China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), formed in 1983, is proving to be one of the most formidable intelligence agencies in the world in the modern age. It is an all-in-one civilian intelligence and security agency, sometimes encompassing roles that are equivalent to those of the U.S. FBI and CIA. Since its inception, the MSS has expanded its mandate from traditional counterintelligence to new security fields, like cyber espionage, industrial spying, and foreign political influence. It is divided into geographically separate bureaus, which increases compartmentalization.
Images Sourced From: WSJ, 維基小霸王, Vmenkov
1 MSS History
The MSS was formed in June 1983 as a result of a merger between two governmental organizations, the Central Investigation Department (CID) and the Counterintelligence Department of the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), the leading intelligence service up until that time. Once the MSS was established, it stood up country, municipal, and provincial bureaus. Chinese leaders envisioned a service similar to the KGB, covering domestic and foreign affairs.
After the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989, MSS took a more aggressive approach toward political dissenters. It heavily monitored intellectuals and student groups while increasing domestic counterintelligence capabilities.
During the 1990s, MSS shifted focus to technological intelligence to help China’s development and economy by stealing innovations from other countries’ corporations and governments. This involved a range of tactics, from cyber espionage to human penetrations. Through the 2000s and 2010s, MSS actors were busy infiltrating Western companies, governments, and telecom networks and their methods became increasingly focused on cyber ops. In the 2020s, the MSS expanded into political interference, aggressive cyberattacks (including sabotage), and recruiting spies and planting influence operatives in Western nations.
2 Organisation
2.1 Ministry of State Security Structure
The MSS’ structure mimics that of the broader Chinese bureaucracy. There is a central component to the MSS that creates a small degree of coordination between the 31 major state and local bureaus that conduct most of the major operations. State Security Bureaus (SSB) have a relatively wide degree of freedom to pursue domestic or international sources, and each has a distinct target focus. The Shanghai State Security Bureau (SSSB), for example, focuses on operations against the United States. As one example of its effectiveness, SSSB as early as 2017 recruited US Defence contractor and former CIA officer Kevin Mallory, who passed classified information in return for a cumulative USD 25,000; he was later arrested by the FBI and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Each SSB maintains its own informants and maintains close relations with local party committees. Most bureaus of the MSS place counterintelligence at the top of their priorities. The bureaus can range in size and, while their exact numbers are classified, the Beijing State Security Bureau (BSSB) is considered particularly large.
MSS is the primary agency in China spying on ethnic minorities and dissidents within the Chinese state, such as Uyghurs and Tibetans. They do so, in an attempt to quell “unrest.”
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2.2 Place within broader government
The MSS works closely with the MPS on matters of domestic surveillance. The MPS handles most domestic political spying, while the MSS handles individuals suspected of external connections and ethnic minorities. They coordinate closely on a sizable portion of domestic security matters.
2.3 Recruitment
Staff hiring
Most hiring methods are secret, but the Ministry of State Security usually recruits employees from top universities across China. Offers of employment include a contract with a set minimum number of years of employment. MSS prizes language skills, such as speaking Uyghur.
Foreign Source Recruitment
Chinese intelligence operatives routinely attempt to infiltrate foreign governments by recruiting current officials and retired officials, including intelligence personnel. China has successfully recruited officers in the Pentagon, CIA, and other sensitive US government agencies.
MSS agents sometimes make initial contact with potential sources through the guise of being part of educational institutions or pretending to be business contractors, ruses that help justify payment to the cooperating individual.
3 Operations of the Ministry of State Security
MSS intelligence operations inform policy decisions of the government that oversees the second-largest economy in the world. Therefore, MSS has an indirect global influence. Some argue that China’s intelligence operations outperform those of more operationally mature services, such as Russia’s SVR.
3.1 Operations Types:
3.1.1 Foreign Intelligence
The primary purpose of the MSS is to collect foreign intelligence. They acquire foreign intelligence through human sources (HUMINT), industrial espionage, and cyber espionage. Since the MSS is a covert intelligence agency, most of its systems rely on solid cover to operate. They use “official cover” like most global intelligence agencies. The MSS is very efficient at influence operations, especially against foreign elites. Their most profound influence campaign was instilling the concept of “China’s peaceful rise,” in which MSS agents pretended to be scholars as they manufactured relations with policymakers, foreign academics, and diplomats, all to push the narrative that China posed no threat to the West.
3.1.2 Domestic Surveillance and Counterintelligence
The secondary purpose of the MSS is domestic surveillance and intelligence. They primarily use surveillance tech to monitor potential security threats, but they also use it to identify potential recruitment targets. The MSS tracks dissidents and loyalists in Hong Kong, identifies members who are discontent with the government, and scans WeChat for sensitive content.
3.1.3 Cyber Operations
A big part of MSS’s operational capabilities is in the cyber realm. It targets critical infrastructure and tries to penetrate governments, companies, and the accounts and networks of elites. Multiple cyber actors connected to the MSS have attempted to use publicly available data to exploit vulnerabilities in foreign governments’ systems.
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3.2 Tactics of the Ministry of State Security
The MSS employs two key tactics: gathering intelligence on everyone and everything and manipulating culture (leveraging public sentiments of nationalism) to aid counterintelligence. They foster a watchful society through public campaigns using platforms like WeChat to spread messages and even using cartoons to warn against espionage.
4 Notable MSS Cases
4.1 The 2010-2012 CIA Purge
From 2010 to 2012, the MSS killed or arrested over 12 CIA sources, shooting one dead in the courtyard of a government building. This was a significant setback to US intelligence operations, and some US officials described it as the worst counterespionage failure in decades.
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4.2 Operation Fox Hunt
Operation Fox Hunt launched in 2014 to demonstrate to dissidents based outside of China, mostly in the West, that no one is beyond the grasp of Beijing. The objective was to force nationals back to China to face repercussions for actions they had undertaken that the state deemed unacceptable, an effort to suppress dissent. The government repatriated thousands of dissidents and charged them with crimes. Meanwhile, in the US, the FBI caught multiple Chinese agents stalking, threatening, and harassing dissidents and brought them to justice. Beijing’s disregard for the norms of international law and order stirred up an uproar.
4.3 First Known Penetration of the CIA
Before the formal creation of the MSS, but indicative of the capabilities of its forbearers, Beijing ran the first known penetration of the CIA, Larry Wu Tai Chin. Larry was born in Beijing, China. Because of his language skills, he was recruited by the US Army during WWII as a translator and interpreter. In 1948, he took a job with the US consulate in Shanghai, where his spying career began. For over 30 years, he passed intelligence to Chinese intelligence officials. In 1952, Larry joined the CIA, specifically the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS). Then in 1970, after passing a polygraph test according to the standards of those days, Larry was moved to Virginia. In Virginia he handled increasingly classified material. In 1982, the FBI received a tip and he confessed to his spying during interrogation. Finally in 1985, he was charged and arrested with espionage.
4.4 Jerry Chun Shing Lee
A notable foreign recruit is former CIA case officer Jerry Chun Shing Lee, who gave the MSS secrets from his 13-year career in return for hundreds of thousands of dollars. The FBI caught him and sentenced him to 19 years in prison. Additionally, Authorities suspect that the information he passed contributed to the 2010-2012 CIA purge.
4.5 Alexander Yuk Ching Ma
A recent notable case is CIA operations officer Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, born in 1952. Jerry left the CIA in 1989 and was recruited by the SSSB in 2001. At the time, he was living and working in Shanghai, China. His first act of espionage was giving an hour-long presentation to Chinese intelligence officials on classified intel he remembered, for which he was paid 50,000 USD. After being recruited, he moved to Honolulu, Hawaii and secured a linguist job at the FBI in 2004. Although he was already under suspicion of collaborating with Chinese intelligence. Altogether, his arrest came after a sting operation in 2020. He evidently admitted his espionage and pleaded guilty in September 2024.
5 The Future
MSS is pushing a heavy agenda of encouraging average citizens to play a counterintelligence role, turning every citizen into eyes and ears of the state. They are pushing the narrative of ”see something, say something” targeted specifically at intelligence efforts to leverage the cultural importance of nationalism in their favor. The Chinese security apparatus demonstrates this in the following video:
Propaganda Video: [source]
This new direction is in response to an evidently expanding counterintelligence agenda. In 2023, China’s government certainly expanded their counterespionage laws, giving the government greater authority and grounds to be aggressive with potential threats to the regime. All of this is pointing to a future of making China increasingly difficult for foreign intelligence agencies to operate in.
6 Conclusion
China’s Ministry of State Security remains one of the most formidable intelligence agencies in the world, playing a multipurpose role in protecting the country’s domestic and foreign interests. The MSS has been deeply involved in both domestic surveillance, particularly of ethnic minorities and dissidents, and foreign intelligence operations, including high-profile espionage cases. Its structure gives it strong security through compartmentalization and the organisation has become more aggressive in counterespionage efforts, with recent laws strengthening its grip on internal security. The MSS is also using cultural narratives and public campaigns to turn citizens into instruments of intelligence gathering.
