Matt Brazil

Say “cheese.” Okay, don’t say cheese.

China’s semi-underground police station in New York, set up there by the Fuzhou Public Security Bureau, made headlines last month for good reason. It was completely illegal and was harassing dissidents, as well as chasing actual exiled criminals.

And there are hundreds more across the world.

For an eight-minute explanation of these stations, go here for my interview with Scott Tong on “Here and Now,” the award-winning radio program from National Public Radio and WBUR Boston. They do long-form interviews and dig deeper into contemporary affairs than other such shows, and are worth checking out.

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The Chinese Communist Party has always been a secretive organization. For their 98 million members, clandestine operations are normal. Even the headquarters building of the party’s all-important Organization Department is unmarked with standard signage.

The party is overly concerned with the slightest opposition, in part because China’s history of revolts and revolutions has many examples of fatal revolts rising from below. Whenever they find organized activity not controlled by themselves, the CCP moves to nip it in the bud. This was true before Xi Jinping rose to lead the party, and will continue after he departs the scene.

This includes Chinese dissent abroad. Party leaders no doubt remember that the father of modern China, Sun Yat-sen, did most of his organizing against the Qing Dynasty overseas before returning when the time was ripe in 1911 – as did Lenin to Russia a few years later.

So it is no surprise that the CCP takes dissent in the U.S. and elsewhere very seriously, even if it seems harmless to their powerful party-state (an important difference in perspective to keep in mind when observing CCP behavior). Thus, they have tasked the Chinese Ministry of Public Security (MPS) to have its subordinate Public Security Bureaus (PSBs) go abroad and tackle dissent, even by isolated individuals.

To be fair, the officers at these “secret police stations” also hunt for actual criminals that have committed fraud or worse. And today’s secret police stations have precedent, as shown by Matt Schrader in his January 2019 China Brief article on “Overseas Chinese Assistance Centers.”

Even older precedent: the openly established police posts in South Africa, set up beginning in 2004 for what appears to be good reasons with the agreement of the host government.

But the problem lies where such stations have been set up in secret, for reasons unacceptable to the host government, violating the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

Research in East Asia

During the entire month of April, I was in Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia conducting research and interviews for the upcoming book. I am writing more about the findings from that trip and will send along links to articles that result.

I was particularly intrigued to find that awareness of Beijing’s worldwide espionage and influence offensive is rising more or less at the same pace overseas as it is in the United States but with less hyperbole.

In the words of Taylor Swift, we all “need to calm down” and focus on the facts.

To subscribe to my newsletter about Chinese espionage, send me an email: matthew.brazil@gmail.com

US firms helped build Beijing’s ubiquitous surveillance systems

China’s anti-lockdown protests last month were the worst blow yet to the prestige of Xi Jinping. One moment, the Chinese Communist Party’s leader was riding high after securing a third term at the top of the party-state. The next, he was challenged by demonstrators in the streets to “step down,” a sentiment that protestors also chanted against the party itself.

The discontent with the CCP expressed by demonstrators exceeded that of the more massive 1989 protests at Tiananmen Square, albeit this time with much lower numbers: most of the 19 or more cities where protests erupted drew less than 50 people, while the other half in tier one cities with more foreign contact attracted over 50, some in the hundreds.

Though the numbers were small, it was a notable “political coming out of the closet,” (政治出柜, zhengzhi chugui), much discussed in Chinese social media. But to keep it in perspective,  the protests were not thousands of people openly defying authority, as the world now observes in Iran. As far as is known, these were limited actions by small groups in urban centers. 

However, the protests in China at the end of November were bold, as those who participated risked arrest or worse. And there is a chance that the demonstrators represented a larger and more cautious percentage of society. 

Though the party leadership rapidly (maybe too rapidly) eased the “zero Covid” restrictions that prompted this popular anger, those who spoke up soon learned who was boss.

A rough pattern of police response developed, with some similarity to the way some other protestors have been treated. Mere participants were summoned to police stations to explain themselves and sign statements saying they would never do it again. One demonstrator, perhaps typifying others, had tried to disguise himself with a balaclava and clothing change but was quickly tracked down by police. He was surprised at how easily authorities had picked him out of a large crowd, evidently using his phone data and their urban surveillance system.

Leaders of the protests were treated more harshly. At least one—the man who may have led the first “step down” chants in Shanghai—was apprehended at work and has since disappeared. He, too, thought he might not

be identified.

Years ago, well before Xi Jinping’s new era of paranoid surveillance, some citizens have been more clued in than others to the regime’s use of mobiles to keep tabs on users. Chinese citizens secretly working for a foreign intelligence agency were trained to, among other things, separate their phones from any incriminating activity.

Those just living lives removed from international intrigue, but who were tech savvy, also chose different ways to minimize surveillance, according to a Chinese American author who has regularly returned to China for research. They would “put their cell phones in another room when they talk, or take out the SIM cards, use different cell phones to contact different people,” similar to the tactics of protestors in the U.S. to avoid surveillance and police use of data.

See here for the rest of the article in SpyTalk

Excerpt from “China, The Fearful Intelligence Culture,” By Matthew Brazil

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has placed priority on its intelligence and security operations for almost a century. This core business of the party significantly contributed to the CCP’s 1949 victory and to the maintenance of its current power.

Most recently, the internet and artificial intelligence (AI) have enabled previously unimaginable foreign espionage successes. Yet there are cracks in the façade: unending existential fear about enemies within; fear of being caught between CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping’s never-ending anti-corruption drive and a culture that still fosters graft; as well as fear of being insufficiently loyal to Xi’s “thought” and to his status as the CCP “core.”

Drawing from Chinese language publications and interviews with former western security officials who had regular contact with their Chinese counterparts, this chapter argues that these are old problems, but under Xi, have become more pronounced than in recent decades. It shows how China’s espionage organs will likely continue to achieve successes in cyber espionage, agent recruitment, and technology theft, but dispassionate intelligence analysis may be hindered by pressure to conform to the party line. Thus, Chinese intelligence culture in the 2020s may sometimes make it difficult for Beijing’s senior leaders to see the forest through the trees.

The above is an excerpt from “China: The Fearful Intelligence Culture”, in Ryan Shaffer, ed. The Handbook of Asian Intelligence Cultures (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, October 2022). This chapter on China has six sections:

• The Shellshocked Roots of Chinese Communist Intelligence and Security
• Corruption, Anticorruption, and Power Struggles
• State Security, Not National Security
• The Lasting Leftist Influence of Mao Zedong and Kang Sheng
• Competent Spy Versus Rear Area Ideologue
• Conclusion: Beijing’s services may be developing a superior understanding of big data compared to their Western counterparts as cyber operations garner an ever greater share of resources. Meanwhile, during the 2020s and 30s the ranks of State Security and military intelligence will fill up with recruits born during and after the 1990s, raised in an era of heightened nationalism and suspicion of foreigners. If the legacy of fear persists while raw data from cyber and other operations keeps piling up, Beijing’s ability to make sense of the outside world and future domestic developments may decline.

The Handbook of Asian Intelligence Cultures has 30 chapters, one for each Asian nation, and can be found on Rowman.com and Amazon.

The above article is also available on LinkedIn here.

Here are two very recent forums where I had opportunities to reflect on the intersection between China’s security and intelligence apparatus and the nationwide lockdown protests:

https://slate.com/podcasts/what-next/2022/12/what-zero-covid-protests-reflect-about-xi-jinping

https://www.spytalk.co/p/do-china-protests-reveal-beijing

As a result of the tragedy in Urumqi, protestors in China are almost certainly motivated by the fear that they themselves might become fire, earthquake, or flood victims should they need to evacuate a locked-down location.

Secondly, if demonstrators did not previously understand the extent to which their mobile phones were miniature spies-in-the-pocket, they certainly do now. That realization could alter the way people in China handle their cell phones. Imaginative ways to circumvent the surveillance system could develop.

Finally, the protests will probably soon be suppressed. But if they continue, the next step could be to call in the  People’s Armed Police  (PAP), which is a different organ of state security than the Public Security Bureaus around the country. The PAP is little understood outside of China – but is an extremely powerful tool with vast resources. They are trained to quickly put down mass civil disturbances with overwhelming force, but to do so without resorting to the June Fourth, 1989 solution of machine-gunning the citizenry in the streets.

Regards,

Matt

Non-resident Fellow,  The Jamestown Foundation  and Contributing Editor,  SpyTalk  San Jose, CaliforniaMobile (Signal enabled): +1-408-891-5187

Encrypted:  matt.brazil@hushmail.com   https://www.mattbrazil.net/   https://www.usni.org/press/books/chinese-communist-espionage 

The Hoover Institution’s Dr. Michael Auslin is joined by Anna Puglisi, former National Counterintelligence Officer for China, and Matt Brazil, Senior Analyst at BluePath Labs and co-author of Chinese Communist Espionage, to discuss just how widely and successfully Chinese spies have penetrated American business, government, and academia.

Listen at: the Stanford Hoover website, Stitcher, or Podbean.

The full URL at Stanford:

https://www.hoover.org/research/pacific-century-chinese-spies-america-helpless-against-prc-espionage

National Review Magazine

By MATTHEW BRAZIL

September 18, 2022 6:30 AM

As Washington’s allies struggle to resist Beijing’s worldwide espionage and influence offensive, the U.S. can set an example.

hen the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949, many in the nation remained resistant. But in the words of Mao Zedong, the Chinese Communist Party had three “magic weapons” (法宝, fǎbǎo): a well-organized military, party building, and its United Front apparatus, now known as the United Front Work Department (UFWD). In part by stressing consensus and mischaracterizing their long-term plans, United Front cadres convinced influential figures to support the new government. Meanwhile, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) mopped up remnant Nationalist units, invaded Xinjiang and Tibet, and intervened in Korea.

The chairman avoided publicly praising a fourth magic weapon: his espionage apparatus, then called the CCP Social Affairs Department (社会部, Shèhuì bù, SHB). From 1946 to 1949, SHB spy rings thoroughly infiltrated the Nationalist Party, army, and government. As Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek later reportedly said, “there was no space that they did not enter” (无孔不入, wú kǒng bùrù).

For more, see The National Review/

(Online title: Brussels, the Den of Spies) The home of the EU and NATO remains an open playground for Chinese and Russian operatives.

SpyTalk, 27 August 2022

Conjure up a list of cities considered world capitals of espionage. Those featured in movies and television, with their romantic atmosphere and scenery, include Vienna, Budapest, Berlin, London, Cairo, Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Macau, Bangkok, and Saigon. 

Not to ignore the less romantic but important cities of Moscow, Beijing, and Washington, DC. 

By comparison, Brussels seems overlooked by spy novelists and film directors, but its unusual concentration of diplomatic missions to the European Union, NATO, and to Belgium itself brings a high ratio per square kilometer of diplomats and lobbyists—as well as spies. “Washington and Brussels compete for the largest number of embassies and other representations on earth” remarked an ICT (information and communications technology)  executive close to the Belgian authorities. He added that the spy agencies of numerous countries, including America, Russia, and China “do whatever they want here; there are so many [espionage] issues going on that Belgian authorities don’t know where to start.”

His view was not contradicted by other Belgians in the private sector and in government, including the police, who requested anonymity when interviewed in July…

The article continues here

By Sasha Ingber

NEWSY video, click here. For YouTube version, click this.

June 8, 2022

Former government officials tell Newsy that China’s intelligence often conforms to political framing, and there is no system of checks and balances.

With Vladimir Putin’s war still raging in Ukraine, U.S. officials fear China will follow suit, by one day invading the self-ruled island of Taiwan and triggering another war. They want to know what China is learning from the battle for Ukraine and whether President Xi Jinping is getting accurate intelligence.

“The lack of an independent intelligence community significantly worsened Putin’s decision making in Ukraine,” Sen. Jim Inhofe said. “What is President Xi in China learning about his intel community?”

“I think it’s a really interesting question,” Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines responded. “I’d prefer to answer it in closed session. Would that be all right, sir?”

While that answer may be in secret, Newsy spoke with former government officials who say China’s intelligence often conforms to political framing, and has no system of checks and balances.

Matt Brazil is a former diplomat who served in Beijing and co-wrote a book on China’s intelligence community.  

“What careful intelligence officers do is, they do actually outsource their analysis to foreigners, because when they do this, they can say if they’re asked about ‘Why did you bring this heretical viewpoint to the leadership?’ ‘We didn’t do it. What we’re doing is reporting on what foreign experts are saying,'” he said.

He says Chinese spies fear being quietly shuffled out or accused of corruption, which could lead to demotion, arrest, physical harm, indefinite detention, family reprisal, or even possible execution. And he says Chinese spies are operating in Ukraine. 

“The Chinese intelligence community undoubtedly has people on the ground in Ukraine,” Brazil said. “They are learning about Russian military mistakes. They are learning about how quickly Russian military morale dipped, how quick it went down. They’re learning about how the Ukrainians are vociferously defending their own country. And so the question that they are going to send to their agents in Taiwan is, what are the chances, No. 1, of people in Taiwan acting like Ukrainians?”

A former senior intelligence officer — who did not want to be named in order to speak freely — tells Newsy that unlike Putin, Xi is not completely surrounded by yes men. He has relied on a vast array of sources, including the contacts of his father, who was a revolutionary and senior official.  

The source also said the U.S. does not know how often Xi receives intelligence briefings, but that Chinese officials previously considered having their own version of the President’s Daily Brief, which is the crown jewel of U.S. intelligence products.  

Meanwhile, Beijing has been quietly and publicly pursuing efforts to build overseas military infrastructure. And recent satellite imagery, first obtained by analyst Matt Funaiole, shows China preparing to launch its third, largest, and most advanced aircraft carrier. 

“This newest carrier, it’s using all of the newest technology that China has access to. And it really is pushing the boundaries of carrier technology,” Funaiole said. “It’s also one of the first sort of indigenously built aircraft carriers in China.”

The vessel is expected to carry large aircraft that fly to gather intelligence. And the U.S. will evaluate whether that intelligence is swayed by political winds.