China's intelligence machine

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 17, 1997 | by Stanislav Lunev

In countries that do not have official diplomatic relations with Communist China, each of the political and military intelligence services has established networks of illegal intelligence officers who operate in the countries of their responsibility under cover of being local citizens, residents or friendly foreigners.

After the so-called "cultural revolution" at the end of the 1970s, the political and military intelligence services received special funding to start hundreds of so-called "private" firms and companies in Third World countries. By a special decree of the Politburo, the Chinese intelligence services organized trading companies, manufacturing industries, banks and other enterprises designed to look like very attractive business partners without any real connections to the Communist regime.

Incidentally, Chinese military and political leaders welcomed that important Politburo decision. It gave them the opportunity to establish their own children and relatives in these businesses. In the mid-1980s, hundreds of these companies were created, usually headed by persons with strong family connections with the party and the government.

These special companies are required first of all to make a profit, but they also must provide every possible support for their real bosses in the Politburo who actually created the companies. They must work for profits to explain and justify their existence, but they also must engage in espionage according to their positioning in the market. Thus, the companies provide "deep cover" for professional intelligence officers who must never take any risk that might result in divulging their identities. If they make any mistakes, they will face a criminal trial.

Defection from the Chinese special services is prevented by the so-called "collective blood guarantee" under which all family members and relatives of the defector must share responsibility for the defection, and all will receive extremely cruel punishment.

However, one of the primary factors accounting for the success of Chinese intelligence is the exploitation of a historical circumstance -- the vast emigration of Chinese to communities worldwide.

The intelligence organizations do not bother to look for assistance among first-generation immigrants who have made few connections, and have no access to higher levels of the host country. Rather, they look among second- and third-generation immigrants who usually have become local citizens and do not have any legal limitations on their life in the host country. They have a chance to do business, to take part in political and social life, to work inside government institutions with real access to all kinds of domestic information and even state secrets. Of course, the vast majority of these Overseas Chinese descendants of immigrants are not susceptible to working for the Red Chinese intelligence services.

But Chinese intelligence operatives have used the Overseas Chinese community very successfully for the establishment of so-called agents of influence. The word "agent" in this context can be used only conditionally, and only in connection with the word "influence." Most are not spies in the usual sense of the word.