Spy story

‘Chinese Spies’ Review: The People’s Secret Service

Mr. Faligot has been chronicling the activities of various intelligence agencies—a notoriously difficult subject to research—for almost 40 years. He estimates that at the height of the Cold War between 40% and 60% of Chinese diplomats were involved in intelligence, compared to 20% of their Russian counterparts. This in addition to the many Chinese students and business executives operating under what is known as “nonofficial cover.”

China has since become one of the world’s major intelligence players, especially in the area of signals intelligence, by eagerly forging alliances with whichever country serves its purpose. At first this was the Soviet Union, which in the 1920s and ’30s helped train many of China’s operatives. Then it was the U.S. and West Germany, which during the Cold War assisted China in monitoring the Soviet Union. Now Beijing is again aligned with Moscow in their common efforts to spy on the U.S.

According to Mr. Faligot, China’s intelligence services are focused on protecting the state, suppressing dissent within the state (internet users, for example, are required to register with the government), and involving itself in the domestic affairs of other countries. Each of the three services—state security (guoanbu), public security (gonganbu) and army intelligence (PLA2)—is appointed a technical director, who handles the daily operations, and a political commissar, who is responsible, we are told, “for ensuring that the organization’s ideological orientation conforms to the strategy decreed by the CCP.” Between them the three services ran—indeed, often owned—Beijing’s largest hotels, where all the public rooms and bedrooms were bugged. At the Beijing Hotel, for instance, “telephone ladies” were constantly on call, ready to translate whatever language was being intercepted.