Dear Friends:

Many analysts think that researching the espionage efforts of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is a fruitless exercise. "You won't find much" is advice that I've heard many times, plus "aren't you afraid for your safety?" These views are held not only by academics, but also by some in government.

One needs only examine the writings of Peter Mattis or Alex Joske to see that one can find much through open sources, not only on the historical side of the question, but also on modern developments.

As David Chambers showed in his article discussing the historiography of CCP intelligence, numerous sources on this topic in the Chinese language exist - some propagandistic to be sure, but others that are meant to be as close to factual as allowed, such as the 年谱 (nianpu, annals: official records of activity) of figures like the late Premier Zhou Enlai and the late General Luo Ruiqing.

Some assertions in those works, such as the importance of the 1931 defection of Gu Shunzhang or the rise of Chen Wenqing can be checked by sources from Taiwan and others published decades ago in Hong Kong, before crackdowns intensified against publishers there in 2015. One such interesting source is 國共間諜戰七十年 (Guogong jiandie zhan qishi nian, Seventy Years of Nationalist-Communist Spy Wars)

People who have been the subject (or victims) of attention by China's State Security and Public Security officers are also highly valuable as sources of information. They are treated differently by Beijing's authorities depending on their status:

- mainland Chinese citizen (subcategories Han Chinese, PRC minority, et al)

- Taiwan residents

- overseas Chinese with a foreign passport

- foreign - looking foreigner.

As a Public Security Bureau chief in Shenzhen told me in an interview back in 2005, regarding the alleged collusion of a Hong Kong truck driver with mainland hijackers, "If the driver were mainland Chinese, we would have solved this crime many days ago." To coin a phrase, "We have ways of making you talk."

Since those good-old days, the differences in how these categories of people are treated has been drastically reduced, as can be seen in an examination of the prisoner list at Dui Hua.

One of our latest SpyTalk articles on how cell phones are used to track down protesters in China benefitted from such testimony. I hope that you'll take a look and if you like it, forward the article to others.

Best Regards,

Matt

​Matt Brazil, Non-resident Fellow, The Jamestown Foundation

Contributing Editor, SpyTalk​

San Jose, California. Mobile (Signal enabled): +1-408-891-5187

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