By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

The Circumstances That Allowed Past MSS Operations To Thrive

In Part One of this investigation, we, among others, covered three major US indictments and 13 Chinese nationals accused of spying and details how Chinese spies successfully worked as influencers. In Part Two, we also covered the Chinese Patriotic Education Campaign, Chinese Overseas Police Service Stations, and the three layers of the CCP’s repressive capacity. And in Part Three, we detailed how and why the Chinese spy agency could lure in foreign dignitaries from the highest levels.

It used to be that Chinese spies were adept at hacking and harassing dissidents but in other areas where lacking is not the case anymore. Nicholas Eftimiades, the author of Chinese Intelligence Operations (1994), wrote in 2019 that Chinese espionage operations had expanded dramatically, increasing the number of operations, personnel, government, and foreign targets sets. However, a national construct is also in place (however redundant) to ensure that intelligence information objectives are satisfied by collecting foreign information and technology. These information objectives are also tied to national defense and economic priorities. The only notable area in which China has shown minimal advancement has been applying sophisticated espionage tradecraft. Lastly, China’s espionage continues unabated despite many arrests, public exposure, and, most recently, U.S. trade sanctions.

Already towards the turn of the millennium, the Ministery Of State Security (MSS) found its forte. It still lacked the skill of organizations like the CIA or Russian intelligence agencies regarding clandestine operations. Finally, it began to get its head around the US foreign policy system and appreciate the benefits of targeting weak points like think tanks, retired officials, and the business community.

The first key feature of these efforts was that instead of playing a Russian game of hardcore operations designed to flip CIA officers and break into classified facilities, the Social Investigation Bureau’s officers were careful and patient, and they wore their cover stories like skin. They became foreign policy scholars, cultural exchange officials, poets, filmmakers, businessmen, and book publishers.

Lin Di, secretary general of a key Chinese cultural exchange organization and the bureau chief in charge of these spy operations, spoke English, held a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University, and was well-known to many American China watchers. Like Lin, many of his subordinates were fluent in foreign languages, had books and journal articles to their name, and often held credentials from world-class universities in Britain, the United States, and France. Chinese spies of generations past couldn’t match the comfort with which they moved in Western capitalist circles. They could literally go to RAND Corporation conferences by day and eat dinner with their American agents by night. Unlike spies posted to embassies, Social Investigation Bureau officers were based in China and served in the same positions for years. They built and maintained international connections beyond the usual three-year cycle of diplomatic assignments. Their contacts were almost exclusively among those who made regular trips to China, making them safe targets. 

These methods meant MSS officers played a different game to Western intelligence agencies, striking at unprotected parts of democratic systems. When the FBI was looking for sophisticated espionage operations or the theft of defense technology, China Reform Forum and other influence operations seemed insignificant. At the same time, China's work was under-resourced across Western intelligence agencies. There was scant political will to take a hard stance against Beijing, so MSS operations faced little opposition. Counterintelligence agencies were also lulled into a false sense of ease because these MSS officers usually weren’t using the kinds of sophisticated tradecraft that might indicate they were engaging in high-risk operations.

The second key to the MSS’s success was that it had long been signing up prominent Chinese officials and scholars to give its front groups a degree of verisimilitude and ensure it had plenty of informants among the kinds of people important foreigners interacted with. The networks it had built among pro-CCP Chinese community figures abroad, long dismissed by Western intelligence officials as unimportant and ‘only’ targeting pro-democracy activists and other enemies of the Party, were another launchpad for foreign operations. Once the MSS was ready to operate against the West actively, these friends became even more helpful. Well-known Chinese academics accompanied MSS officers on trips abroad, shoring up their cover stories and expanding their access in foreign capitals.

But perhaps the MSS’s most brilliant decision was to bring on board leading Chinese thinkers seen in the West as liberal and reformist. China Reform Forum, the think tank tailor-made by the MSS for influencing the outside world, was at the center of these operations, drawing together talented officers from across the agency and sometimes even gaining the participation of Party leaders. This was a long-term game of building up relationships, bartering access to the Communist Party’s inner workings and elites, and distorting perceptions of China’s direction. 

The MSS was taking the West’s dream of a more free and open China and turning it into a weapon that gave China valuable time to build up its power and ability to challenge the existing world order. To many of the people targeted for influence, these undercover MSS officers and scholars stood out as the kinds of people who wanted to push China towards political and economic liberalism. They were ‘free agents’ who could help you get meetings with important Chinese liberals, sometimes even Party leaders, and were willing to share gossip. It worked not just on China scholars but also on Western diplomats and policymakers, who cabled back information and disinformation passed on to them by undercover MSS officers. Every now and then they also tried to blackmail their American contacts and make deals, offering greater access to Party leaders in exchange for siding with China on key issues like Taiwan. Few were any the wiser. Those who realised their friends at China Reform Forum were more than they seemed sometimes genuinely believed these were reformists within the MSS who were willing to help foreigners influence the Party. 

Zheng Bijian, the veteran Party ideologue serving as China Reform Forum’s chairman, transformed the MSS front group into flypaper for foreigners eager to learn about and shape China. His ‘theory of China’s peaceful rise’, which he coined after working with the MSS to study American attitudes towards China, lives on in today’s ‘peaceful development’ policy and gave a brand to the MSS’s influence operation. They were no longer just promoting friendship and sympathy towards China but pushing the theory of China’s peaceful rise. This schema for understanding China was praised and adopted by no less than Henry Kissinger and former Goldman Sachs co-president John L. Thornton, two backchannels between Party leaders and the White House. Those whom many in the West placed their greatest hopes for China’s future in turned out to be serving a covert agenda.

Today’s political environment, where overt coercion and aggression towards Western nations is an increasingly normal part of the Party’s behaviour, has further unshackled the MSS. 

 

What Went Wrong?

Faced with such an enormous and poorly understood host of intelligence agencies, how can governments and societies around the world hope to push back?

It’s worth first considering what went wrong, because the circumstances that allowed past MSS operations to thrive haven’t gone away. Why was MSS bureau chief Lin Di allowed to build close friendships with influential Americans and speak at Washington, DC’s National Press Club? Why did no one intervene when former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke entered business with an MSS affiliate? Why did diplomats from around the world continue to treat undercover MSS officers as sources when their colleagues in intelligence agencies should have stopped it? Why did experienced scholars of China fail to sound the alarm on these activities? Why, for so long, has the challenge posed by the CCP and its intelligence agencies been downplayed in the West? Reckoning with these absurdities will be the first step in defeating China’s intelligence and influence operations. 

There’s no easy answer to these questions, especially when the MSS’s operations are themselves part of that answer. It’s a cyclical problem. Intelligence agencies are ultimately accountable to their governments, which set priorities and targets for information gathering. If political leaders fail to appreciate the significance of China’s rise then the resources they allocate to studying China naturally decline. The global War on Terror also drew attention away from China at a key moment and even became a driver of cooperation between Western intelligence agencies and the MSS. At the same time, the onus is largely on intelligence and foreign affairs agencies to assess the CCP’s activities and educate policymakers. They failed to effectively do this. 

 

Mindful Of These Complexities, A Few Key Failures And Mistakes Stand Out

 

1. The failure to appreciate influence efforts by the CCP 

The CCP’s political influence mechanisms remain poorly understood, but the situation was far worse in the past. Intelligence agencies and scholars have chronically overlooked the overseas aspects of united front work. Very few recognised that the MSS wasn’t just playing a game of espionage but rather tasked some of its best officers to convince influential foreigners that China would rise peacefully and gradually liberalise. The MSS’s involvement in promoting such narratives should have also hinted that the Party may have had other intentions and was simply buying more time to build its power. Instead, American foreign policy took on board the idea that the United States should encourage China’s peaceful rise as formulated by Zheng Bijian. The US government sought to deepen China’s involvement in international governance and focus on areas of cooperation while downgrading concerns over matters such as human rights, unfair trade practices and theft of intellectual property. 

Had the significance of CCP political influence efforts been appreciated, they should have triggered very different responses from governments and their intelligence agencies. Countering political interference is fundamentally different to countering espionage and terrorism because the CCP’s influence operations tend to focus on individuals without access to classified information and often don’t involve traditional attempts to recruit agents. Rather than intervene to stop the MSS from building friendships with those individuals, intelligence agencies usually preferred to watch and see what happened. They might have stepped in once these efforts touched on senior government officials but the need to prevent the MSS from influencing scholars and retired leaders wasn’t appreciated. Furthermore, many countries lack laws to prosecute political interference, and there isn’t anything necessarily illegal about being manipulated by an undercover intelligence officer. 

Together with anti-interference laws, targeted actions by security agencies and clear government policies on the matter, sunlight is the best disinfectant. Transparency is an essential pillar of responding to political interference. Governments and media can cut off the legs of many an influence operation simply by publicly exposing it. The earlier the better. But first they need the capabilities to accurately identify and understand CCP influence. 

Now that the threat of political interference is widely recognised, governments need to foster a community of experts in the CCP and its intelligence agencies. This will be a decades-long effort. Analysts in the government should be encouraged to specialise and cultivate their expertise on China rather than being moved between assignments every three years. University programs need to be established to train a new generation of fluent Chinese speakers with strong open-source research skills. The flexibility and creativity of independent research institutions will be a key part of this. 

2. The belief in misleading stereotypes about China and its intelligence agencies Stereotypes and misconceptions were widespread among observers of Chinese intelligence agencies until recently, and these biased them towards downplaying or misunderstanding the threat. Over many decades, this has allowed the CCP to build entrenched intelligence and influence networks in many countries.

The ‘thousand grains of sand’ theory, whereby China purportedly uses masses of ethnic Chinese amateur spies to hoover up vast amounts of information that are then pieced together into useful intelligence, has perhaps been the most widespread of these misconceptions.1 At first glance, this vivid idea might seem to encourage an active and well-resourced response to Chinese intelligence activity. But any attempt to uncover some essential character of Chinese intelligence is dangerously wrong. China expert Peter Mattis criticises the theory because ‘if “Chinese intelligence” includes everything from the intelligence services to a corporation to a criminal entrepreneur, then the term becomes almost meaningless’. Mattis points out that it fails on empirical grounds because it grossly understates the role of professional intelligence agencies and wrongly focuses attention on ethnic Chinese people when the MSS has a long history of targeting foreigners too.2 Nonetheless, versions of this idea have been common among intelligence analysts and in the broader China-watching community. 

A related mistake has been the belief that CCP efforts to infiltrate and influence Chinese diaspora communities, particularly through united front work, are relatively harmless. The MSS’s foreign operations have always been hotly focused on suppressing what it calls the ‘five poisons’: Uyghur activists, Tibetan activists, Taiwanese activists, democracy activists and Falun Gong practitioners.3 Until very recently, intelligence agencies didn’t pay attention to these activities. They were seen as insignificant ethnic community affairs even as they impinged upon the freedoms of citizens.4 This has its roots in ignorance and ambivalence towards ethnic Chinese communities. 

Today, the failure by governments around the world to care about united front work in Chinese communities is leading to serious and broad consequences. The diversity of Chinese community organisations and media has collapsed in many countries. Where most groups were independent or aligned with Taiwan in the past, today many of the loudest community bodies in countries such as Australia and Canada are run by CCP-aligned individuals who have been courted by the Party’s united front work agencies. Recent political interference cases in Australia show that these united front networks now serve as an infrastructure for espionage and covert influence beyond Chinese communities and into mainstream politics. This also forms a vicious self-sustaining cycle when CCP influence over traditional media and dominance over Chinese social media platforms like WeChat stymies efforts by anti-CCP groups to push back, and by governments to educate affected communities on foreign interference.5 

3. Risk aversion in bureaucracies and intelligence agencies Intelligence agencies are hoarders. To protect these hoards, they strictly compartmentalise sensitive information, and little is more sensitive than information gathered on intelligence agencies in foreign countries. This process of gathering and protecting information is an art, but so is knowing how to share and act on it. When it comes to sharing intelligence on China, insular culture and political sensitivities have helped the MSS’s influence operations flourish. 

Excessive compartmentalisation of information hindered efforts by intelligence agencies to cooperate with other members of their own communities – the CIA with the FBI, for example. In the case of MSS agent Katrina Leung, this made it almost impossible to pick out and remove or flag the information she passed on while posing as an FBI source, information that sometimes made it to the White House. With China Reform Forum, it allowed diplomats to cable MSS disinformation straight to Washington, DC.

Even worse, it predisposed intelligence agencies against intervening in these MSS operations, which was also exacerbated by the lack of understanding towards political influence efforts. This explains why foreign diplomats in China continued to rely on information from China Reform Forum even when some of their colleagues in intelligence agencies knew the think tank was an MSS influence front. 

If even US government employees weren’t being warned then it’s little wonder that many scholars, retired officials and business leaders weren’t either. While intelligence agencies often do warn and debrief those they see coming into contact with MSS officers, they’re reluctant to do so when high-level retired officials, politicians and business leaders are involved. One concern is that these warnings might end up in the press, which could lead to a change in MSS tactics. Even worse, some worried that warnings given to the wrong people would be ignored or even passed on to the MSS, so it wasn’t worth doing. To some, the access and opportunities offered by the MSS are too valuable to pass up. 

Bureaucratic risk aversion has probably been an even greater factor in the weak response to Party influence operations. In consensus-driven bureaucracies where hearts and minds change at a snail’s pace, nothing is more risky than making an arrest or exposing an operation that reflects poorly on your political masters. As one former US intelligence officer explained, ‘The [FBI leadership] hate dealing with political cases because they feel like either way you’re going to piss off half the people no matter what you do,’ because neither major party wants to be exposed as the target of a concerted influence operation. This way, influence operations become self-reinforcing. By spreading its influence operations broadly across the world’s political, business and academic leadership, the Party forestalled any response to those activities. Another problem is that intelligence agencies have chronically underutilised open-source intelligence – information collected from publicly accessible sources. Intelligence gathered through secretive channels has a powerful mystique, even when similar findings could be made with Google searches. As this book demonstrates, many Chinese government secrets can be pieced together by carefully reading Chinese-language books, newspapers, journals and websites. Amazingly, no country (with the exception of China) has seriously invested in this approach to intelligence gathering, and open-source intelligence is viewed as a lesser calling and a bad career choice within intelligence agencies. While there’s much you can’t access from analysis of open information, its distinct advantage is that it’s low risk, it’s cheap and it comes with a lower level of security classification. This means open-source intelligence is easily shared within governments, and even outside of them. It’s an essential tool for countering foreign interference but one that is largely untapped. Recognising the special characteristics of influence efforts should change these approaches. If you’re trying to disrupt an influence operation, sometimes a headline newspaper story is exactly what you want. Educating the public about the CCP’s political influence methods and narratives should be a priority. Releasing information about the scale and nature of the MSS will help encourage people to take its activities seriously. Raising the transparency of foreign interference through public reporting and prosecutions has to be hard-wired into the response. Having high-quality open-source intelligence on hand makes that much easier to do.

4. The vacuum of research on Party intelligence organisations and the rise of the Access Cult Let’s not forget the importance of one of the main targets of MSS influence operations: scholars, commentators and other non-governmental observers of China. Though they’re not experts on intelligence agencies, they profess to be experts on China, yet the degree of obliviousness and recklessness with which some of these people have treated the CCP is astounding. The case of the RAND Corporation, which continued to help China Reform Forum access the United States even after it was warned that the group was an MSS front, is symptomatic of a broader problem.

China’s intelligence and security agencies are generally left out of histories and analysis of the country in a way that would be unimaginable when writing about the Soviet Union, for example. As intelligence historian Christopher Andrew points out, ‘The intelligence community is central to the structure of the one-party state.’ It’s one of those forgotten lessons from the Cold War, and one that has been slow to sink into discussions about China.6

China’s intelligence community continues to be glossed over when scholars write about contemporary China. One recent 650-page report about the CCP’s influence operations only devoted two pages to the MSS.7 Part of this might be chalked up to the inherent difficulty of studying intelligence agencies, but this excuse holds little water. Scant scholarly attention has been applied to the dozens if not hundreds of biographical articles and memoirs by retired Chinese intelligence agents. Government archives in many countries provide another angle on Chinese intelligence operations, yet little attention has been paid to them.8 You’ll be hard-pressed to find any substantial references in academic literature to the CCP’s Central Investigation Department, a predecessor to the MSS, even though it was a driving force behind China’s early diplomatic missions and foreign relations.9 Today, when the US government prosecutes Chinese spies or hackers, few follow up on the leads littered in court records and indictments that often name front organisations for the MSS and PLA.10

Instead, there is minimal scholarly interest in Chinese intelligence agencies. As a field, China studies research into the structure and operation of Party organisations has largely given way to theoretical or quantitative approaches that leave little room for studying the MSS. Open-source investigative methods haven’t featured enough in academic research on China, although this is beginning to change. Since the gradual reopening of the People’s Republic of China after Mao’s death, it’s simply been more fruitful to work in the fields of study that emerged from that liberalisation. Demographic statistics and economic records that had never been accessible could suddenly be studied by foreigners. New opportunities for fieldwork opened up across China to interview everyday people. For those interested in Party politics, some officials were now willing to sit down for interviews and share their perspectives with American scholars. 

These were all worthy avenues for inquiry but had the effect of drawing attention away from less fruitful and more sensitive areas of study. And when scholars managed to interview MSS officers, they often didn’t realise it because their interviewees were undercover. When they understood they were meeting with MSS officers, often through the MSS bureau outwardly known as the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, those they met were carefully selected individuals trusted to push the Party line, promote influence narratives and not give away the secrets of the trade.

Another explanation is that scholars know well what happens to those who cross into verboten topics or are too politically incorrect for the Party’s liking. China experts like Professor Andrew Nathan, who helped publish and edit a collection of leaked documents on the Tiananmen massacre in 2001, have been barred from entering China. I was publicly banned from China in 2019. No one likes to self-censor, but it’s a reality for many who want to continue to visit the country. As Professor David Shambaugh, often viewed as an authority on the CCP, reportedly told a group of young scholars: ‘At some point, you’ll receive a call from a journalist, who will ask you about Taiwan, or Tibet, or Tiananmen … And when that happens, you should put down the phone and run as far away as possible.’11 The impact of this self-censorship upon China research, and particularly on the West’s understanding of sensitive aspects like the MSS, cannot be understated. 

Self-censorship is the sibling of another source of ignorance and laxity towards the Party’s underbelly: the Access Cult. In a relatively closed-off political system, those who can access its inner sanctum gain credibility and authority. A cohort of scholars and retired policymakers such as former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke have built careers and business upon their ability to meet with decision-makers in the Party. 

But the MSS is all too aware of the power of access, and it’s a phenomenon the Party as a whole exploits to great effect. The MSS has explicitly offered to help individuals land meetings with senior officials as part of its recruitment pitches.12 While not all who take part in the Access Cult are involved with Chinese intelligence agencies, all accept its bargain of access in exchange for compromising their freedom and integrity. They rely on access for their reputations and income and will never knowingly cross a line that might compromise their continued good standing with the Party or the proxies they rely on to organise high-level meetings. As the case of China Reform Forum shows, what China whisperers learn through the Access Cult is of little value. At best, they’re fed trivial information. At worst, they’re pawns in a covert influence operation.

The MSS’s China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations is another key part of these MSS efforts.13 Many know that it’s ‘affiliated’ with the MSS, but its contribution to intelligence collection and influence operations as the 11th Bureau of the agency is recognised by few.14 In fact, the institute was originally established as the outward-facing nameplate of an intelligence bureau that specialised in open-source analysis. The reason for its establishment was to give Chinese intelligence a channel for engaging internationally, and it actively helps the rest of the MSS target and recruit foreigners.15

Nonetheless, this MSS bureau’s international relationships are some of the most extensive of any Chinese research institution because many assume it offers insight into the Party’s thinking. It holds dialogues and conferences with think tanks like the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC and London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies.16 The Australian Strategic Policy Institute previously ran exchanges with CICIR with the aim of seeking ‘common ground’ on cybersecurity by encouraging the Chinese government to limit cyber attacks.17 The Australian government once sponsored one of its economists to complete a joint PhD at CICIR and the Australian National University. The same university also partnered with CICIR to produce a significant report on Australia–China relations.18

The backlash Despite the world’s past mistakes, the MSS now faces the toughest backlash in its history. The agency that once prided itself on never having allowed an officer to be captured abroad saw one of its own arrested and hauled before a jury in the United States. Xu Yanjun, an officer in the Jiangsu State Security Department, fell into a trap laid by the FBI after it cottoned onto his efforts to steal American jet engine technology. Captured in Belgium, he was extradited to the United States in 2018. Other arrests that year dismantled the network of agents he’d been building up in America.19 And in November 2021 he was convicted of economic espionage. The US government was announcing loud and clear that MSS officers, previously only watched but never arrested, were now fair game.20 

That’s not the only disaster that’s keeping MSS officers up at night. Numerous governments are in the process of fundamentally reconfiguring their foreign policies as the charade of China’s peaceful rise crumbles.

 

Continued in Part Five

 

1 .​Vernon Loeb & Walter Pincus, ‘Beijing prefers the sand to the moles’, Washington Post, 12 December 1999, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/1999-12/12/097r-121299-idx.html; David Wise, ‘America’s other espionage challenge’, New York Times, 5 March 2018, web.archive.org/web/20180305174938/https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/05/opinion/china-espionage.html. 

2.​ Peter Mattis, ‘The analytic challenge of understanding Chinese intelligence services’, Studies in Intelligence, vol. 56, no. 3, 2012, pp. 48–9, www.cia.gov/static/6ba6d7cb6151971fda8a14600cd86fbe/Beyond-Spy-vs-Spy.pdf. 

3. Samantha Hoffman & Peter Mattis, ‘Managing the power within: China’s State Security Commission’, War on the Rocks,18 July 2016, warontherocks.com/2016/07/managing-the-power-within-chinas-state-security-commission/. 

4. Interview with a former US intelligence officer. 

5. Alex Joske, Lin Li, Alexandra Pascoe & Nathan Attrill, The Influence Environment, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Canberra, 17 December 2020, www.aspi.org.au/report/influence-environment. 

6. See Christopher Andrew, ‘Intelligence, international relations and under-theorisation’, Intelligence and National Security, vol. 19, no. 2, 2004, p. 177. 

7 .Paul Charon & Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer, Les opérations d’influence chinoises, IRSEM, 2021, pp. 81–2, www.irsem.fr/rapport.html. 

8. Some exceptions relate to Russian records and Swiss archives. Ariane Knüsel, ‘Swiss counterintelligence and Chinese espionage during the Cold War’, Journal of Cold War Studies, vol. 22, no. 3, 2020, pp. 4–31, direct.mit.edu/jcws/article-abstract/22/3/4/95292/Swiss-Counterintelligence-and-Chinese-Espionage?redirectedFrom=fulltext; Filip Kovacevic, ‘The Soviet-Chinese spy wars in the 1970s: What KGB counterintelligence knew, part II’, Sources and Methods [blog], 22 April 2021, www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/soviet-chinese-spy-wars-1970s-what-kgb-counterintelligence-knew-part-ii. 

9. See, for example, the use of sources by Chinese journalist Wu Xuewen (吴学文) by scholars, not realising he was an undercover intelligence officer. Casper Wits, ‘Foreign correspondents in the East Asian Cold War: The Sino-Japanese journalist exchange of 1964’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 54, no. 5, 2020, pp. 1446–82, www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-asian-studies/article/foreign-correspondents-in-the-east-asian-cold-war-the-sinojapanese-journalist-exchange-of-1964/31E861B45E3ECB3A2A5396FA3284236C. On Wu Xuewen, see ch. 10, note 40.

10. A July 2020 US indictment of alleged Guangdong State Security Department hackers included the address and cover name of a major MSS facility in Guangzhou, but those leads did not appear to attract any attention. ‘United States of America v. Li Xiaoyu (a/k/a “Oro0lxy”) and Dong Jiazhi Indictment’, US Department of Justice, 7 July 2020, web.archive.org/web/20220417115140/https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1295981/download. 

11. Isaac Stone Fish,‘The other political correctness’, New Republic, 4 September 2018, newrepublic.com/article/150476/american-elite-universities-selfcensorship-china. 

12. Jonas Parello-Plesner, ‘China’s LinkedIn honey traps’, The American Interest via Hudson Institute, 23 October 2018, www.hudson.org/research/14637-china-s-linked-in-honey-traps. 

13. To a lesser degree, the MSS’s University of International Relations is involved in similar influence efforts. For example, in 2019 an Australian think tank took a group of Australian politicians and business figures to meet with a UIR scholar. ‘Second China Matters study tour’, China Matters, no date, web.archive.org/web/20191001215623/http://chinamatters.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Biographies-of-Second-Study-Tour-participants.pdf; Daniel Golden, Spy Schools, Henry Holt, New York, 2017, pp. 85–110. 

14. Peter Mattis & Matthew Brazil, Chinese Communist Espionage: An intelligence primer, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 2019, p. 56. 

15. 郝汀 & 章钟峨,《文化大革命中的中央调查部, 2013, p. 486. 

16. ‘Department of International Exchanges’, CICIR, no date, archive.ph/PEC16. 

17. Tobias Feakin, Enter the Cyber Dragon, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Canberra, June 2013, s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/ad-aspi/import/10_42_31_AM_SR50_chinese_cyber.pdf; Jessica Woodall, ‘Cyber wrap,’ Strategist, 10 February 2016, www.aspistrategist.org.au/cyber-wrap-106/. 

18. Australian Centre on China in the World & CICIR, Australia and China: A joint report on the bilateral relationship, Australian National University, February 2012, ciw-dev.anu.edu.au/joint_report/CIWCICIRJointReport-Australia_and_China-Feb2012.pdf. 

19. Office of Public Affairs, ‘Jury convicts Chinese intelligence officer of espionage crimes, attempting to steal trade secrets’, US Department of Justice, 5 November 2021, www.justice.gov/opa/pr/jury-convicts-chinese-intelligence-officer-espionage-crimes-attempting-steal-trade-secrets; Gorden Corera, ‘Looking for China’s spies’, BBC, 19 December 2018, www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/Looking_for_Chinas_spies. 

20. One exception to this may be the arrest of Tang Yuhua (唐宇华) by the FBI in 2011 on charges relating to commercial bribery. Tang was the New York correspondent of Shanghai’s Wenhui Bao newspaper. According to former MSS officer and Guangming Daily correspondent Ding Ke, all Wenhui Bao foreign correspondents are MSS officers.

 

 

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