Ministry of State Security of the People's Republic of China
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article or section relies largely or entirely upon a single source. Please help improve this article by introducing appropriate citations of additional sources. |
| Ministry of State Security of the People's Republic of China 中华人民共和国国家安全部 |
|
| Agency overview | |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Beijing |
| Agency Executive | Geng Huichang, Minister of State Security |
| Parent agency | State Council |
The Ministry of State Security (MSS) (Simplified Chinese: 国家安全部; Pinyin: Guojia Anquan Bu, or Guoanbu) is the security agency of the People's Republic of China. It is also probably the Chinese government's largest and most active foreign intelligence agency, though it is also involved in domestic security matters. Because of its role in collecting domestic intelligence and in monitoring domestic political dissidents, it has sometimes been termed a secret police.
Article 4 of the Criminal Procedure Law gives the MSS the same authority to arrest or detain people as regular police for crimes involving state security with identical supervision by the procuratorates and the courts.[1] It is headquartered near the Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China in Beijing.
Contents |
[edit] History
The precursor of the modern MSS was the Central Department of Social Affairs (CDSA), the primary intelligence organ of the Communist Party of China (CPC) before its accession to power in 1949. The CDSA operated in the Red Army base area of Yan'an in Shaanxi Province in northern China during the 1937-45 Second Sino-Japanese War. The CDSA provided the CPC with assessments of the world situation based on news reports and furnished the Communists with intelligence that proved important in the 1946-49 Chinese Civil War against the Nationalist forces. The CDSA later became the Central Investigation Department (CID). The MSS was established in 1983 as the result of the merger of the CID and the counter-intelligence elements of the Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China. One of its longest-serving chiefs was Jia Chunwang, a native of Beijing and a 1964 graduate of Tsinghua University, who is reportedly an admirer of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. He served as Minister of State Security from 1985 until March 1998, when the MSS underwent an overhaul and Xu Yongyue was appointed the new head of the organization. Jia was then appointed to the Minister of Public Security post, after a decade of distinguished service as head of the MSS.
Chinese intelligence agents, probably under the control of the MSS, have achieved success in penetrating the US intelligence community in the past. In the 1980s, Larry Wu-Tai Chin (Jin Wudai), a translator for the CIA's Foreign Broadcast Information Service, was arrested and charged with espionage in the service of the PRC. He had been recruited in 1944 while stationed in China as a US Army officer and went undetected for four decades. More recently, in 2003, Chinese-American Federal Bureau of Investigation employee and Republican Party fundraiser Katrina Leung was arrested and accused of being a double agent for both the FBI and the Chinese government, although she was acquitted of charges of copying classified information, and convicted only of tax charges and of lying to the FBI.
[edit] Mission
According to Liu Fuzhi, Secretary-General of the Political Bureau (Politburo) of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and Minister of Public Security, the mission of the MSS is to ensure "the security of the state through effective measures against enemy agents, spies, and counter-revolutionary activities designed to sabotage or overthrow China's socialist system." One of the primary missions of the MSS is undoubtedly to gather foreign intelligence from targets in various countries overseas. Many MSS agents are said to have operated in the Greater China region (Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan) and to have integrated themselves into the world's numerous overseas Chinese communities. At one point, nearly 120 agents who had been operating under non-official cover in the U.S., Canada, Western and Northern Europe, and Japan as businessmen, bankers, scholars, and journalists were recalled to China, a fact that demonstrates the broad geographical scope of MSS agent coverage.[citation needed]
[edit] Agency Heads
The following is a list of the known heads of this agency. They are known as Minister of State Security, reporting directly to the State Council[1]
- Ling Yun (凌云), 1983 - 1985
- Jia Chunwang, 1985 - 1998
- Xu Yongyue, 1998 - 2007
- Geng Huichang, 2007 - present
[edit] Organization
The MSS is divided into several bureaus:
- First Bureau - Domestic Affairs
- Second Bureau - Foreign Affairs
- Third Bureau - Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan
- Fourth Bureau - Technology
- Fifth Bureau - Local Intelligence
- Sixth Bureau - Counterintelligence
- Seventh Bureau - Circulation
- Eighth Bureau - Research (Institute of Contemporary International Relations)
- Ninth Bureau - Anti-Defection and Countersurveillance
- Tenth Bureau - Scientific and Technological Information
- Personnel and Education Bureau
- Supervision and Auditing Bureau
And other offices:
- General Office
- Political Department
- Party Committee
[edit] References
[edit] External links
|
|||||
|
|||||
