th Design Department, or Shanghai Institute of Electromechanical Engineering, employing a staff of 478; 509th Research Institute, or the Shanghai Institute of Satellite Engineering, established in 1969, which researches satellite systems engineering and environmental testing with a staff of more than 600; the Shanghai Precision Machinery Research Institute; the Shanghai Institute of Power Machinery; the 802nd Institute, or Shanghai Institute of Radio Equipment, developing SAM guidance systems and fuzes; the Shanghai Institute of Precision Instruments, making guidance systems; the Shanghai Institute of Electronic Communications Equipment Engineering; the Shanghai Institute of Electromechanical Equipment; the Shanghai Xinfeng Chemical Engineering Institute, researching propellant technology; the Shanghai Institute of Science and Technology Information for Electromechanical Engineering; the Shanghai Institute of Precision Metrology and Test Engineering; the 809th Institute, or Shanghai Xinwei Electronic Equipment Research Institute, established in 1979 and working on tactical weapons and satellite control computers; the Shanghai Xinli Institute of Power Equipment, building engines and motors; the Shanghai Institute of Space Power Sources; the Shanghai Spaceflight Automatic Control Equipment Research Institute; the Shanghai Institute of Spaceflight Telemetry, Control, and Telecommunications Engineering; the Shanghai Institute of Video and Telecommunications Equipment Engineering; the Shanghai Spaceflight Architecture Design Institute; the Shanghai Xinzhonghua Machinery Factory; the Shanghai Xinjiang Machinery Factory; the Shanghai Xinxin Machinery Factory; the Shanghai Xinhua Radio Factory; the Shanghai Xinya Radio Factory; the Shanghai Xinguang Telecommunications Factory; the Shanghai Xinyu Power Supply Factory; the Shanghai Xinli Machinery Factory; the Shanghai Broadcast Equipment Factory; the Shanghai Instrument Factory; and the Shanghai Wire Communication Factory.

The 9th Academy, or China Academy of Space Electronics Technology, in Beijing’s Haidian district at 8 Fucheng Road, was established in 1993 and runs sites in Nanyuan and near Xi’an engaged in the development of specialized computers, integrated circuits, and other microelectronic devices, with a staff of more than 10,000 in 9 institutes, 10 manufacturing plants, and 5 technical centers, including the 771st Research Institute, or the Lishan Microelectronics Institute, which was established in the 1960s and manufactures missile and satellite-related computers; and the 165 Factory.

The 061 Base, also known as the China Jiangnan Space Industry Group, employs 6,500 at some 33 research institutes and factories, building surface-to-air missiles at Zunyi and Kaishan in Guizhou Province. The component units include the 302nd Research Institute, or General Institute of Military Products; the Jiangnan Electromechanical Design Institute; the 38th Research Institute; the 303rd Research Institute; the Wujiang Machinery Factory; the Nanfeng Factory; the Xinfeng Instrument Manufacturing Corporation; the Qunjian Machinery Factory; the Chaohui Electromechanical Factory; the Meiling Factory; the Honggang Electromechanical Factory; and the Guizhou Gaoyuan Machinery Factory, which assembles SAM launchers.

The 062 Base, or the Sichuan Aerospace Corporation, employs more than 20,000 staff at Chengdu, Sichuan Province, developing liquid-fueled ballistic missiles, launch vehicles, and antiship missiles. Other associated facilities include the Chongqing Aerospace Electromechanical Design Institute, employing 800 staff; the Sichuan Changzheng Mechanical Factory in Wanyuan, in northern Sichuan, employing 5,000 staff; the Chongqing Bashan Instrument Factory, making telemetry equipment; the Fenghuo Machinery Factory, making servo-mechanical devices; and the Liaoyuan Radio Factory, producing space flight controls. Located in Xuanhua, Sichuan Province, are the Tongjiang Machinery Factory; the Mingjiang Machinery Factory in Dachuan; the Pingjiang Instrument Factory, making control systems in Dachuan; and the Chuannan Machinery Factory, producing missile system igniters.

The 066 Base or Sanjiang Space Group, employing a staff of 17,000 at Xiaogan, north of Wuhan, with a production facility at Yuan’an, in western Hubei Province and an administrative office in Wuhan, develops solid-fueled tactical ballistic missiles and stealth/counter-stealth technology. Established in August 1969 as a production center for 3rd Academy antiship missiles, the base began independent development of the Dong Feng-11 CSS-7 road-mobile, solid-fueled, short-range ballistic missile (SRBM), designed by Wang Zhenhua, in 1975. The export version of the DF-11 is designated the M-11, which was supplied by the China Precision Machinery Import-Export Corporation and the China Great Wall Industry Corporation to Pakistan from 1990 for $15 million. A further payment of $83 million was made in late 1992 to the same company, according to a U.S. intelligence report circulated in 1994.

Also associated are the Sanjiang Space Group Design Institute; the Hubei Redstar (Hongxing) Chemical Institute; the 42nd Research Institute, in Xiangfan, Hubei Province; the Hubei Hongfeng Machinery Plant, established in 1970 to develop electromechanical integration in Yuan’an; the Wanshan Special Vehicle Machinery Factory in Yuan’an; the Hubei Jianghe Chemical Factory in Yuan’an; the Xianfeng Machinery Factory in Yuan’an; the Wanli Radio Factory in Yuan’an; the Honglin Machinery Factory in Xiaogan; the Hubei Hongyang Machinery Factory in Yuan’an; the Jiangbei Machinery Factory in Yuan’an; and the Wanfeng Factory in Yuan’an.

The 067 Base, or Shaanxi Lingnan Machinery Corporation, develops liquid engines and inertial guidance systems for launch vehicles. Employing more than 1,200, 067 Base runs five research institutes and four factories, including the Shaanxi Engine Design Institute; the Beijing Fengyuan Machinery Institute; the Shaanxi Institute of Power Test Technology; the Xi’an Changda Precision Electromachinery Institute; the Shaanxi Hongguang Machinery Factory; the Shaanxi Cangsong Machinery Factory; the 16th Research Institute; the 165th Research Institute; the 204 Factory; the 710 Factory; the 7103 Factory (Hongguang); the 7107 Factory; and the 7171 Factory, making inertial devices.

The 068 Base, or Hunan Space Agency, in Changsha, develops electromechanical equipment for surface-to-air missiles at one research institute and five factories, including the 7801 Research Institute at Changsha, Hunan Province; the 7803 Factory, producing superhard materials (chaoying cailiao); the Hunan Taishan Machinery Factory; the 804 Factory; the 861 Factory; the Hunan Zhujiang Instrument Factory; and the Hunan Electromechanical Instrument Factory.

The Yunnan Space Group, previously linked to the 3rd Academy, established in 1969, and moved to Kunming in 1987, manages six factories and eight companies, employing 3,500 staff.

The Harbin Institute of Technology includes the Academy of Astronautics; the Academy of Material Science and Engineering; the Department of Astronautics and Physics; the Department of Applied Chemistry; the Department of Applied Physics; the Department of Communications Engineering; the Department of Computer Science and Engineering; the Department of Control Engineering; the Department of Electrical Engineering; the Department of Mathematics; the Department of Mechanical Engineering; the Department of Power Engineering; the Department of Precision Instrumentation; the Department of Radio Engineering; the Department of Space and Opto-Electronic Engineering; the Robotics Research Institute; the Plating Research Center; the Analysis and Measurement Center; the Inertial Navigation Test Equipment Center; and the Simulation Center.

The entire CAC, with all its numerous components, remains an organ of the PRC government and, in many cases, has been seen to be the recipient of research stolen from foreign companies, principally in the United States. Recent examples include Greg Chung and the 1996 enquiry conducted into the Long March-3D failures, which led to restricted Loral technology being passed to PRC aerospace engineers.

In 1993, the PRC’s State Council established a China National Space Agency, apparently in an effort to demilitarize some of the country’s aerospace program and emulate the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), but the organization never acquired full responsibility for all research, development, and production, which remained largely in the hands of the military, leaving the civilian China National Space Agency as an intermediary with its foreign counterparts. In 1999, the state space sector was divided into two giant competing conglomerates (the Chinese Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, which includes the China Great Wall Industry Corporation and the China Satellite Communications Corporation, and the smaller Chinese Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation, which encompasses 150 separate enterprises) and employed more than 100,000 people. See alsoCHINESE NUCLEAR WEAPONS; TECHNOLOGY ACQUISITION.

CHINA AID COUNCIL. A front organization created and controlled by the Communist Party of the United States of America, the China Aid Council sponsored two publications, China Today and Amerasia, which peddled a line sympathetic to the Communist cause while ostensibly appearing to be politically neutral, using aliases on the journals’ mastheads to conceal the true identities of the editorial staff. Backed by a well-funded foundation supported by plenty of entirely respectable academics and philanthropists who were unaware of the organization’s true role, the periodicals were intended to influence public opinion and policy makers, but their true purpose was exposed by Elizabeth Bentley in 1945, when she named the China Aid Council’s executive director, Mildred Price, as a Soviet spy.

CHINA INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL STRATEGIC STUDIES (CIISS). Headed by retired general Xiong Guangkai, the former head of the Military Intelligence Department (MID), CIISS is the MID’s foreign policy and national security research organization; although, the integrated nature of the relationship with the Second Department of the People’s Liberation Army General Staff is not publicly acknowledged. The permanent staff are all current or recently retired People’s Liberation Army officers and routinely switch between the CIISS and posts in the MID. The CIISS is located in Luoyang and Nanjing and publishes the fortnightly Wai Jun Dongtai (Foreign Military Trends) for distribution throughout the armed forces.

CHINA INSTITUTES OF CONTEMPORARY INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS (CICIR). A cover organization originally run by and for the Eighth Bureau of the Chinese Central Investigation Department, the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (Xiandai Guojii Yanjiu Yuan), said to have been established at the behest of Zhou Enlai, is wholly integrated into the Eighth Bureau (later the Eleventh Bureau) of the Ministry of State Security (MSS)and, based in northwestern Beijing, acts as an analytic resource, publishing its own journal, Xiandai Guoji Guanxi(Contemporary International Relations). The CICIR serves as the analysis branch of mainland China’s intelligence apparatus and employs some 150 research analysts and 220 support staff, maintaining links with foreign policy research organizations and frequently hosting visiting academics. Between January 2007 and June 2009, the CICIR participated in 119 scholar exchanges and fact-finding missions with foreign institutions and academic bodies. Its academic staff is shared with the Beijing Institute of International Relations, another MSS front.

CHINA NATIONAL NUCLEAR CORPORATION (CNNC). Created in September 1988, the CNNC replaced the Ministry of Nuclear Industry and acts as an umbrella organization responsible for the development of civil nuclear power and nuclear weapons and the import and export of nuclear technology. The CNNC supervises fuel processing and production, the manufacture and management of civil power plants, hydrogen bombs, and waste disposal, and the acquisition and sale of technology.

The close association of Chi Mak with a CNNC official, as revealed by a photograph recovered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the spy in China accompanied by his wife and a CNNC official, suggested that the CNNC was also engaged in illicit procurement of nuclear technology. Subordinate to the CNNC are the Institute of Materials, formerly the Special Parts Factory, responsible for fabricating nuclear weapons; the China Atomic Energy Authority, which is based in Beijing and liaises with the International Atomic Energy Authority in Vienna; the China Institute of Atomic Energy in Tuoli; the Nuclear Power Institute of China in Chengdu, responsible for the design, construction, and operation of all the country’s reactors; and the China Nuclear Energy Industry Corporation (CNEIC), an export organization identified in August 1996 by a U.S. National Security Agency intercept as selling nuclear components to an unsafeguarded Pakistani weapons laboratory. See also CHINA ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING PHYSICS (CAEP); CHINESE NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

CHINCOM. The generic Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) codename for a series of counterintelligence operations conducted by Division 5, CHINCOM was intended to recruit Chinese Communists in the United States. One success was the recruitment of a senior ethnic Chinese who entered into an ideological debate with an FBI informant and was later enrolled as an informant himself.

CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY (CCP). With its inspiration drawn from the Bolshevik Revolution, the CCP (Zhongguo Gongchandang) began in Shanghai in 1921 and, like its Russian model, relied upon a ubiquitous security arm to eliminate dissent and protect the state from counterrevolutionaries. The party’s principal instrument of repression was the Central Department of Social Affairs (CDSA), a ruthless organization known as the Zhongyang Shehuibu and headed by Kang Sheng. Later, the CDSA would evolve into the Central Investigation Department (CID), headed by Li Kenong, but would be abolished during the Cultural Revolution, when some of its intelligence responsibilities were absorbed by the Second Department of the People’s Liberation Army’s General Staff, leaving internal security in the chaotic hands of the Red Guards. The CID would be reestablished in 1972 and, in 1976, headed by Zhou Shaozheng. He was purged in 1982, and the following year, the CID was subsumed into a new Ministry of State Security under Lin Yun. In 1985, he would be replaced by Jia Chunwang, following the defection of Yu Qiangsheng.

In all its various forms, the totalitarian state’s security apparatus has served the party rather than the country, based on the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s reliance on the NKVD and then the KGB as its sword and shield. However, during the rule of Mao Zedong, both the CCP and its security apparatus remained obedient to the chairman, who used the party as a vehicle for a series of radical political campaigns, including the Hundred Flowers of 1957, the Great Leap Forward in 1958, and the decade-long Cultural Revolution, that kept him in power and served to eliminate any rivals. Purges were an essential component of these campaigns, and the party formalized the procedures, conducting them by creating various bureaucratic entities, such as the Central Case Examination Group, which supervised the expulsions of an estimated two million suspects and the reeducation of cadres. After Mao’s death, the Central Disciplinary Inspection Committee rid the party of the 17 million members recruited during the Cultural Revolution, and some 30 million surviving victims were rehabilitated by Central Party Rectification Working Leadership Commission, which also punished those held responsible for the excesses, including some like Kang Sheng and Xie Fuzhi, who were tried posthumously and expelled. While these measures restored order, the indivisible nature of the party and government remained intact, with the party exercising power through its pervasive presence in every office, factory, ideological classroom, cultural gathering, youth movement, school, university, and village.

Following the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests of June 1989, which were suppressed by the 27th Group Army and elements of the 17th Airborne Corps, a further purge was conducted, with a million cadres sent for rustication and reeducation, and the People’s Liberation Army’s Central Military Commission exerted more influence over the Central Committee. While the democracy movement was ruthlessly suppressed, the party responded to the public criticism by introducing measures to reduce the endemic nepotism and corruption.

Despite these reforms, the CCP organs continue to oversee both the central and regional governments; although, the party has evolved and embraced globalization and increasing commercialism, it retains a firm grip on every aspect of political and economic life in the PRC. See also CENTRAL DISCIPLINE INSPECTION COMMISSION (CDIC).

CHINESE COURSE. In 1951, the British Joint Services School for Linguists (JSSL) was established at Bodmin in Cornwall and four years later moved to HMS Bruce at Crail in Fife, Scotland. Hitherto, the individual branches of the armed forces had to run their own language courses, with the Royal Air Force (RAF) teaching Chinese to selected students at Kidbrooke in South London.

Initially intended to train Russian interpreters and intercept operators, a Chinese course was created soon afterward, with students drawn from national servicemen drafted into the forces. The Chinese course included attendance at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in Russell Square or at Cambridge University, with RAF personnel billeted at RAF Uxbridge. The course usually lasted a year, including a final month spent at RAF Wythall for technical training. From October 1952, those passing the final exam were posted to Lymun camp, near Shaukiwan on Hong Kong, for duties as intercept operators, manning positions at an RAF radio station, Old Belvedere, on Victoria Peak.

In June 1956, the Chinese Course was moved to Worth Matravers in Dorset and then, in April 1957, to RAF Pucklechurch in Gloucestershire. In September 1959, it shifted to RAF Tangmere in West Sussex and, in September 1964, was transferred to RAF North Luffenham in Rutland. Altogether, an estimated 250 linguists underwent the JSSL Chinese Course, and most were posted to Little Sai Wan on Hong Kong. See also CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY (CCP); GREAT BRITAIN.

CHINESE EMBASSY BOMBING. On 7 May 1999, the new People’s Republic of China embassy in Belgrade received a direct hit from six 2,000-pound GBU-31 precision bombs dropped by a United States Air Force B-2 Spirit stealth bomber during an air raid conducted by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) from Whiteman Air Force base in Missouri. Three Chinese journalists, Shao Yunhuan, Xu Xinghu, and Xu’s wife, Zhu Ying, were killed, and the military attaché, Ven Bo Koy, was badly injured.

The five-story building at Bulevar Umetnosti 2 had been erroneously identified as a military target, the Yugoslav Federal Directorate of Supply and Procurement, and an investigation into the blunder was conducted by Britt Snider, the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) inspector general. He discovered that a CIA contract officer had relied upon an out-of-date street map to locate the building and had used a parallel street to work out the exact street address. A further review of the target list, intended to highlight hospitals, schools, churches, and diplomatic premises, had failed to spot the mistake, and a warning from an analyst familiar with the city had gone unheeded. The correct site, a warehouse suspected of holding missiles parts destined for Iraq and Libya, was located 300 yards away, and the error was spotted by a CIA analyst who made a call to the U.S. Department of Defense Task Force in Naples, Italy, suggesting the coordinates were wrong. He gave a second, follow-up warning, but by then, the aircraft had been dispatched on its 15-hour flight, and it was too late to correct the data.

As a result, the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, fired the contract employee and reprimanded six others in the management chain, making them ineligible for promotion or financial rewards for a year, while commending the lone analyst. The United States government issued an apology to Beijing and compensated the family of the three Chinese killed in the accident and the 20 others injured, but the damage to Sino-American relations proved considerable and prompted a group of ostensibly independent computer hackers based in the PRC to launch a concerted attack on U.S. government-related Internet websites. See also CYBER ESPIONAGE.

CHINESE NAVAL STRENGTH. Western intelligence analysts monitor the development of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) as a means of assessing the country’s military power and as one method of gauging Beijing’s ambitions. Naval strength is considered a relatively easy target on which to collect intelligence, as it is hard to conceal shipbuilding yards from overhead reconnaissance, and throughout much of the Cold War, the PLA’s Navy was a relatively insignificant coastal force incapable of venturing further afield. In terms of threat, the absence of modern submarines or nuclear missiles provided reassurance that the country had adopted a purely defensive posture. However, in recent years, the PLA Navy has attracted the attention of analysts because of a demonstrable investment in the very specific areas that create anxiety among potential adversaries.

In May 2009, the PLA Navy consisted of 75 surface warships, amounting to 26 destroyers, 48 frigates, with an additional 77 fast attack craft. The Navy’s submarine fleet totaled 57 attack diesels, including 7 Russian Romeos and 21 Kilos. The Navy’s antiship missile arsenal is mainly of Russian origin, principally the supersonic Sizzler and Sunburn weapons; although, locally built, reverse-engineered versions are replacing them.

A recent expansion of the PLA Navy’s strength is in large measure a reflection of the country’s growing commitment to protecting the sea lanes from piracy and to enforce the country’s strategic goals in the Straits of Taiwan and further afield, into the Western Pacific. The priorities have been assessed as coastal defense, maritime security, and protection of the claimed 200-mile economic exclusion zone, as well as the more traditional preoccupations of exercising sovereignty in the disputed territories of the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, the Paracel Islands, and the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. These unresolved historical foreign policy disagreements bring the People’s Republic of China (PRC) into conflict with Vietnam, Japan, Brunei, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Taiwan. In pursuit of these objectives, the PLA Navy has embarked on a 10-year modernization program that is intended to expand the surface and submarine fleet and enhance the Navy’s intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities. In addition to a commitment to develop smart torpedoes, new sea-mines, supersonic cruise missiles, and an antiship ballistic missile, the Navy announced the construction of an aircraft carrier and a new generation of equipment and weapons.

Since 2001, the Navy has commissioned 22 modern attack submarines, including 8 of the new quiet, upgraded Russian Kilo diesels, 2 Shang nuclear vessels, as well as 2 relatively quiet Yuan and 10 Song diesels. In addition, the Navy is building a pair of Jin nuclear-powered ballistic missile boats, armed with 12 new but as yet untested JL-2 submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM), designated the CSS-NX-4, to enhance the single Xia, a troubled submarine, which has never been observed to undertake an extended patrol. The JL-2 is based on the DF-15 (CSS-6) missiles with an estimated range of 2,500 kilometers.

The Navy’s surface strength, consisting of 2 Luhu-class guided-missile destroyers and 5 Jiangwei-class guided-missile frigates, has improved since 2001 with the commissioning of 6 indigenously built Layang-class destroyers, 11 frigates, a pair of Russian Sovremenny II guided-missile destroyers armed with the supersonic SS-N-22 Sunburn missile (designed to defeat American Aegis warships), and more than 40 Houbei fast catamaran-configured attack craft armed with antiship cruise missiles. The Navy has also invested in 31 new amphibious ships, bought 4 Zubr-class assault hovercraft from the Ukraine, built 6 minelayers, and acquired the uncompleted Ukrainian aircraft carrier Varyag, ostensibly as a floating casino but actually to undergo conversion at Dalian and sea trials in 2011.

The PRC’s acquisition of military hardware from the Ukraine and the Russian Federation are of intense interest to the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence and other community analysts and, in recent years, have included 50 T-72 tanks, 24 Mil-17 assault helicopters, 100 SA-10 long-range air defense missiles, and 10 Il-76 transports. These purchases are considered part of a long-term investment effort not only to build up the country’s capability but also to obtain models to reverse engineer, such as the Russian SA-7 shoulder-fired antiaircraft weapon, which has been copied and manufactured locally. Similarly, the F-10 fighter is thought to have been built with American technology supplied by the Israelis after the cancellation of the Lavi project. 

Despite this modernization program, the Navy’s aviation branch remains weak, with an estimated total of 322 mainly elderly Soviet-designed aircraft, which includes 24 new Russian Sukhoi-30 fighter-bomber and 18 locally developed JH-7A fighter bombers.

The PRC’s potential adversaries in the region, including Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea, Japan, and especially Taiwan, have responded by expanding their own naval strength, with Australia doubling its submarine fleet to 12 and Vietnam buying 6 Russian Kilos and 12 Sukhoi-30 jets. India has also announced the purchase of three Russian stealth frigates and three American maritime surveillance aircraft, built six attack submarines, leased two Russian nuclear submarines, started the construction of an aircraft carrier, and, in July 2009, launched a Russian-designed nuclear-powered ballistic missile boat.

The PRC’s naval modernization and expansion was demonstrated in April 2009 at a fleet review conducted at Qingdao to celebrate the PLA Navy’s 60th anniversary when 25 indigenously built vessels were put on display before invited foreign guests, thus ensuring that Western intelligence analysts clearly understood Beijing’s commitment to projecting its newfound sea power. See also CHINESE NUCLEAR WEAPONS; UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (USA).

CHINESE NUCLEAR WEAPONS. The commitment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to the development of atomic weapons, made in January 1955, became clear to external analysts in 1957 when Mao Zedong opened a debate between “modernizers” and “traditionalists” within the Chinese military establishment, which culminated in December 1957 in an article published in Shijie zhishi that advocated Soviet sharing of atomic technology in response to the United States’s decision to develop weapons jointly with Great Britain and deploy arsenals across the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) membership in pursuit of a doctrine of limited nuclear conflicts using tactical weapons. The following month, a high-level delegation arrived in Moscow led by Marshal Peng Dehuai (the minister of national defense), General Su Yu (the PLA chief of staff), and Marshal Ye Jianying to negotiate with Marshal Rodion Malinovsky for nearly three weeks.

Clearly, the military mission’s objective had been to persuade the Kremlin that Soviet technical aid should be stepped up so the PRC could develop its own atomic weapons and at least counter American support for Taiwan. However, at the conclusion of their meetings, Western analysts detected a curious divergence in views. Whereas Marshal Peng referred to “the heroic Soviet army” being “equipped with the latest nuclear weapons,” Malinovsky remarked that “the might of our armies is based not only on the fact that they are armed with modern first-class weapons, but primarily on the fact that they are closely linked with their people,” an observation that was interpreted to mean that the Soviet Union was not quite so enthusiastic about sharing nuclear military secrets with its Chinese friends. As the truth dawned on the Chinese, their public pronouncements subtly changed, and propaganda from Beijing suggested that weapons alone did not decide the outcome of war and that the American “paper tiger” had been beaten in Korea even though the PRC did not possess nuclear weapons.

In fact, the exchanges in Moscow had taken place against a backdrop of increasing political tension between Mao and Nikita Khrushchev and the latter’s decision the following year to withdraw all Soviet technicians from the PRC, one of the first overt manifestations of the gravity of the Sino-Soviet split. Nevertheless, Western intelligence analysts, seeking to divine what was really happening in the Sino-Soviet relationship, concluded in 1962: 

The Chinese Communists have no atomic or nuclear weapons and little hope of acquiring more than a token nuclear capability in the near future. Even if they should test an atomic device in the near future it will probably take at least a decade for them to perfect simple modern delivery vehicles. This means that China cannot use its own military to advance its political goals except in a very limited sense. For achieving the major political goals—the absorption of Taiwan, for example—it must rely on Soviet military power, which is not always at Chinese disposal.

This assessment made by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) followed five years of U-2 overflights of the PRC, which had commenced from Pakistan in August 1957, and just two years later, in October 1964, a Chinese bomb test was detected as Lop Nor in Xinjiang Province, an event that was eloquent proof of the inadequacy of the CIA’s prediction.

Initial experiments with high explosives had been conducted at the Tuoli laboratory, 20 miles south of Beijing, and a test detonation, without enriched uranium, was completed successfully on 20 November 1963 and went undetected. By the end of the year, the enrichment facility at Lanzhou, in Gansu, was in production and, on 14 January 1964, delivered its first consignment of 90 percent enriched uranium, which was then machined in readiness for a bomb that was assembled at Malan. The test of the 22-kiloton device, weighing 3,410 pounds, detonated on the top of a steel tower 330 feet high, took place on 16 October 1964.

The speed with which the PRC detonated a bomb, based on the FAT MAN weapon built at Los Alamos, took Western intelligence analysts by surprise. Study of the air sample recovered after the test found that the first test had not contained any plutonium, which meant that the weapon had been a third of FAT MAN’s weight but with a yield four times more powerful than the LITTLE BOY plutonium device.

The third test, in the spring of 1966, with a yield of 200 to 300 kilotons, revealed lithium-6 in the isotope traces, indicating that a booster had been employed in the chain reaction, a strong indication of a Chinese commitment to the development of thermonuclear weapons. This was followed at the end of the year with a test of a 122-kiloton weapon, and then, on 17 June 1967, an aircraft dropped a 3.3-megaton uranium-only bomb. Thus, the PRC had accomplished the almost impossible, detonating its first hydrogen bomb without any plutonium, and had done so in just 32 months, a feat that had taken the United States 7 years to achieve.

Success had been achieved with less than 4 percent of the tests conducted by the United States, and analysts concluded that PRC scientists, led by Qian Xuesen, had received vital assistance from the atom spy Klaus Fuchs and his former Manhattan Project colleague Joan Hinton. In addition, it was believed that the PRC had collected air samples from American tests in the Pacific in 1958 and 1962 and perhaps had benefited from monitoring Soviet tests in Kazakhstan. Even so, considering the country’s economic plight, the feat was quite astonishing. During five years of atmospheric atomic tests, the PRC used two steel towers and delivered a further six weapons by air. The first underground test, in a tunnel mined into a mountain, was conducted on 23 September 1969, and the last atmospheric test conducted by any nuclear power was a 700-kiloton airburst on 16 October 1980.

As well as reporting on the PRC’s nuclear program, the CIA also monitored Beijing’s investment in delivery vehicles, which were based on the Soviet R-1 rocket, designated the SS-1, which was actually a modified German V-2 and later became the Dong Feng (East Wind) short-range ballistic missile (SRBM). The Dong Feng-2, a copy of the R-5 Shyster and designated CSS-1 (“China surface-to-surface”), with a range of 1,250 kilometers, was deployed for the 1966 missile test at Lop Nor.

By April 1984, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) had monitored 29 Chinese nuclear tests and predicted that future improvements would depend on both overt contact with U.S. scientists and technology and covert acquisition of U.S. technology.

There is evidence that the Chinese have been successful in assimilating into their nuclear weapons program United States technology in areas such as high explosive, radiochemistry, metallurgy, welding, super computers, numerical modeling, high speed photonics, and underground drilling. Throughout the history of the Chinese nuclear weapons program, they have followed closely advances in western technology. Increased access to this technology and continued Chinese efforts will in the 1980s and early 1990s show up as qualitative warhead improvements in terms of: (1) increased warhead reliability and confidence, (2) development of more compact warheads, especially for tactical nuclear applications and possibly for MRV warheads, (3) increased hardening of warheads in a nuclear antiballistic missile environment, (4) tailored output devices, such as enhanced radiation and (5) improved warhead safety, storage, and logistics procedures. Thus, in some areas, the gap between United States and Chinese nuclear technology may begin to narrow.

Subsequent Chinese missile variants included the DF-3 (CSS-2) intermediate-range ballistic missile, sold in 1981 to Saudi Arabia; the DF-4 (CSS-3) Long March-1 two-stage booster with a range of 7,000 kilometers; the DF-5 (CSS-4), a silo-based two-stage rocket with a 12,000-kilometer range; the DF-11 (CSS-7) road-mobile, solid-fueled SRBM; and the DF-15 (CSS-6) with a range of 2,500 kilometers. In January 1999, a Pentagon analysis assessed that there were 150 CSS-6 M-9 SRBMs aimed at Taiwan, a figure that would increase to 600 by 2005, based on production statistics from the China Academy of Rocket Motor Technology, formerly the 5th Aerospace Academy.

The DIA reported in January 1996 that Liu Huaqing, chairman of the Central Military Commission, had visited Moscow and Kiev recently and expressed an interest in buying components for the SS-18 Satan heavy intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). Liu’s visit had followed a trip to Beijing made by the Ukraine’s President Leonid Kuchma, who, the DIA observed, was a rocket engineer and had himself once been a director of the SS-18 production plant at Yuzhnoye.

The DIA noted that while the SS-18 booster rocket could be used for placing satellite payloads in orbit, it was not an obvious choice to carry sensitive equipment and, of course, also had a primary military function as a nuclear warhead delivery vehicle.

Beijing is working on an improved version of the CSS-4 ICBM and seems to be planning to incorporate MIRV technology into its missile force. China’s interest in Russian SS-18 military technology probably is linked to Beijing’s strategic force modernization, particularly the areas of missile guidance, accuracy, rocket engines, and warhead improvements. Incorporating SS-18-related military guidance or warhead technologies into China’s Strategic Missile Forces would greatly improve Beijing’s ability to threaten targets in the United States.

The U.S. National Air Intelligence Center reported in November 1996 that SS-18 technology could enhance the performance of the DF-31 ICBM with a range of 5,000 miles and the DF-41 with an estimated reach of 7,500 miles, each armed with a 500-kiloton-yield warhead.

Since that date, Beijing is estimated to have maintained a substantial stockpile of around 180 nuclear weapons, including warheads for 18 CSS-4 Mod 2 silo-based ICBMs capable of reaching the West Coast of the United States. According to the DIA, the principal ICBM production complex, located at an underground site at Wanyuan, was closed in December 1998 and relocated at a modern facility at Chengdu. The PRC’s strategic rocket capacity has been assessed as 70 DF-31 solid-fueled, road-mobile MRBMs with a range of 8,000 kilometers and 12 CSS-NX-4 SLBMs for the Xia submarine.

Having successfully built an arsenal of nuclear warheads but failing to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty until March 1992, Deng Xiaoping adopted a policy of proliferation and, in 1982, passed the designs of the uranium CHIC-4 weapon to Pakistan. In February 1983, China agreed to build a duplicate of the reactor at the Beijing Institute of Atomic Energy Research in a remote location, at Aïn Oussera, high in Algeria’s Atlas Mountains. Although the El Salam reactor would be described, eight years later, as a research facility, the secret deal raised the suspicion that China had agreed to help Algeria develop nuclear weapons.

On 26 May 1990, a test was conducted at Lop Nor for the Pakistanis. Thereafter, the principal Pakistani physicist, A. Q. Khan, peddled the CHIC-4 bomb design to North Korea, Iran, and Libya and attempted to sell it to Iraq. According to communications intercepted by the National Security Agency (NSA), in September 1996, the China Nuclear Energy Industry Corporation (CNEIC) sold him 5,000 ring magnets, components for upgrading enrichment centrifuges, for $70,000. This event was significant because only three months earlier, on 11 May, the PRC’s foreign ministry had issued a statement confirming that “China will not provide assistance to unsafeguarded nuclear facilities.” However, soon afterward, there was a further shipment of diagnostic equipment and a furnace for use with high-technology metals, and on 14 September, the CIA reported that Ghulam Kibria, the Pakistani nuclear and missile procurement officer in Beijing, had met with CNEIC officials to discuss the measures to be taken to conceal the purchase’s true destination.

The Chinese told Kibria they needed end user certificates for the sale and all future dual-use shipments and other equipment for Pakistan’s unsafeguarded facilities and vowed to discuss the certificates only with a “third party”—apparently the US—probably to demonstrate that Beijing is complying with its May commitment.

. . . Kibria suggested possible language for the false end user certificates to make it appear that one item—possibly the diagnostic equipment—was intended for the safeguarded Chasma nuclear power plant, which Chinese firms are building.

The intercept indicates Kibria also suggested to the Chinese that all remaining contracts, apparently for unsafeguarded facilities, be canceled and new ones drawn up naming unobjectionable end users.

Kibria claimed the Chinese reacted positively to the idea, but added this kind of agreement is “dangerous.” Such a subterfuge probably would require the approval of senior Chinese government leaders.

In December 2003, following a lengthy joint Anglo-American intelligence investigation of Khan, scientists in Tripoli surrendered details of Libya’s nuclear weapons development program to International Atomic Energy Authority inspectors and included a plastic bag marked “Good Looks Tailor Shop” containing the CHIC-4 blueprints.

As well as studying the PRC’s stockpile of nuclear weapons, CIA and DIA analysts scrutinized delivery systems, which included some 50 Su-27 fighters built under license and armed with AA-11 radar-guided missiles; the F-10 indigenous multi-role fighter; the F-8 interceptor; the FB-7 light strike aircraft; and an advanced stealth fighter project, the XXJ. See also AIRBORNE COLLECTION; COX REPORT; INDUSTRIAL ESPIONAGE; SENIOR BOWL.

CHINESE SIGNALS INTELLIGENCE. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) operates a network of signals intelligence intercept stations close to its foreign borders, with large installations on Lake Kinghathu, Jilemutu, and Jixi, monitoring Russian traffic in the northeast. Others at Erlian and Hami cover Mongolia. Indian communications are intercepted at Chengdu and Dayi, with Vietnam monitored from Kunming. In addition, there are large intercept facilities at Lingshui on Hainan Island, at Shenyang, near Jinan, in Shanghai, and in Nanjing. Surveillance on Taiwan is maintained by a chain of sites in the Fujian and Guangdong military districts. An estimated eight naval platforms also contribute to the PRC signals intelligence matrix, with an analytical center integrated into the South Sea Fleet headquarters at Zhanjiang. Intelligence collection aircraft include Antonov-12 Cubs and converted Tu-154 transports. See also THIRD DEPARTMENT.

CHIN PENG. The secretary-general of the Malayan Communist Party, in March 1947, Chin Peng succeeded Lai Tek, who had been exposed as a Special Branch mole and murdered. Chin Peng led the PRC-backed insurgency in Malaya during the Emergency, which was declared in June 1948 and lasted 12 years. In 1955, Chin Peng established contact with the Malaya Special Branch and attempted, unsuccessfully, to negotiate a truce. Two years later, he abandoned his guerrilla headquarters close to the Thai border and fled to Beijing. In 1989, Chin Peng announced the end of hostilities against Malaysia and, in 1994, traveled to Australia. Four years later, he visited Shoreham in Sussex to lunch with his old adversary, and Lai Tek’s handler, Jon Davies of the Malaya Special Branch. When Davis died, in October 2006, a tribute to him from Chin Peng was read at the funeral. See also GREAT BRITAIN.

CHI TONG KUOK. On 17 June 2009, Chi Tong Kuok, a citizen of Macau, was arrested in Atlanta, Georgia, while he was in transit for Panama, where he was to meet undercover federal agents who intended to seize controlled technology. The arrest was the result of a lengthy sting operation conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS).

Kuok was escorted back to San Diego, California, where he was indicted for attempts to acquire, on eBay, sensitive defense technology used to encrypt American military and government communications and then export the items to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). He was also charged with conspiracy to export defense articles and smuggle goods from the United States and money laundering. According to the prosecution, Kuok negotiated with undercover agents to obtain PRC-148 radios, a multiband transceiver used by U.S. Special Forces, and the key required to operate the cryptographic functions on a KG-175 TACLANE encryptor, a sophisticated piece of electronic equipment used to encrypt classified communications on military networks.

In 2006, Kuok had approached a contact in the defense industry in search of software for a VDC-300 airborne data controller, a device that secures satellite communications from American military aircraft. The contact referred Kuok to an undercover agent in San Diego who began to negotiate with Kuok about a shopping list of military technology, which grew to 43 items, ranging from a GPS receiver with anti-spoofing defenses to the AN/CYZ-10 crypto key management device developed by the National Security Agency (NSA). Despite frequently expressing fears that he might be dealing with someone working for the NSA, Central Intelligence Agency, or Federal Bureau of Investigation,Kuok continued to negotiate and, in March 2008, paid $8,000, channeled through Western Union, for two PRC-148 radios, shipping them to his address in Macao. Later, using a Yahoo e-mail address and different name, Kuok attempted to purchase the KG-175 TACLANE, but the company refused to ship the item but did allow an investigator to negotiate on its behalf.

Kuok, who had used the aliases of Edison Kuok, Yoko Chong, Yoko Kawasaki, and others, told investigators that he had been “acting at the direction of officials of the People’s Republic of China” and that “he and PRC officials had sought the items to figure out ways to listen to or monitor U.S. government and military communications.”

At his trial in San Diego in March 2010, Kuok’s attorney asserted that his client’s attempt to acquire restricted technology had been coerced by PRC officials, but after the defense failed to offer a witness in support of the claim, he was found guilty. See also AIRBORNE COLLECTION; NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY (NSA); TECHNOLOGY ACQUISITION.

CHITRON ELECTRONICS. In May 2010, Chitron Electronics, a company based in Waltham, Massachusetts, and Shenzhen, China, was convicted of conspiring to evade export controls on sensitive equipment with military applications over a period of 10 years. The Shenzhen Chitron Electronics Company Limited, based in Shenzhen, had been formed and controlled by a Harvard-educated engineer, Wu Zhenzhou, and Wei Yufeng was the office manager in Waltham. Chitron was also found guilty of selling embargoed material, including phased-array radar and satellite communications systems to the China Electronics Technology Group Corporation, a firm responsible for the procurement, development, and manufacture of electronics for the Chinese military. The company failed to appear at trial and was fined $1.9 million, but Wu Zhenzhou was sentenced in January 2011 to eight years’ imprisonment. A fourth defendant, Li Bo, alias Eric Lee, had already pleaded guilty to a charge of making false statements on shipping documents. See also INDUSTRIAL ESPIONAGE; TECHNOLOGY ACQUISITION; UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (USA).

CHUNG, GREG. A 73-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen, originally from China, Dongfan “Greg” Chung was a senior Boeing engineer arrested on 11 February 2008 and charged with economic espionage for the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In July 2009, he was found guilty of taking 300,000 pages of sensitive documents that included information about the U.S. Space Shuttle and a booster rocket in which Boeing had invested $50 million. “Mr. Chung has been an agent of the PRC for over 30 years,” ruled the U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney.

Chung, who had worked on the Space Shuttle, had been compromised by the discovery of a letter addressed to him from Gu Weihao, a Chinese Ministry of Aviation Industry representative, found by the Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI) in Chi Mak’s Los Angeles apartment. Gu was related to Chi Mak’s wife, Rebecca Liu-wa Chu, and used her husband as a conduit to exchange messages by hand with Chung, and the document was explicit, noting that “in the past I have asked you to collect some quality control information at your convenience” and also noting that Gu undertook to pay Chung for any expenses incurred “while collecting or purchasing information.” This find led to a search on 11 September 2006 of Chung’s home, where documents were recovered concerning the Space Shuttle phased-array radar, the Delta IV rocket, and the C-17 Globemaster III military transport aircraft. One letter, addressed to Professor Chen Lung Ku[AQ11] of the Harbin Institute of Technology referred to Chung having “sent via sea freight three sets of manuals dealing with flight stress analysis.”

Various other documents suggested that Chung was an ideologically motivated spy who had been active for decades. One, mentioning the four reform goals announced in December 1978 by Deng Xiaoping, stated, “I don’t know what I can do for the country. Having been a Chinese compatriot for over thirty years and being proud of the people’s effort for the motherland, I am regretful for not contributing anything. . . . I would like to make an effort to contribute to the Four Modernizations of China.” The reply to Chung, dated September 1979, acknowledged receipt of his package of information and observed, “We are moved by your patriotism.” Another letter, dated February 1985, from Chen Qinan, the deputy director of the China National Aero Technology Import and Export Corporation’s technical import department, provided a list of aeronautical topics for Chung to focus on, including metal fatigue, helicopter rotor blades, and aircraft propellers. This correspondence heralded Chung’s sponsored return to the PRC in June 1985 to give a series of lectures on aircraft design, the Space Shuttle’s forward fuselage, stress factors, and heat resistant tiles.

Chung completed his unreported visit to the PRC and remained in contact with the Nanchang Aircraft Company that provided him with questionnaires identifying the topics of interest. One requested:

1.     Please introduce in detail how to determine the safety life and damage tolerance for the life conceptual design and operating procedure of an aircraft or part thereof.

2.     Should non-failure probability and confidence level be considered for the actual measurement of the flight load spectrum? U.S. military specification recommends using mainly average spectrum, what is the basis of this recommendation?

3.     How does the United States perform flight measurement and compiling of the tail load spectrum? Please introduce in detail.

4.     For aircraft life estimation by the aircraft companies in the United States, what are the few commonly used engineering approaches?

5.     What are the differences in determining the aircraft life for large civil aircraft vs. military fighter planes?

6.     Introduce procedures and implementation processes for aircraft maintenance and inspection outlines. Specific contents and frequency for inspections, monitoring technology for major parts under stress.

7.     What is the purpose of adding a spacer in the design (such as Boeing 707 airplanes) for the butt joint on the wing?

8.     How many types of loaded flights are used for the fatigue tests of smaller fighter planes? What are the percentages for the mobile loading and the non-symmetrical loading? When performing loading test, are the sequences of the loading random or are they derived manually?

9.     What approaches are used in the United States to determine the helicopter’s life? Is the safety-life, fail-safe, or damage tolerance approach being used to assure flight safety? What is the application?

At the end of December 1985, Chung had reported to “Chief Engineer Feng” that he had acquired Rockwell Aviation manuals for the F-100, X-15, and B-70, 24 Rockwell manuals relating to the B-1 bomber, and 27 manuals concerning the stress loads on Plexiglas canopies, and arrangements were made for a diplomat at the consulate in San Francisco, Zhen Lan Zhao, to receive the material so it could be sent to Beijing in the Chinese diplomatic pouch.

Other incriminating documents found at Chung’s home indicated that he had been in continuous contact with the Chinese since 1979 and had made numerous unreported visits to the PRC from 1985 onward. In a discussion concerning a plausible cover for these trips, if Chung was challenged, it had been suggested that Chung’s wife might receive invitations to an art institute. In addition to these visits, there was also evidence that Gu had traveled to the United States to see Chung in 1986 and probably thereafter.

The judge convicted Chung of six counts of economic espionage, one count of acting as a foreign agent, one count of conspiracy, and one count of lying to a federal agent but acquitted him of obstruction of justice. Chung had opted for a nonjury trial that lasted three weeks and ended on 24 June. His defense lawyers argued that Chung was a “pack rat” who hoarded documents at his house but insisted he was not a spy, claiming he may have violated Boeing policy by bringing the papers home, but he had not broken any laws, and the U.S. government could not prove he had given any of the information to China. According to the prosecution, Chung had worked for Rockwell International until it was bought by Boeing in 1996 and had stayed with the Chicago-based company until he had been made redundant in 2002. However, after the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster in 2003, Chung had been rehired as a consultant and had been employed until he was fired when the FBI began its investigation in 2006. The prosecution alleged that Chung began to spy for the PRC in the late 1970s, a few years after he became a naturalized U.S. citizen and was hired by Rockwell. In November 2009, he was sentenced to 24 years’ imprisonment. See also CHINA AEROSPACE CORPORATION (CAC); INDUSTRIAL ESPIONAGE; TECHNOLOGY ACQUISITION.

CIRCUS. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) codename for a series of operations conducted in Tibet from June 1957 in support of Khampa tribesmen from the east of the country who opposed the occupation by the People’s Republic of China (PRC), CIRCUS began with eight Khampas who were exfiltrated from Tibet on a converted B-17 bomber flown from Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, by experienced Polish pilots, to Kermitola, near Dacca, in East Pakistan. The team then underwent CIA guerrilla training at camps on Guam and Okinawa before being dropped back into Tibet from Kermitola in Operation ST/BARNUM in October and November. In July the following year, the CIA began dropping weapons to the fighters, employing a C-118 transport from Guam. During CIRCUS, more than 200 guerrillas were flown to the United States to undergo training in the Rocky Mountains at Camp Hale, near Leadville in Colorado. Formerly a World War II winter warfare center, Camp Hale had accommodated the 10th Mountain Division before the CIA took over the site. Having undergone the guerrilla course, the volunteers returned either to Mustang, just inside Nepal, or to their homeland. CIRCUS was terminated in May 1965 when the last supply drop was completed and the 247,000 acres of Camp Hale were turned over the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service.

CIVIL AIR TRANSPORT (CAT). Founded after World War II by the leader of the famous Flying Tigers, General Claire L. Chennault, in partnership with another American, Whiting Willauer, CAT operated closely with Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist air force and, based in Taiwan from October 1949, acted as a proprietary company of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), undertaking clandestine propaganda leaflet-drop missions and reconnaissance overflights of Hainan Island and the mainland.

Exploiting gaps in China’s radar screen detected by electronic intelligence missions, flights were made by the 91st Strategic Reconnaissance Wing from Yokota in Japan, and in March 1952, CAT aircraft began to penetrate deep into Chinese airspace in daylight with a Boeing B-17 and a Douglas DC-4 Skymaster, delivering Nationalist agents and collecting imagery. More than 100 of these missions were flown by Douglas A-25s and Consolidated PB-47s and RB-69s, often U.S. Air Force aircraft repainted in CAT livery. In 1950, the CIA took over CAT entirely and, until the project was closed down in June 1976, flew missions along the border with Yunnan Province, communicating with agents and making parachute drops of matériel. See also TROPIC; U-2.

CLINE, RAY. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) station chief in Taipei between 1958 and 1962, Dr. Ray Cline was an influential figure in local politics, operating under U.S. Naval Auxiliary Communications Center, and would be promoted to be the CIA’s deputy director of intelligence. Born in 1918 in Illinois and educated at Harvard on a scholarship, Cline served in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II in China and joined the CIA in 1949. His foreign postings included London from 1951 to 1953 and Bonn from 1966 to 1969. Later, he headed the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

As chief of the CIA’s analytical staff on the Sino-Soviet bloc between 1953 and 1957, he accurately predicted the split between the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union. His contribution during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 gave him almost legendary status within the CIA and ensured he remained an influential figure in Washington DC, long after his retirement to Georgetown University in 1973, when he continued to be a keen advocate for the Chinese Nationalists and headed the Taiwan Committee for a Free China. He died in March 1996, aged 77.

COLLECTIVE SECURITY TREATY ORGANIZATION (CSTO). Created by the Russian Federation to offer mutual security in Central Asia, with a membership of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, the CSTO excludes the People’s Republic of China and is perceived by Beijing as a rival to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

COMBINED INTELLIGENCE FAR EAST (CIFE). The postwar successor of the Far East Combined Bureau, CIFE was Great Britain’s principal signals intelligence organization in the region during the Cold War. Based in Singapore, CIFE provided an umbrella for all local British security and intelligence operations and played a key role in the campaign against the guerrillas known as “Chinese Terrorists” during the Malayan Emergency. Among the Secret Intelligence Service professionals to head CIFE were Dick Ellis, James Fulton, Ellis Morgan, and Maurice Oldfield.

COMINTERN. The Third Communist International, headed until 1926 by Grigori Zinoviev from its creation in March 1919 in Moscow, was active in China with representatives in Peking, Shanghai, and Harbin engaged in promoting a global Bolshevik Revolution. Zinoviev was replaced in July 1935 by Nikolai Bukharin, who would be succeeded by a Bulgarian Communist, Georgi Dmitrov. The Comintern’s intelligence branch, the Foreign Liaison Department (OMS), ran a clandestine network in Shanghai headed by Hilaire Noulens, but he was arrested in June 1931 and replaced by a series of illegals, among them Earl Browder and Max Steinberg. The OMS network operated parallel to a separate GRU ring headed by Richard Sorge and, among many other activities, sponsored the English-language fortnightly newspaper Voice of China, published by the Eastern Publishing Company, which was headed by Manny Granich, a leading member of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA). In New York, Granich’s wife, Grace, had been Browder’s secretary.

COMMISSION OF SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND INDUSTRY FOR NATIONAL DEFENSE (COSTIND). The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) COSTIND is the body responsible for the planning and development of new technology with military applications and for overseeing the modernization of the PLA. Since its establishment, COSTIND has sponsored the Beijing Institute of Systems Engineering, held a series of symposia to debate such subjects as information warfare, and enjoyed a close relationship with the Ministry of Electronics Industries. Headed originally by Zhang Aiping, COSTIND sets policy for China’s extensive military industrial complex and selects priority projects, such as the development of advanced satellites, lasers, and remote sensors, for direct funding. COSTIND exercises considerable influence on the direction of China’s high-tech industry and is perceived by Western intelligence analysts as the key organization in Beijing responsible for identifying areas for industrial espionage. See also PROJECT 863.

COX REPORT. A redacted version of the Report of the Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People’s Republic of China, known as the Cox Report (after the committee’s chairman, Congressman Christopher Cox), was released in May 1999; although, the complete document remains classified. The report, which had a lasting impact on United States policy toward the People’s Republic of China (PRC), reached five major conclusions:

1.     The theft of nuclear and other technology by the PRC was not achieved in a vacuum and was the result of decades of hostile intelligence operations conducted by the Ministry of State Security against U.S. weapons facilities, such as the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

2.     The PRC had been successful in stealing the designs of the seven most advanced American thermonuclear weapons.

3.     The theft of those secrets had enabled the People’s Liberation Army to accelerate its own design, development, and testing of nuclear weapons, without the added burden of conducting its own research and development.

4.     The PRC’s next generation of nuclear weapons would benefit from stolen designs and would be much more effective.

5.     The PRC would be able to deploy small nuclear warheads much sooner than the previously predicted date of 2002, and the stolen designs would enable China to integrate multiple independent reentry vehicle (MIRV) technology in its next generation of missiles.

Following circulation of the Cox Report, the Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet appointed Robert Walpole in February 2000 to complete a study of the PRC’s nuclear espionage, a document that remains classified. See also CHINESE NUCLEAR WEAPONS; INDUSTRIAL ESPIONAGE; TECHNOLOGY ACQUISITION.

CULTURAL REVOLUTION. The Cultural Revolution, Wuchan Jieji Wenhua Da Geming (literally the Great Proletarian Cultural Great Revolution), was launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 and plunged the country into social, political, and economic turmoil that lasted a decade. By 1976, there was nationwide chaos, economic disaster, and little external intelligence activity conducted by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS). The MPS’s headquarters was attacked by the Red Guards (Hong Wei Bing), and the minister of security, Luo Qingchang, was thrown out of a window, breaking his legs. He was then paraded through the streets and subjected to humiliation while MPS files were seized as well as individual dossiers used to identify candidates for criticism and banishment into the lao jiao prison system.

Following the catastrophic Great Leap Forward, Mao’s unchallenged power was contested, and although he resigned his political position as state chairman of China, he refused to admit to a mistake, insisting his plan had been “70 percent correct,” and retained the more important post of chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). After an initial alliance with Liu Shaoqi, in an effort to discredit Peng Dehuai, who had earlier criticized Mao and threatened his powerbase, Mao turned on Liu in 1963 and asserted that the class struggle was an ongoing process and must be undertaken “yearly, monthly, and daily.” This resulted in the “Four Cleans Movement,” with the goal of purifying politics, economics, ideas, and organization of “reactionaries,” a campaign directed at Liu. By 1966, the Cultural Revolution was underway, led by the Red Guards. Mao turned to his long-time associate Kang Sheng, the head of his security apparatus, to ensure that his ideological and security directives were carried out.

Kang played a key role in implementing the Cultural Revolution, as did Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, who had been Kang’s lover. Jiang, together with Wang Hongwen, Yao Wenyuan, and Zhang Chunqiao, became known as the “Gang of Four” and began a campaign to renew the spirit of the Chinese revolution. They attacked the “Four Olds” of Chinese society (old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas), and the Red Guards destroyed fully two-thirds of China’s famous temples, shrines, and other such heritage sites. Established political leaders, including Deng Xiaoping, Liu Shaoqi, and Peng Dehuai, were attacked, sometimes physically, and Deng’s son Deng Pufang was thrown out of a second story window, leaving him permanently confined to a wheelchair.

Intelligence personnel were also attacked, and Shen Jian, a long-time associate of Kang’s, was subjected to criticism. Only leaders of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) escaped such behavior, and some officials, such as Shen, were able to find positions for family members in the PLA to avoid the wrath of the Red Guards.

The fact that during the 10 years of the Cultural Revolution Larry Wu-tai Chin was not contacted by Chinese intelligence is an indication of the paralysis experienced by the MPS. However, by 1967, the Red Guards came to be considered a liability, and they encountered resistance in some factories and even in rural areas, where they had never been as disruptive as in the major cities. Eventually, the PLA was ordered to restore order, and the following year, it put down the Red Guard movement, often violently. Mass executions and even cannibalism of students occurred in Guangxi Province, and there were similar incidents in Sichuan, Anhui, Hunan, Fujian, and Hubei provinces. Finally, Mao himself met with Red Guard leaders and asked them to gently end the movement.

Lin Biao, as head of the PLA, gained considerable power and, in 1969, was named as Mao’s designated heir, but after some semblance of order had been restored, Mao began to view Lin Biao, who had been prominent in establishing Mao’s personality cult throughout China, as a threat and turned on him. Lin was killed in a plane crash while ostensibly trying to flee to the Soviet Union in 1971, and it has been claimed that this was Kang Sheng’s handiwork.

The Cultural Revolution persisted beyond the death of Kang Sheng in 1975 but came to an end the following year when Mao and Zhou Enlai died. The Gang of Four was prosecuted, and Deng Xiaoping regained power to undo much of the harm inflicted by Mao over the previous decade. Contact with Larry Wu-tai Chin, for instance, was reestablished by the MPS, enabling him to resume his espionage. Modern Chinese intelligence personnel rarely discuss the Cultural Revolution, and usually the topic is only raised within a CCP context.

CYBER ESPIONAGE. Since the development of the Internet and the impressive electronic warfare techniques employed by the United States during the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has adopted a policy of developing and occasionally deploying aggressive strategies intended to close down an adversary’s communications network or plunder its databases for information. One attack, codenamed NIGHT DRAGON, appeared to concentrate on the energy sector. According to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission report released in September 2009, attacks on U.S. Department of Defense computers from sources traced to mainland China rose from 43,880 in 2007 to 54,640 in 2008. As well as launching offensives against U.S. government targets, the PRC has been the source of denial of service and other sabotage against the country’s perceived opponents, such as Tibetanactivists, the pro-democracy movement, Uighur separatists, and members of Falun Gong.

In recent years, evidence has emerged of PRC students abroad engaging in cyber espionage, with a group at Leuven’s Catholic University accused of having attempted to sabotage the communications systems of the Belgian Parliament, the European Union’s headquarters in Brussels, and the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Other attacks have been traced to the PRC, including a month-long assault on the Australian Parliament’s computer system in March 2011. According to the U.S. State Department internal memoranda, the PRC sponsored Lin Yong, a notorious hacker known as “Lion,” who founded the Hacker Union of China, a group of ostensibly independent hackers who sought to revenge the accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in May 1999 by attacking U.S. government-related websites. Also mentioned is Xfocus, the hackers who released the Blaster worm in August 2003, infecting computers using Windows XP and Windows 2000 operating systems worldwide. In June 2009, a classified State Department circular claimed:

There is a strong possibility the PRC is harvesting the talents of its private sector in order to bolster offensive and defensive computer network operations capabilities. . . . Potential linkages of China’s top companies with the PRC illustrate the government’s use of its private sector in support of information warfare objectives.

The State Department identified Topsec, the PRC’s largest computer security company, and Venustech, another leading Chinese security firm, as part of the China Information Technology Security Center (CITSC), the entity that was Microsoft’s partner in distributing the Windows operating system in the country. However, during 2002 and 2003, Topsec employed Lion, and the company’s founder, He Weidong, publicly acknowledged that the PRC government had invested in his company, supplying half of Topsec’s start-up capital and awarding it research and development contracts.

In assessing what was termed the “cyber threat,” in confidential cables in 2008, the State Department claimed that, since 2002, cyber intruders involved in the BYZANTINE CANDOR attack, which originated in the PRC, exploited the vulnerabilities of the Windows system to steal login data and access to hundreds of U.S. government and sensitive defense contractor systems:

In the United States, the majority of the systems BYZANTINE CANDOR actors have targeted belong to the U.S. Army, but targets also include other Department of Defense services as well as Department of State, Department of Energy, additional U.S. government entities, and commercial systems and networks.

In another cable headed “Diplomatic Security Daily,” a State Department memo described how officials involved in talks with the PRC at the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen were subject to a cyber attack containing the POISON IVY remote access tool intended to give hackers almost complete control over the victim’s system.

The socially engineered message had the subject line “China and Climate Change” and was spoofed to appear as if it were from a legitimate international economics columnist at the National Journal. In addition, the body of the e-mail contained comments designed to appeal to the recipients as it was specifically aligned with their job function. . . . State Department employees dealing with sensitive matters are often targets of social-engineering schemes conducted by actors seeking to harvest sensitive information. As negotiations on . . . climate change continue, it is probable intrusion attempts such as this will persist.

An intrusion in March 2011 into the SecurID password authentication system marketed by EMC, the security component of the defense contractor RSA, compromised some of the 25 million key-fobs that generate “one-time” access codes and led to the cloning of tokens distributed to Lockheed Martin employees. The attack was found to have originated in an ostensibly harmless e-mail entitled “2011 Recruitment Plan” but actually enabled the downloading of POISON IVY, a notorious, Chinese-built remote access tool. In consequence, the U.S. National Security Agencyinitiated Operation STARLIGHT, a group of independent consultants, to recommend countermeasures. Then, in October 2011, Representative Mike Rogers, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, protested that cyber attacks from the PRC had reached an “intolerable level” and called on the administration to “confront Beijing,” saying, “I don’t believe that there is a precedent in history for such a massive and sustained intelligence effort by a government to blatantly steal commercial data and intellectual property.”

A month later, in November 2011, the U.S. National Counterintelligence Executive (NCIX) released a report that identifies the PRC and Russia as being the principal perpetrators of cyber-espionage and quotes the National Science Foundation as estimating annual American losses at $398 billion, mainly in the field of research spending, asserting that China and Russia view themselves as strategic competitors of the United States and are the most aggressive collectors of U.S. economic information and technology.

Relying on data assembled over the past two years from 13 other U.S. agencies, including the CIA and the FBI, the NCIX report notes that corporations, universities, and government departments were being deliberately targeted by hackers to “gather enormous quantities of information with little risk” while acknowledging the difficulty in tracing the precise whereabouts of the culprits who routinely employed dispersed routers in third countries. Priority targets appeared to be pharmaceutical companies, military equipment manufacturers, and any organization working on advanced materials; although, the threat had not been fully recognized, noting, “Only 5 percent of corporate chief financial officers are involved in network security matters, and only 13 percent of companies have a cross-functional cyber risk team that bridges the technical, financial and other elements of a company,” according to a 2010 study.

The computer networks of a broad array of U.S. government agencies, private companies, universities and other institutions—all holding large volumes of sensitive economic information—were targeted by cyberespionage.

However, the NCIX concludes, “Many companies are unaware when their sensitive data is pilfered, and those that find out are often reluctant to report the loss, fearing potential damage to their reputation with investors, customers, and employees.” See also AVOCADO; GHOSTNET; INFORMATION WARFARE; INFORMATION WARFARE MILITIA; TITAN RAIN.