Bod, 西藏, Xizang)Espionage during the Revolution and the Early People’s Republic
After the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, the party allowed more open discussion of recent history and current events. A “literature of the wounded” developed that critically portrayed the impact of the Cultural Revolution on ordinary people. Authorities allowed historians to write in more detail, beyond the previous focus on Mao’s role. They published biographies, diaries, and “annals” or “chronicles” (年谱, nianpu) recording the experiences of other key figures such as Zhou Enlai, Ye Jianying, Luo Ruiqing, and Yang Shangkun.1 These included works on CCP intelligence figures of note and other mostly fragmented descriptions of working-level activity. Though selective in their treatment of events, these accounts opened a window on how espionage, signal intercept, and other intelligence disciplines assisted the 1949 Chinese Communist victory. However, with rare exceptions, they are mum about operations after 1949.
PRC sources, especially the popular accounts, tend to stress the heroic and the terrible, who should be lauded, and who was responsible. The times of the revolution were awful indeed: both main Chinese parties, Nationalist and Communist, and the invading Japanese regularly displayed behavior as ruthless in intelligence and security work as did soldiers on the conventional battlefield. Writers tended to ignore their own party’s reprehensible acts and stress evidence against the evil other. With the communists, in the spirit of “making the past serve the present,” peasants are always brave, as are communist soldiers and CCP intelligence figures, while landlords, KMT spies, and others are venal and cruel. Imperialists are devious and despicable, and China’s problems are the fault of foreigners and traitors, not of her loyal leaders—except for the ones who were less loyal or responsible for ideological “deviations.”
This focus on heroics and crimes, defining enemies and friends, continues in accounts up to the present. It is part of a “script” that avoids tarnishing more than a few moments in Chinese Communist Party history. Those spoiled bits are blamed on a selection of villains—the latest including Bo Xilai, Zhou Yongkang, and numerous others netted in Xi Jinping’s anticorruption campaign, waged to fight graft but also to achieve political supremacy.
In China, biographies of intelligence and security leaders and accounts of operations are edited with particular care. They are always sensitive because of what they might reveal about intelligence sources and methods and the party’s strategy, planning, and priorities. This chapter employs both those accounts and unapproved works. We attempt to go beyond the CCP’s script for an unvarnished look at operations, the warts as well as the wonders, from the early days until the near present.
Boursicot, Bernard (伯纳德·布尔西科,
Bai na de—Bu er xi ke, 1944–)
See Shi Peipu.
Classified Materials Theft, 1966–67
By August 1966 the violent phase of the Chinese Cultural Revolution was under way. In Beijing, marauding Red Guard groups began searching for “black materials” (黑资料, hei ziliao) to implicate those they considered enemies of Mao Zedong. As Red Guard militants laid hands on these materials, they often published them verbatim in homegrown newspapers and pamphlets.2
The mounting chaos was fed by encouragement from Mao himself and the Cultural Revolution Group (CRG, 中央文化大革命小组, Zhongyang wenhua da geming xiaozu), headed by the chairman’s wife, Jiang Qing (江青). In this rapidly deteriorating situation, even the secure areas of the CCP’s foreign intelligence organization, the Central Investigation Department, came under threat. In early August, the CID director Kong Yuan appealed to Tong Xiaopeng, the confidential secretary of premier Zhou Enlai, for help in repelling members of the Red Guard rebel faction (造反派, zaofan pai) that had surrounded his building. They demanded entry to look for black materials.3
Zhou was alarmed but did not directly respond—a sign that his position vis-à-vis the CRG was perilous. Instead, between August 16 and 31, Zhou sent an official of the Central Committee Confidential Office, Li Zhizong, to persuade the rebels to cease their action. They briefly detained Li, but he succeeded in postponing Red Guard efforts to enter the CID. The situation temporarily assuaged, Zhou had Tong draft a Central Committee memorandum (中央文件, Zhongyang wenjian) ordering the protection of secret materials and forbidding their theft.4
In response, Jiang Qing accused Zhou Enlai of engaging in “eclecticism” and creating a “firefighting unit” to prevent Red Guards from finding black materials. She then accused Xu Ming, the spouse of Kong Yuan, of spying for disgraced Beijing mayor Peng Zhen. (Xu Ming was herself a veteran intelligence officer from the revolution and a longtime member of Zhou’s staff. According to Tong, she had made an enemy of Jiang a decade before while serving under her in the propaganda department film section.) Ultimately, Zhou’s memorandum to protect classified materials was vetoed by Mao.5
The situation further deteriorated as a troubled capital contemplated the new year. Kong Yuan and his deputy Zou Dapeng were arrested and tortured in late 1966, subjected in subsequent months to struggle meetings (斗争会, douzheng hui) by radical Red Guards, where they suffered from exhausting verbal invective and physical abuse. Eventually they were sent to labor for years in remote regions. Xu Ming committed suicide on December 31, 1966, depressed at being suspected of disloyalty by Mao, and Kong himself might have tried but failed to kill himself at the same time. Xu Ming left a note saying that she and her family were loyal and innocent of wrongdoing.6 Rebel faction Red Guard groups in Beijing grew powerful enough to negotiate “opportunities for inspection” (检查的机会, jiancha de jihui) into the National Defense Science and Technology Commission (国防科委, Guofang kewei) and the National Defense Industry Office (国防公办所, Guofang gongban suo).7
In early 1967 the two Red Guard factions inside of the CID began fighting each other. On March 18, Mao approved Zhou’s suggestion that military officers take charge of the CID in order to secure its materials and return the workplace to normal.8
In the spreading chaos, the CID was not the only organ to be taken over in this fashion. That same month, the Posts and Telecommunications, Railways, and Communications ministries were placed under military control, as was the CCP Central Organization Department, and the famous Daqing oilfield. The entire Tibet Autonomous Region was placed under military control in May.9
Dalbank (Dal’bank, Dal’niyvostochnyi Bank, The Far Eastern Bank in Harbin, 1923–34)
Dalbank’s name came from the Russian phrase Dalniy Vostok, or Far East. Based in Harbin, it handled genuine trade and investment in Manchuria but worked elsewhere in China on behalf of the Comintern and the GRU (Soviet military intelligence) to conduct financial operations supporting clandestine Soviet networks in China. The GRU’s mission was to keep track of Japanese and Chinese Nationalist military developments.10
Dalbank worked with other Soviet-owned businesses including Sovtorgflot, a GRU-controlled trading company and shipping business in Harbin, and the Chinese Eastern Railway, used by the Russians as a cover for collecting intelligence about cross-border movements of bandits and White Russian remnants.
On February 28, 1927, forces of the Chinese warlord Zhang Zuolin (张作霖, Chang Tso-lin) seized documents aboard the Soviet vessel Pamiat Lenina while anchored off Nanjing that incriminated Russian organizations in propaganda activities disallowed by bilateral agreement. On April 6–7, Peking police, controlled by Zhang’s forces, raided Dalbank, other Soviet businesses, and the Soviet embassy. They seized documents showing that the Russians were interested not only in assisting the Nationalist Chinese revolution but also in preparing for a communist uprising.
Zhang Zuolin published a Chinese translation of the documents in a book that discredited Soviet efforts in China, and may have influenced Chiang Kai-shek to turn against the Chinese Communists in the April 12 coup d’état that marked the end of the Nationalist-Communist First United Front.11 After the CCP’s Guangzhou uprising in December, the Chinese Central Government severed relations with the Soviet Union, and Dalbank’s representatives were forced to flee areas controlled by the Nationalists.12
No evidence to date indicates that the CCP received any direct help from Dalbank, but their example of clandestine financial operations may have been noted by Mao Zedong’s brother, Mao Zemin (毛泽民), who led the CCP’s first national bank, which was founded in 1932. An official account of the exploits of Mao’s younger brother claims that the bank helped break the enemy’s blockade and assisted in the underground movement, assertions that require additional research.13
Downey-Fecteau Case
John Downey and Richard Fecteau were CIA paramilitary officers, referred to officially by the Chinese as wuzhuang tewu (武装特务, armed special agents). They were shot down and captured in the Changbai mountains district of Jilin province on the night of November 29, 1952, while on a mission to collect a courier. He was a member of an ethnic Chinese Staroma team inserted by the CIA, meant to link up with local guerrilla forces, collect intelligence, and look for opportunities to engage in sabotage and psychological warfare. The agency’s analysts later determined that the entire Staroma team had been captured and compromised and that their request for the courier’s exfiltration was a trap. Richard Fecteau and John Downey were held until 1971 and 1973, respectively. Their mission and ordeal of captivity are described in the video Extraordinary Fidelity.14
Hong Kong (香港, Xianggang): Overview
Hong Kong has attracted Chinese and foreign intelligence operations since before the start of the Chinese Communist movement in 1921. Like Macau (see subsequent entry), Hong Kong has a majority Chinese population, albeit with a significant foreign element. However, Hong Kong has a larger population, a more dynamic economy with vigorous international trade, a larger territory, and a more varied and abundant foreign presence. This is true today as it was throughout the Chinese Revolution. It may have made related CCP espionage activities such as front organizations, intelligence stations, safe houses, smuggling and couriering, high-technology diversion, and agent recruiting easier to conduct and keep secret than in Macau. Hong Kong was and remains a base for foreign intelligence organizations to “watch” China. Hong Kong’s utility to espionage may not survive Chinese attempts under Xi Jinping to change the nature of the territory, now a PRC special administrative region.
Early CCP Operations
A year after the CCP was founded in Shanghai, it supported the 1922 seaman’s strike in Hong Kong but did not have sufficient resources in south China to have any impact. However, in 1925–26 during the Guangzhou–Hong Kong strike and boycott, the CCP and the Chinese Socialist Youth League together grew tenfold to more than seven thousand members, and the communists were active enough to influence at least two key unions. The economic damage caused by the strike and boycott and the April 1927 CCP–KMT split led to British suppression of unions in general and the CCP in particular, especially in the wake of the disastrous Canton (Guangzhou) uprising that December. For the next ten years, Hong Kong authorities cooperated with the KMT to suppress communist activity. Among those nabbed by the British in 1929 was the father of future PRC prime minister Li Peng, whom they deported to the KMT in Guangdong for quick execution.15
To facilitate communication with the leadership in Shanghai, the CCP established a clandestine radio in Kowloon, which began transmitting in January 1930. It was set up by Li Qiang, the future PRC trade minister. Already a veteran of VIP protection operations, Li was the new head of the Fourth Section (communications) of the party’s nascent intelligence body, the Special Services Section (see chapter 1). The operators used a cipher designed by Zhou Enlai, nicknamed Haomi (the Hao code) after Zhou’s clandestine work name, Wu Hao.16
Other early CCP intelligence operations in Hong Kong are described in the entries on Deng Fa (chapter 2) and Gong Changrong (chapter 3).
Hong Kong and CCP Intelligence during the Anti-Japanese War
CCP intelligence ran two broad efforts in the Pearl River Delta, including Hong Kong, adjacent areas, and Macau from 1938 to 1945: commando and military intelligence under the organization consolidated in 1942 and named the East River Column, and an urban agent network directly controlled by Pan Hannian (chapter 3) from the Eighth Route Army Liaison Office in Hong Kong, headed by Liao Chengzhi. Concerning his intelligence duties, Pan reported directly to Yan’an after February 1939, when the Social Affairs Department was established under Kang Sheng (chapter 2).
Zhou Enlai chose Liao for this task in October 1937. Mao gave the network three priorities: publicize to the outside world the anti-Japanese stand of the CCP and its forces, prompt overseas Chinese and sympathetic foreigners to contribute money and matériel to the cause, and compile information on the latest developments in international affairs.17 The team included Zhang Weiyi, an older and more experienced cadre picked a year later by Pan Hannian to run the SAD intelligence network in Hong Kong.18 Liao arrived in Hong Kong in January 1938 after Zhou Enlai’s negotiations with the British to establish the office. The British wanted it to stay clandestine to avoid attention from the Japanese and KMT, while the CCP wanted the most open operation possible. The two sides compromised by agreeing on a semi-open arrangement (see Ban gongkai huodong in the web-based glossary). The CCP’s outpost would be hidden from public view, albeit in a busy part of Hong Kong at 18 Queensway, Central.19 The establishment later adopted the business name of Yue Hwa, which survives today as the famous department store chain specializing in mainland goods.
In 1938–39 Liao fostered “Return to Hometown Service Teams” in Hong Kong and nearby localities in Guangdong, with the object of gathering as many people of military age as possible to join the anti-Japanese effort. In the months leading to the Pacific War in 1941, these teams were consolidated into the Hong Kong and Kowloon Independent Brigade, with a main detachment, a marine unit, a logistics unit, couriers, and an intelligence organization. The last two had a higher percentage of women than did the combat elements. The intelligence workers were unarmed agents stationed around the New Territories and Kowloon, some of whom were passive observers sending reports of enemy activity, while others sought opportunities to work among the Japanese army and puppet forces. The East River People’s Anti-Japanese Guerrilla Column (东江人民抗日游击 纵队, Dongjiang renmin kangri youji zongdui) was founded from these organizations in February 1942.20
At the start of the Pacific War, Yan’an passed instructions to the East River Column to establish an underground evacuation route to remove Chinese friends of the CCP under the united front policy. They assisted left wing personages such as the writer Mao Dun and some KMT officials, British government officials who remained at large under occupation, some escaped prisoners from the Japanese internment camps, and Allied flyers shot down in the area. They developed intelligence on Japanese army units and ship movements and pursued limited guerrilla attacks against Japanese transport links and isolated units.21 Just as Japanese forces in other parts of China were stretched thin and could not cover every square mile of occupied territory, so in this region Japan could only secure Hong Kong Island and urban Kowloon. Parts of Kowloon and virtually all of the Crown Colony’s New Territories were frequently visited or controlled by CCP or Nationalist guerrillas, especially at night.22 By 1944 the East River Column had established a network of intelligence stations and subordinate intelligence points, as the CCP had done in northern China, gathering information that was passed on to the CCP and at times to the British to generate targeting data for Allied bombing raids. This activity was the product of cooperation between the British Army Assistance Group (BAAG) and the CCP and was fostered by Zhou Enlai in his discussions with the British ambassador in Chongqing. While approved in Yan’an (and the subject of much consternation among KMT officials), the cooperation was driven in part by the enthusiasm of Zeng Sheng and his cadre in Hong Kong on the one hand, and BAAG on the other, to pursue common goals such as tying down Japanese troops who might have been used elsewhere.23 BAAG officers observed that East River Column guerrillas were superior in skill if not numbers to nearby KMT units and more adept at infiltrating Japanese units to gather intelligence useful for the eventual Allied liberation.24
Yan’an ordered Liao to withdraw in December 1941, and he established a remote headquarters about 150 kilometers to the north, probably intending to remain in the region while staying mobile in order to avoid capture.25 However, three KMT agents apprehended Liao on May 30, 1942.26 Until that time, the orders of Yan’an seemed to have been strictly followed: when East River Column guerrillas retreated from the KMT in the face of overwhelming force in 1939, Yan’an ordered them to move back toward Hong Kong, and they complied in spite of the danger. However, Liao’s capture left the East River Column without a representative from the party center. General Zeng Sheng led them for the rest of the war. He was a more locally oriented CCP leader who appears to have been less closely tied to Yan’an than was Liao.27 Now on his own, Zeng operated with combat utility uppermost, completely unaffected by the Yan’an Rectification and Salvation campaigns of 1942–44; writings we reviewed about the East River Column do not mention struggle sessions or anyone being recalled to Yan’an to face criticism.
Jin Wudai (金无怠, 1922–86)
Jin Wudai of Beijing was known in the United States as Larry Wu-Tai Chin. A student in Yenching University beginning in 1940, Jin studied English. He left for Fujian province in the south during World War II, obtaining employment with British and American forces. Jin returned to Beijing after the Japanese surrender, finished his degree in 1947, and landed a job the following year at the U.S. consulate in Shanghai. With the communist victory looming in 1949, Jin moved to Hong Kong with the consulate staff and remained a U.S. government employee for the rest of his career. Probably about the time of his 1947 graduation or beforehand, he was recruited by the CCP, most likely the Social Affairs Department, which then had numerous resources in the cities and on university campuses.
Jin was among the most damaging spies in U.S. history. Though he became an employee of a CIA sideline activity, the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), Jin was occasionally requested to evaluate documents for the CIA, and he met officers from its China program. Jin helped interview captured Chinese soldiers during the Korean War and revealed their identities in his reports for Beijing. He also revealed that the newly inaugurated Nixon administration (1969–74) was interested in a rapprochement with China.
While based in Okinawa at Kadena Air Force Base with FBIS, Jin left his first wife, Doris, in 1959 for Cathy Zhou Jinyu (周谨予), whom he married in 1962 just after the FBIS moved him to Santa Rosa, California. Tod Hoffman relates an FBI interview where Jin revealed that Doris complained after the divorce about the small settlement she received from him, considering the “millions” China paid him to spy.28
By contrast, Cathy claimed that she was ignorant of Jin’s spying, saying that “everything I knew was from the newspapers, magazines, television, and the court” after his arrest. In her memoir, Cathy complained of false rumors that she had turned in her husband. In spite of the situation after his November 1985 arrest, she wrote that they wholeheartedly supported each other. Jin urged her to seek solace in Buddhism and asked that she contact Deng Xiaoping, for whom Jin had helped interpret in 1979 during the Chinese leader’s American visit. Jin held out hope for assistance from China, and Cathy also wrote letters to members of Congress, but to no avail: the Chinese side denied any connection to him. He despaired before committing suicide in February 1986, after his conviction on espionage charges but before sentencing.29
Jin’s downfall came not from his own conduct or anyone’s mistake, but from a CIA agent within the new Ministry of State Security (MSS), Yu Qiangsheng (俞强声, also known as Yu Zhensan). Yu did not reveal
Jin’s name to his American handlers but gave them some travel details of a Chinese agent inside the CIA. The FBI was able to tie these details to Jin after he retired in 1983 and built a case against him over subsequent months.30
Kashmir Princess Bombing Case (克什米尔公主号飞机 被炸案, Keshenmi’er Gongzhu Hao bei zha an)
This case is an exception to the rule that Chinese mainland sources avoid discussing post-1949 espionage cases. However, accounts from the mainland contain inconsistencies.
On April 11, 1955, the Indian airliner Kashmir Princess, Air India flight 300 from Hong Kong to Jakarta, crashed in Indonesian waters five hours after departure. Three crewmembers survived, but the other eleven persons onboard, including Chinese officials and journalists from the PRC, Vietnam, and Europe, were killed. The crash was caused by a time bomb planted by a KMT agent while the aircraft was on the tarmac at Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong, then a British colony.31
The original target of the bomb plot was PRC premier Zhou Enlai, who with his senior entourage was scheduled to take the flight to the Nonaligned Conference in Bandung. However, Zhou and senior colleagues rescheduled their travel four days beforehand, and a party of junior officials and journalists took their place on the manifest.32
Some aspects of the case appear clear, confirmed by both British and PRC accounts:
• there was a KMT plot to bomb Zhou’s flight
• more than forty Nationalist Chinese agents in Hong Kong were involved, working on behalf of the KMT Intelligence Bureau (情报 局, Qingbao ju)
• they recruited a single individual already employed as a ground crew member by Kai Tak airport, Zhou Ju (周驹, also known as Zhou Ziming, 周梓铭; Cantonese: Chow Keoi, also known as Chow Chi-ming), promising him sanctuary in Taiwan and 600,000 Hong Kong dollars
• all of these agents including the perpetrator either escaped or were deported by the British from Hong Kong to Taiwan, breaking up a large Nationalist spy ring in in the colony.33
However, a sensitive controversy remains. Though vigorously contested by Li (2015) and by a Xinhua account (2004), the most internally consistent hypothesis comes from Tsang (1994).34 It is more specific than other accounts on the KMT’s motives for planting the bomb, what Zhou Enlai and PRC intelligence knew and when they knew it, why the flight was not cancelled or diverted, and what roles the British, the Hong Kong government, and U.S. intelligence played.
In early 1955 the truce ending the Korean War, in which the British fought on the side of the United Nations against China, was less than two years old. Zhou Enlai succeeded in upgrading Sino-British relations with an exchange of chargés d’affaires in London and Beijing. This step toward normal diplomatic relations alarmed Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Republic of China’s Nationalist government on Taiwan. Chiang feared that British recognition of Beijing might lead to the PRC’s admission to the United Nations, displacing Taiwan (which did not occur until political circumstances changed over a decade later). The Taiwan government likely decided to disrupt relations between Britain and mainland China, as Chiang considered Zhou’s diplomacy and the Nonaligned Conference itself, scheduled for April 1955 in Bandung, to be a threat to his regime. Therefore, even when Zhou Enlai changed his travel plans on April 7, avoiding Air India flight 300, the KMT allowed the bomb plot to go ahead as it might disrupt the conference and damage Sino-British relations.35
British archives indicate that in the wake of the bombing, the Hong Kong authorities played a balancing act to survive between China, Taiwan, and the United States, and that they found only circumstantial evidence that the United States was involved. After apprehending forty-four of the perpetrators, the British concluded the best outcome would be successful convictions, but the worst would be putting them on trial and losing the case. Deportation was a middling option that carried the advantage of being under the full control of the British. However, a critical player eluded justice. On May 18 Zhou Ju was secretly smuggled out by the KMT intelligence bureau aboard a civil air transport flight operated by the Central Intelligence Agency—raising the possibility that the United States was either negligent or involved in the plot after all.36
Tsang argues that the CCP came out on top in the end, ridding Hong Kong of at least forty-four Nationalist spies, winning a propaganda battle, and testing how far the British could be pushed to go against the United States and Taiwan.37 However, to win these gains, did Zhou, now regarded as an almost saintly figure in the CCP pantheon, use CCP intelligence and the foreign ministry to sacrifice innocent Xinhua and foreign journalists?
These ideas may seem fantastic and have caused outrage in China, but PRC efforts to refute them have met with only limited success and contain two critical contradictions. The 2004 Ministry of Foreign Affairs document release and the 2015 article by Li Hong, a former PRC intelligence officer working at the time under Luo Qingchang (chapter 2), assert that CCP intelligence issued a report on April 9 that the KMT intended to plant a time bomb aboard Air India flight 300, departing Hong Kong two days later. This led to a démarche from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the British representative in Beijing on the morning of April 10. While the British archives record that démarche, they say that the warning was not specific or even particularly urgent: it was about a threat to the passengers, not a time bomb. Moreover, the Xinhua and Li Hong accounts do not address an even more central question: If Zhou Enlai knew on or before April 9 that the threat against the flight was a time bomb, why did he not cancel or delay the flight or reroute the passengers to another mode of transport?
Though the hypothesis that Zhou sacrificed loyal citizens and foreign journalists is as intriguing to some as it is maddening to others, another possibility is apparent. At the moment when these questions arose in Beijing, the Chinese Communist Party was in crisis, as were its intelligence organs under Li Kenong. Mao Zedong’s confidence in his senior colleagues had been badly shaken by the 1954 Gao Gang–Rao Shushi affair, which led the chairman to suspect a broad antiparty conspiracy between senior communists and the KMT enemy, and in March 1955 he remained concerned by the “rampant influence” of “domestic counterrevolutionary remnants.”38 Moreover, Mao Zedong decided on April 2, 1955, to arrest Pan Hannian under suspicion of being a KMT agent. Pan was a highly respected contemporary of Li Kenong in CCP intelligence during the revolution and in 1955 was a vice mayor of Shanghai. His arrest on April 3 was followed by a purge of CCP intelligence officers. Five days later, Mao Zedong approved Li Kenong’s recommendation for an intelligence reorganization and the creation of the Central Investigation Department.39
Under these circumstances, rescheduling or rerouting Air India flight 300 might have either been overtaken by the events of the moment or required a decision by Mao Zedong under circumstances of great tension. Li Hong does not mention these events, though in his position he would have been aware of them. Future research in currently unavailable archives may eventually reveal if confusion, inertia, or fear contributed to the tragedy of Air India flight 300.
Intelligence during the Early PRC
Details about CCP intelligence operations in Hong Kong from 1949 onward, especially during the multi-agency interim period through 1955, are scant. However, there is some information on Pan Jing’an, who was the CID station chief there under the guise of a Bank of China official from 1958 to 1982 (see chapter 3). During the Cultural Revolution, Zhou Enlai apparently resisted pressure to bring Pan back to Beijing, and the CID station chief stayed on post. However, it is unclear how his station was affected by the turmoil of 1967.
There may have been a division of effort between the CID and the Ministry of Public Security in Hong Kong during these years, with the presence of Pan’s CID station and a separate MPS effort to recruit large numbers of bellhops, hotel cleaners, taxi drivers, postmen, and others to gather information on foreign visitors.40
In the 1970s and 1980s Hong Kong was an occasional meeting place between the CID’s agent inside the CIA, Larry Wu-tai Chin, and his handlers from Beijing, showing the Crown Colony’s continuing utility as a spot for clandestine operations. In the run-up to the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China, British officials made efforts to strengthen Hong Kong’s export controls in order to maintain the “free world status” of the territory for U.S. shipments of controlled technology. However, the growing number of mainland-controlled businesses during this time and the burgeoning cross-border trade probably made easier the smuggling of sensitive dual-use technology from Hong Kong to the Chinese military.
The Kowloon Walled City (九龙寨城, Jiulong Zhaicheng)
After the 1842 cession of Hong Kong to Great Britain under the Treaty of Nanjing, Chinese efforts to monitor British activities may have been based in the Walled City, which Beijing maintained as a government installation in the territory abutting Hong Kong that remained Chinese. However, the British desired an expansion of Hong Kong. In 1898 they initiated negotiations with Beijing’s envoy, Viceroy Li Hongzhang, to lease what became the New Territories, allowing the colony better defense and more arable land. The Walled City lay within that area, and Beijing insisted on retaining sovereignty over it during the negotiations for the ninety-nine-year New Territories lease (1898–97).41
Such a place seems ideal as a base for espionage, and indeed the area became “a special area administratively distinct from the rest of the colony.”42 However, Qing Dynasty efforts after 1899 and subsequent Nationalist Chinese actions regarding the Walled City seem confined to retaining sovereignty in name rather than in fact. After the founding of the PRC in 1949, communist officials consistently objected to British efforts to evict residents, demolish old structures, and so on, citing violations of Chinese sovereignty. This echoed the pragmatic stance of previous Chinese governments by opposing colonial authority inside the Walled City without pushing the envelope by trying to establish an official presence there. Meanwhile, the British ran regular police patrols inside the enclave to stop violent crime. By contrast, unlicensed physicians and dentists, gambling, prostitution, and drug use were more common than in other Hong Kong neighborhoods.43
At some point, CCP intelligence may have gained a foothold within the Walled City. In his memoir, the novelist Frederick Forsyth wrote that a friend employed by the Secret Intelligence Service took him to a restaurant in the Walled City in the 1980s, claiming that the establishment was run by CCP intelligence, serving as both a meeting place for British and Chinese intelligence officials and an operational base.44 No additional source has surfaced to confirm this claim; one Western former intelligence officer with experience in Hong Kong commented that the CCP could just as easily have rented office space downtown and that the Hong Kong station chief of CCP intelligence probably sat in the old Bank of China building, now demolished. Indeed, Pan Jing’an, the CID station chief in Hong Kong, had the cover of chief auditor in the bank.45 If the Walled City was used by CCP intelligence, it was probably to hold clandestine meetings and hide assets, not to serve as any sort of operational headquarters.
In 1987 with the agreement of the PRC government, the British took full control of the settlement and prepared it for demolition, which was carried out in 1993. The site is now a park, where traces of the Qing-era imperial residence are the only preserved remnants.46
Macau (Macao, 澳门, Aomen)
Long before it was the “Vegas of Asia,” Macau was a Portugueseadministered porto de abrigo, or haven, for political activists. Secret societies dedicated to overthrowing the Manchu (Qing) dynasty were based there in the 1870s. The father of modern China, Sun Yat-sen, resided in the enclave at different times in the 1890s, and he founded the Tongmenghui (Liga Unida, or Unity League) in Macau in 1905.47
With the collapse of China’s last dynasty in 1911–12 and the Bolshevik victory in Russia in 1918, Macau became an increasingly attractive haven for another activity: espionage. The Portuguese rounded up Chinese communist cells in 1927 and 1929 and in the 1930s. While Ho Chi Minh briefly lived in Macau, the Indochinese communist party held an early congress in the Hotel Cantão (Canton Hotel) on March 27–31, 1935. In 1937 a Russian NKVD “illegal” agent posing as a Frenchman was discovered operating a restaurant.48 These are just the publicly known cases.
As they prepared to invade China, the Japanese made investments in Macau, posting intelligence officers under commercial cover.49 In May 1935 news reports circulated that Tokyo had offered Lisbon U.S. $100 million to buy Macau, apparently as a military base.50 When Tokyo’s forces swept across the mainland and reached south China in mid-1938, Macau had become “a center for Japanese espionage and in turn one for Chinese counter-espionage,” according a Portuguese report, which urged neutrality to preserve Lisbon’s control.51 Japanese soldiers patronized Macau hotels, restaurants, and gambling houses without paying, the Kempeitai (Japanese army secret police) maintained a strong presence, and Japanese forces controlled movement in and out. However, Japan mostly respected Macau’s neutrality (as Germany respected that of Portugal): the British consulate stayed in place, the Portuguese administration remained intact, and Macau absorbed hundreds of thousands of refugees.52
Though the environment remained hostile to the Chinese communists, their urban agents and rural guerrillas found opportunities to expand operations. Pan Hannian, who ran all communist espionage operations in Japanese-occupied China, directed Dr. Ke Lin, a veteran secret agent, to move from Hong Kong to Macau in 1935 and establish a medical clinic. The mission: befriend and re-recruit General Ye Ting (who had taken refuge in Macau) to the communist cause. Ke was successful and continued clandestine operations in the Portuguese enclave for sixteen years. Most important for the long term, Ke cultivated and recruited Macau business figures such as Ho Yin and Ma Man-kei.53
When the Japanese army arrived in 1938, Chinese Communist East River Column guerrillas began operating in the region. They maintained three clandestine radio stations: in the Hong Kong New Territories, on Landau Island, and in downtown Macau. The Macau station operated without interruption from the Salesian School (Escola Salesiana—today’s Instituto Salesiano) on Rua Central (Central Street). The Japanese tried but failed to locate the Macau station, which stayed on the air, undetected, until the end of the war.54
With Japan’s surrender in August 1945, the Chinese Nationalists surrounded Macau, as had the Japanese before them, and placed operatives among “class associations” of herbalists, barbers, hotel employees, and factory workers.55 In the midst of regular Nationalist bombings and shootings against communists in Macau, Ho Yin appealed to the Portuguese for protection. Lisbon’s representatives tolerated secret operations of both the Nationalists and Communists as long as they did not disturb public order.
The Nam Kwong Company, founded in August 1949, became Beijing’s unofficial office in Macau through 1987—when Xinhua, the New China News Agency, assumed that role as it had in Hong Kong.56 Ho Yin and Ma Man-kei founded educational and business associations to counter the continuing strong presence of the exiled Nationalists on Taiwan, who were tolerated by the Portuguese due to the anticommunist stance of the Salazar government in Lisbon. Ho Yin became the chief intermediary between Beijing and Macau’s Portuguese governor and ran some of Macau’s lucrative gold smuggling operations—enriching himself and bringing $27 million a month into China after the People’s Republic was declared in 1949.57 Portuguese officials largely turned a blind eye to these re-exports, which during the Korean War also included petroleum, tires, and medicines destined for the Chinese People’s Volunteers in Korea.
The balance of power in Macau dramatically shifted in 1966. After a string of Nationalist bombings and assassination attempts, including a grenade thrown at a car carrying Ho Yin on May 8 and the advent of the Cultural Revolution on the mainland that month, Beijing’s agents in Macau prepared to move.58 Portuguese mishandling of an unlicensed communist school on Taipa Island triggered demonstrations beginning December 3, which became known as the “12–3 (Um dois três) incident.” Portuguese authorities were forced to close or expel Taiwan’s overt and clandestine organizations.59 While leaving Portuguese administrators in charge of dayto-day operations, Chinese representatives now had the final say in important matters, allowing Beijing’s organizations to freely operate. In 1989, when a Portuguese police official was asked about possible re-exports of U.S. dual-use technology from Macau into the PRC, he said, “This is their country. We must respect their wishes.”60
In recent times, PRC-appointed authorities have allowed those who would be suppressed as religious dissidents on the mainland to operate in Macau but have pursued a vigorous counterintelligence program—tightening up on organized crime and examining cases such as the perceived use of at least one American casino by the CIA to spot and recruit corrupt Chinese officials.61 This is at least one indication that the role of Macau as a haven for international intrigue is not yet over.
Number Stations
Number stations refer to high-frequency (shortwave) transmissions of number groups with no explanation. Though they originated in the early twentieth century, these broadcasts can still be heard around the world. At least some probably carry enciphered messages from intelligence agencies for clandestine agents in the field abroad. During the Cold War, number station transmissions originated from Russia, its Warsaw Pact allies, Cuba, China, North Korea,62 the United Kingdom, Australia, and some U.S. possessions. Such broadcasts continue today, including some in the Chinese language that carry a PRC signature.
Chinese number station broadcasts appear to send messages that probably originate as plaintext Chinese characters, converted into the publicly available four-digit standard telegraphic code (STC, 标准编码, biaozhun bianma).63 The STC code groups can be encrypted using a one-time pad (OTP, 一次性密码本, yi ci xing mima ben), virtually guaranteeing security absent procedural errors. The agent at the receiving end, if equipped with the same OTP, can decipher the message at leisure after copying it by listening with an ordinary shortwave radio.
The four-digit enciphered groups are usually read by a woman in clearly spoken Mandarin (Putonghua) and seem tightly scripted. Broadcasts begin with a station identifier, such as “This is Zhuhai” (我是珠海, Wo shi Zhuhai), followed by an alert to have pen and paper ready (现在有报, xianzai youbao). Each four-digit group is spoken twice, yielding a transmission rate of roughly one Chinese character every five seconds.
This may seem like an oddly slow method, especially compared to messaging by computer and mobile phone. However, it is far more secure for the highly vulnerable “illegal” agent in the field, who lacks diplomatic immunity and cherishes obscurity. An OTP is easy to hide and simple to destroy, and a shortwave radio can be locally procured. Also, unlike dead drops, the post, mobile phones, or computers, the radio receiver leaves no trace of user identity or location. There are no Internet protocol addresses, cookies, or nearby base stations recording a personal unlocking key or other cell phone equipment number. The clandestine agent copying an encrypted message can be anywhere and is unlocatable by direction finding or other technology.
The Conet Project, Enigma 2000, and others have posted recordings on YouTube and at the Internet Archive of Chinese and other number stations and maintain lists of active broadcasts. While number stations may seem like a relic of the Cold War, they continue to operate today because their effectiveness and security are unmatched by the alternatives.
In popular culture, number station transmissions are depicted in the television series The Americans.64
Shi Peipu (时佩璞, 1938–2009)
In late 1964 the MPS exploited a forbidden sexual relationship between the Beijing opera star Shi Beipu and a French diplomat, Bernard Boursicot. The MPS may simply have taken advantage of the opportunity to blackmail Boursicot rather than create it. Perhaps not coincidentally, on September 3 of that year, Zhou Enlai received a briefing of current operations from MPS minister Xie Fuzhi. In postbriefing comments, Zhou advised him, “When carrying out investigations, we must resolutely oppose the use of the ‘honey trap’ [美人计, meiren ji].”65
Boursicot was just twenty and on his first tour overseas in 1964, assigned to an administrative role at the French embassy in Beijing. He reportedly was out of his intellectual and social depth with other French officers and was a newly realized bisexual. He fell in love with a local person, Shi Peipu (时佩璞). As a local Chinese allowed to associate with foreigners and give language lessons, Shi was probably coopted by the Beijing Public Security Bureau (see Ying Ruocheng, chapter 3). Shi convinced Boursicot that he was really a woman maintaining the disguise of a man for personal and family reasons. He maintained this ruse through manipulation and guile and eventually introduced Boursicot to an MPS officer who took control, soliciting documents and other information. Altogether, Boursicot handed over about 150 classified documents during this and subsequent tours in French overseas missions.
Chinese officers continued to control Boursicot in his subsequent assignments in Mongolia, Beijing, and Southeast Asia. The pair were arrested in 1983, and it was only then that Boursicot learned that his lover was a man. Four years later both men were pardoned by the French government in a bid to reduce tensions with Beijing. Shi continued to perform Chinese opera for a number of years afterward and died in 2009. Boursicot has spent his later years in China and France.66
Three Heroes of the Dragon’s Lair
(龙潭三杰, Longtan sanjie)
The Three Heroes name primarily refers to a CCP intelligence network that operated from December 1929 to April 1931. The network is depicted as an unqualified intelligence success, although two of its three members did not survive for long.
The spy ring was the first CCP “intelligence small group” (情报小组, qingbao xiaozu) inside a KMT security service.67 Their operation began after Qian Zhuangfei (钱壮飞) and Hu Di (胡底), both already active CCP members, moved to Shanghai in late 1927 in the wake of the April 12 Nationalist-Communist split. After a winter of surviving on odd jobs, Qian joined a Nationalist-run radio technology class in mid-1928, which was secretly sponsored by the newly established KMT Investigations Branch (调查科, Diaocha ke), charged with hunting down CCP members.68
Qian strived to be perceived as a good student of Sun Yat-sen’s Three People’s Principles, the KMT’s orthodoxy. In the autumn of 1928 he brought himself to the attention of the KMT wireless bureau director U. T. Hsu (徐恩增, Xu Enzeng), employing to advantage their shared dialect from Huzhou county, Zhejiang.69 Unfortunately for Hsu, he placed undue trust in Qian, hiring him as a confidential secretary in April 1929. Though Hsu had no previous intelligence experience, in December 1929 he replaced Chen Lifu as head of the investigations bureau. Qian Zhuangfei accompanied him to the secret organization and, in Hsu’s words, became “one of the most capable workers … taking care of our top-secret files.”70
That same month, after connecting with Qian, Li Kenong successfully sat for examinations to enter the wireless bureau and was appointed as a news editor. Qian introduced Hu Di to a connection in Shanghai, and Hu began work in the municipal wireless management bureau. With all three placed inside the Nationalist government, they became a network controlled by Li Kenong, reporting to Special Services Section (SSS) intelligence branch chief Chen Geng. Qian, increasingly trusted by Hsu, took charge of the communications room at the investigations bureau’s headquarters in Nanjing. Li Kenong in Shanghai and Hu Di in Tianjin also were inducted into the investigations bureau, with cover jobs in wireless management.71
Though the efforts of the Three Heroes did not fully immunize the CCP from its enemies, their infiltration of the KMT investigations branch and the work of other SSS groups under Chen Geng kept arrests lower than they might have been. However, the defection in April 1931 of Chen’s boss, SSS director Gu Shunzhang, exposed the Three Heroes network and compromised hundreds of other communists and their havens across the country.
Even before Gu’s 1931 defection, KMT pressure was on the rise. On January 3 two Central Committee members, Luo Yiyuan (罗绮园) and Yang Baoan (杨匏安), were arrested after betrayal by the husband of a young female communist forced to live with Luo as his spouse for cover purposes.72
U. T. Hsu called Gu Shunzhang “a genius in secret service work” and “a living encyclopedia of communist underground activities,” but unfortunately for the KMT, they moved too slowly to exploit the situation.73 When apprehended in Wuhan on April 25, Gu decided to cooperate to avoid torture and eventual death, but he would not reveal vital information without a personal meeting with Chiang Kai-shek, who was hundreds of miles away in Nanjing. After some indecision about how to transport Gu to Nanjing, he was put on a military aircraft on April 27 and arrived in Nanjing that day. Meanwhile in Nanjing, Qian Zhuangfei spotted the first reporting telegram on April 25. He intercepted and decrypted the messages and sent a courier to warn Li Kenong in Shanghai and alert the CCP Central Committee.74 As a result, senior communists knew about Gu’s defection before the Nationalist command in Nanjing. Without this lucky break and Qian’s diligence, the CCP Central Committee might have been destroyed, eliminating leaders such as Zhou Enlai and leaving the party in the hands of Zhu De and Mao Zedong with the Red Army in Jiangxi.
Their network compromised, Li, Qian, and Hu fled for Mao’s headquarters. Many other communists also survived.75 Li Kenong went on to a distinguished intelligence career, but both Qian Zhuangfei and Hu Di were killed during the Long March: Qian in an aerial bombardment, and Hu in a “mistaken” purge—not an unfamiliar circumstance for the party under Mao.76 In this sense, the fates of the Three Heroes are a microcosm of the high risks taken by CCP intelligence operatives in the Chinese communist revolution.
Tibet ( Bod, 西藏, Xizang)
To CCP leaders in Beijing, control of Tibet is of vital importance for geopolitical reasons. It is the origin of several major rivers in Asia, and it borders the province of Sichuan, a vital Chinese agricultural region that is also the southwestern corner of China’s core area. Due to a recent history of foreign influence—Indian, British, and arguably American—and because Tibetans throughout history have strived for independence when China is weak, Beijing’s leaders are focused on securing Tibet from outside forces.
Chinese concerns about foreign infiltration of Tibet are not without reason. As U.S. and Taiwan agent insertions declined and failed in northern, eastern, and southern China after 1949, the Americans decided in 1957 to step up efforts to support local resistance in Tibet. Tibet was considered a dangerous assignment for CCP cadre in those days, as illustrated by the April 1958 murder of a PLA officer in Lhasa whose duties included “investigation and research and operational work targeting Tibetan elite and religious circles.”77
When the Dalai Lama and his advisors fled Lhasa on horseback for India in March 1959, they were met and accompanied by a CIA-trained Tibetan radio team that had been on the ground for almost two years. The Dwight D. Eisenhower White House closely tracked reports from the agents, Athar and Lotse, describing the Dalai’s exodus. India gave the group refuge, and they settled in Dharamsala, India, now a center of pilgrimage. These events contributed to an indelible perception among the CCP leadership that, given the chance, India and the United States would employ Tibetans to split the PRC and that some Tibetans would take the chance, if offered, to exit toward independence.78
U.S. espionage and paramilitary operations in Tibet ended in 1968 and were buried for good with the Sino-U.S. rapprochement in 1972, but Beijing continues to perceive a threat in Tibet from foreign agents.79 Consequently, the CCP devotes considerable resources to ascertain whether Western forces are infiltrating Tibet and to keep tabs on Tibetans in exile, particularly the Dalai Lama.
Yellow Crane Pavilion Incident
(黄鹤楼事件, Huanghe lou shijian)
This event in the annals of Chinese VIP protection operations showed that the developing personality cult of Mao Zedong could actually endanger his safety and those of others. It caused a significant shift, albeit not the last one, in how the chairman was protected.
Mao visited Wuhan in February 1953 accompanied by MPS minister Luo Ruiqing (罗瑞卿), Hubei party secretary Li Xiannian (李先念), Yang Shangkun (杨尚昆) of the party central office, and Wang Dongxing (汪东 兴), director of the central guards bureau (中央保卫局, zhongyang baowei ju). Wang later became an MPS vice minister and was in charge of the program to protect the CCP leadership.80
On the fifth day after lunar new year, Mao expressed a desire to visit Hanyang (汉阳), a district in Wuhan. Wang Renzhong (王任重), the vice mayor, urged the chairman not to go, saying the district’s “social order is unstable.” Mao insisted, forcing Wang and Li to admit that they had recently been to Hanyang—so why should the chairman avoid it? After crossing the Yangtze River to Hanyang, Mao decided to attend a fair at the Yellow Crane Pavilion. Upon arrival, Mao stopped to buy fried bean curd from a hawker. Two small girls recognized him and cried out, drawing a crowd. As more people gathered, Luo and Yang suggested that the chairman change his coat and put on a hat and sunglasses. He did so but it was too late: more and more people gathered around, eager to see Mao, whose height (five feet eleven inches), heavy build, and familiar face made him stand out in any crowd.81
The situation began to grow chaotic as people crowded the small party, shouting, “Long live Chairman Mao! Long live the Chinese Communist Party!” and trying to touch him. Mao, seldom wanting for personal courage, removed his hat and sunglasses and began waving to the masses. Li Yinqiao (李银桥), the officer in charge of his protection detail, and his men struggled to place Mao and the other VIPs back into their vehicles. They headed toward the river, a kilometer away, and boarded a ferry. As the boat embarked, people all around seemed to know of Mao’s presence. The air was filled with chants of “Long live Chairman Mao,” leaving no prospect of safely returning to shore. Luo, Yang, and Li discussed what to do next. They were worried, not unreasonably, that “counterrevolutionary elements” might realize Mao was in the area and try to harm him.
Arriving at the western shore of the Yangzi where a vehicle was waiting, Li and three other junior personnel attempted to distract the crowds by announcing that Mao had left Wuhan—but no one believed it. A persistent worker who wanted to see Mao impulsively stripped off his clothes to show he carried no weapon, begging to lay eyes upon the chairman. Meanwhile Mao was still onboard the ferry, which continued along the shore, seeking a river wharf without hazardous crowds. Luo picked one that appeared safe and summoned cars to the spot, but by the time they alighted, more crowds appeared. Nonetheless, Mao’s security detail managed to push through and escape.
The group returned to the chairman’s temporary quarters, nervous as if they had just been in a battle, with “eyes staring wide” (眼睛还瞪的大大的, yanjing hai dengde da da de).82 Luo, humiliated, engaged in a spontaneous self-examination, first to Mao and later before the entire Politburo. Mao downplayed the incident, saying it was not Luo’s fault: “I must really stay within the Summer Palace, not go to places like the Yellow Crane Pavilion” (真是出不了的颐和园, 下不了的黄鹤楼呀, Zhen shi chubuliao de Yiheyuan, xiabuliao Huanghe lou ya).83
In the face of the growing personality cult, it was a lesson in the need to more carefully plan Mao’s public appearances. Luo Ruiqing and Wang Dongxing worked together to increase the chairman’s security. By 1956 Mao’s bodyguards and other entourage on the road totaled more than two hundred people. When he flew, all air traffic in China was grounded, and his food was tested for poison. However, Mao began to complain that year about the increased security. He felt his staff was unduly copying the Soviets; he believed the masses loved him and wished him no harm; and he valued his privacy, believing that Luo Ruiqing and Wang Dongxing reported what they knew to others in the party leadership. In 1957 Mao’s travel entourage was reduced to less than one-tenth of the previous number.84
In the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), Mao’s security was again increased, though in 1967 the chairman had to order “Rebel” Red Guards under the influence of Wang Dongxing, chief of his security detail, to cease political attacks against the leadership.85