Cangzhou State Security Bureau Branch of the Ninth Bureau of the Chinese Ministry of State Security

Director of State Security Bureau Mr. Cheng Zhi-Hua

(in the beginning of November, 2014)

I've been a state security agent for the past five years. I've seen men with much more experience than me become victims of injustice. I've seen men younger than me die on a whim. I've seen men with no experience at all become heroes of a police state. I've seen men who didn't believe I could be alive become my brothers. No one knows how long this will last. I've survived. I've experienced the best and the worst. I've seen evil men. I've seen good men. I've seen the worst and the best of the human race. I've seen men who were not men. I've seen a thousand men and women, but most of all, I've seen the one man: myself.

I have learned that there is no justice in the world, only the struggle to survive.

The Chinese Ministry of State Security has a branch for the Special Division. My division. The Chinese Ministry of State Security is the police within the police. We are the law within the law. We are the judge within the judge. We are the prosecutor within the prosecutor. We are the executioner within the executioner.

The Special Division is made up of people like myself. Men and women who have spent their entire lives in this position. Men and women who have dedicated their lives and their bodies and their minds and their voices to this position. We are men and women who have given our lives to our work and to our bosses.

All of us are at a crossroads of decisions. We have to decide who we are. We have to decide what we are. We have to decide who we want to be.

We are always in the situation where someone has more power over us than we have over them. Someone has more money than we have. Someone has more friends than we have. And, sometimes, for no reason at all, a man or woman will make a decision about us.

We are always in the situation where someone has something we want. Or, someone has something we need.

A knock on the door interrupted his thoughts and he opened the door. two officers came in knocking. they were young, but they had the demeanor of experienced officials. they had the same look in their eyes. the look of men who know who they are.

"Come in, have a seat."

The two officers took two seats at the table. They sat across from him. They were in their twenties.

"I wanted to ask yourselves a few questions." Cheng Zhihua asked, "Do you know why you two were called here?"

The two officers exchanged glances. One of them said, "We were called here because our division has something to do with this."

Cheng Zhihua made a sarcastic smile and said, "You are here because the Special Division has something to do with me."

The two officers nodded.

Cheng Zhihua cleared his throat.

"The State Security Bureau and myself have read your files and believe that you are absolutely loyal to the Party and the motherland. I believe that you will serve the Chinese people for the rest of your life."

"Thank you, sir!"

"This is a matter for the two of you to decide for yourselves. One of you has a family, one doesn't. One of you has a wife, one hasn't. Your decision will affect your families' lives for many years to come, or so I would imagine. I'm going to give you a long-term assignment that you can refuse."

"Sir, I'm honored!"

Cheng Zhihua gave a condescending smile.

"Very well, you have not let the Party and the Fatherland down. Your mission was to investigate an underground illegal political party organization."

He leaned across the table and said, "This organization has connections with the British Secret Intelligence, the CIA, and the BND."

"What?"

"Yes."

The two officers remained silent.

"This was a high-risk mission. You will need to split up and lead two teams to investigate the Chinese Maoist Communist Party and the Chinese Pan Blue Alliance. I trust that you will do a thorough job and bring the culprits to justice."

"We will, sir!"

"Very well. You will begin your investigations immediately. Understood?"

"Yes, sir!"

Cheng Zhihua stood up and walked over to his bookshelf. He took down a thick black volume and said, "Very well, the mission archives have transferred the mission information to your office."

He handed the book to one of the officers.

The officer glanced through the book.

"This is pretty heavy on secrets, sir," he said.

He waved a goodbye and left the room. The two officers stood up and left as well. They shut the door behind them.

***

A little later, one of the officers named Ye Mao called his team back to the conference room to put the stack of files brought over from the records management office on the table.

"The files are all here, so you can read through them at your leisure. We already know the vast majority of the details, but there are some new details we need to go over. Take a look at the files, and then we'll go over the stuff in the review."

The officers looked at each other and went over the files.

"Okay, we have a mission to do, There is a need to investigate the Chinese Maoist Communist Party members on these files and to control the leaders among them. We have a month. How do we start?"

"The same way we started the last mission," one of the officers said.

"By following leads," another officer said.

All the panelists began to go through the archives. The Maoist Communist Party of China is an underground political party founded by supporters of Mao and Bo Xilai. In 2007, police arrested over 10 members of the party, charging them with organizing an armed rebellion and plotting to overthrow the state. The arrestees included professor Hu Jia, writer Zhang Dao, and party secretary Chen Rong. All three were later released, but the charges against them were dropped.

The files revealed that the party had many connections with foreign agents, mainly the British Secret Intelligence, the CIA, and the BND.

"Professor Hu Jia, writer Zhang Guiding and former party secretary Chen Rong are the three main targets, they are in Beijing, Chengdu & Chongqing respectively." Ye Mao flipped through the files and said, "Scout them and implement long-term surveillance."

"We need to get a team together that can blend in with the local population," another officer named Liu Ling said.

"You mean we need to infiltrate." Ye Mao nodded. "Any ideas?"

Liu Ling thought for a moment. She said, "There is a guy named Zhang Gaoyou, he is an accountant at the Beijing office of the French multinational corporation, AXA."

"He is a good choice," Ye Mao said. "He will be reliable, if we approach him correctly."

"What do you mean?"

"I will arrange a meeting between you and Mr. Zhang. I don't want you to go in there as the SIB, I want you to go in as his accountant. Then, let him help us approach the writer Hu Jia."

"What about the party secretary? We can't just let him get away."

"No, we can't. That is why we are going to monitor him and keep him under wraps. Once we have control of him, we will get the information we need. The best way to do that is to keep him in the dark. The less he knows, the better he will be."

"That makes sense. Okay, we'll do that. Now, who do we have that can impersonate an accountant?"

Ye Mao pointed to Sun Ming.

"I'll give you my account number, you can use that to set up an offshore company. Then, Mr. Zhang will trust you completely, and you can use that to get information from him."

One officer named Sun Ming was nodding.

"There is another way," he said. "We can use fake IDs that look real enough to get past airport security. That way, we can get inside the building and get information from the party secretary."

"That sounds like a good plan, But beware of being known by Chen Rong's intelligence network. Also, we should get their internet account information and communication records. That might provide us with a lead as to how they plan to attack us."

"What about the third target?"

"We can leave that for last. We don't have reliable information on him. As far as we know, he is a member of the China Democratic Party."

"That party is pro-democracy, isn't it?" Ye Mao asked.

Liu Ling smiled and said, "All illegal political parties use this banner."

"We are also a democratic country, with Chinese characteristics of democratic centralism." Sun Ming added.

"We should infiltrate that party as well," Liu Ling said.

"No, we shouldn't," Ye Mao said. "What else is wrong with focusing on solving those goals of the Chinese Maoist Communist Party first then finally solving that writer named Zhang Guiding?"

"You just stated that you already knew the majority of the information on him."

"True, but we might not have all the information. Maybe we can get more by infiltrating the party."

"I still disagree," Liu Ling said. "If we can take out the three targets, the media will give us a lot more credit. Besides, we already have more than enough agents on the inside to take out the party. Why use outside help? We can do it."

"Because using them is better than using a bunch of people who hate us and are only out for themselves," Ye Mao said.

"I don't think that is the case. A bunch of greedy liars and thieves is more trustworthy than a bunch of idealists, even if they are less capable."

"Maybe, but we'll gain more from the idealists. The more ruthless approach might work, but it is more dangerous."

"What other choice do we have? We can't let these people get away with this."

"No, we can't let them get away with it. But we have to decide which group is preferable." Ye Mao sighed and said, "Okay, go prepare for action. Sun Ming's squad is responsible for going to prepare fake ID cards with offshore companies to approach the target, and Liu Ling's squad goes to monitor their internet account information and communication records."

"Got it," the two squads said in unison.

Liu Ling's team was responsible for investigating the Internet account information and communication records and bank account information of more than 10 targets, the same as the Prism program of the U.S. intelligence agencies and the Somme information and communication censorship system established by the Russian Federation in 1996, and the same Internet information and communication censorship system established by the Chinese Ministry of State Security.

The Ministry of Intelligence had been using the information obtained from intercepted communications and data mining (a combination of human analysis and software algorithms) to create dossiers on individual targets and compile threat assessments for potential targets.

With the widespread use of the Internet, the potential for a large amount of data to be stored and processed by computers had been recognized. It had become a necessity to find a way to stop information from freely flowing in, and flowing out. In 2004, after the launch of the PRISM program, the first Internet surveillance system was unveiled by the U.S. government.

The system, called PRISM, was a partnership between the NSA and six U.S. telecommunications companies. It allowed the NSA to tap into the companies'data centers and access private communications.

Likewise, the Chinese government does not believe that the people it rules will support it unconditionally and forever. Thus, the National Cyber Firewall of China was born. The Firewall, as it was named, is a vast system of servers hosted by the Chinese government that is used to censor and surveil the country's vast network of Internet users.

Access to and use of the Firewall is restricted to Chinese citizens and permanent residents. Anyone attempting to access foreign websites is met with a message that says, "This site cannot be accessed from this location."

The Firewall is used by the government for the following purposes:

To prevent the spread of pornographic and extremist materials.

To prevent the spread of software and data that could facilitate acts of treason or terrorism. If one attempts to circumvent the block by using a proxy or a virtual private network, he or she will be blocked.

In practice, however, there are still close to 100 million Chinese Internet users who bypass firewalls to access foreign sites, and sometimes the Chinese Ministry of State Security arrests a few of them for prosecution to meet security targets. While individuals cannot access them, private businesses and schools can bypass firewalls without sanction after applying. The irony is that the Firewall has made life more difficult for law-abiding citizens.

A good example is the case of Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng, who was imprisoned for his role in advocating for the rights of children with disabilities. In addition, even supporters of the Chinese Communist Party are penalized for bypassing firewalls to access blocked foreign websites.

The government's strategy is to gradually create a culture of total submission to the state where people's only outlet for free speech is self-censorship. It is a difficult task and one that is sure to fail. This method is similar to the one used by the Soviet Union in its attempt to control the flow of information in its zone of influence. Although the result is the opposite. As citizens become more aware of their own rights and the lack of them, the system only becomes more and more ineffective and, eventually, becomes a laughingstock.

And With the exception of the ideological proponents of nationalism and its revised socialism, almost all ideologies in China are opposed to the current rule of the Chinese Communist Party system. Likewise, the Chinese Communist Party is suppressing them. Nearly all ideologies in China oppose the rule of the current Chinese Communist Party system. Likewise, the Chinese Communist Party represses them. Guo Quan, who wrote public petitions for the petitioning public, was disciplined by Nanjing Normal University, stripped of his associate professorship, and expelled from membership in the China Democratic League, or any other ideology, is suppressed. They are pushed to the fringes of society, where the threat of violence is ever present.

Compared to the user whitelist mechanism of the firewall, Liu Ling remembered that Quanzhou seems to be trying out a network whitelist mechanism there in 2022, but had failed to gain any meaningful traction against the firewalls or censorship.

The lack of viable, effective means of challenging the system had left quite an impression on her.

And it is absurd for big government to try to regulate the ideology of civil society, from which government and ideology are themselves constructed, in the same way that a person constructs a house.

But she was no anarchist. She believed that the only reasonable middle ground between authoritarianism and anarchy is responsible governance. And the government's attempt to interfere with the ideology of civil society (and here we are not talking about a particular ideology) is as absurd as a son over his mother. The only reason why the government is acting this way is because the people who are being oppressed are a threat to the status quo.

Anarchists, left-wingers, and progressives would agree with her.

However, she will still support the government. Not so much a political stance as she is a state employee. She is required by law to support the government of China.

Her job title is the Chinese word for "surveillance," but that is just a figure of speech. In reality, she is monitoring foreign and domestic media for any threats to the security of the state.

More than a dozen targets' files began to be looked at one by one, and she used these personal information to contact communication companies and banks to retrieve personal information and records, as the implementation of the real name system on the Internet made it easy for her to obtain information on citizens.

The sheer volume of data being gathered and stored by the state and the industries that serve it is staggering. It is almost as if the government attempts to gather as much data as possible on the entire population, storing it in giant data centers and using it for statistical purposes.

But the most disturbing fact about the surveillance state in China that Liu Ling discovered is that it is being run by the Chinese Communist Party. They are not only gathering and storing as much data as possible, but they are also using this data and the advanced technologies that they have created to serve their own agenda.

She shrugged and stretched her sore shoulders, not that she cared how private information circulated anyway. She just needed to find out everything she could about the target user.

The first file showed him to be a twenty-nine-year-old man with one child. No address was provided, but the man was suspected of using a VPN to access banned websites.

The next file gave her his name, family name, birthdate, Social Security number, height, weight, hair and eye color, GPA, hometown, hometown church, hometown high school, and a short medical and dental history.

Next, she had to choose whether to extract the data she needed from the file and discard the rest.

The choice was simple.

Her fingers moved with lightning speed as she punched in the ID and retrieved the data she wanted. When she was done, the information was downloaded and the file closed.

She deleted the file and moved on to the next task.

The surveillance state in China had its roots in the desire to control every facet of a person's life, from cradle to grave. And the state has been successful in a number of these endeavors.

The second target came from a user who logged into an underground FTP site. This person was a bit trickier, using a virtual cell phone number, tor proxy server and telegram communication software.

But it was not a difficult task tracking him. The man was using a borrowed laptop and, for some reason, an unsecured Wifi network.

His personal information was already stored in the database, so it was a simple matter to cross-reference the data to the target in question.

His name was Jiang Xing. He was from Hangzhou and had obtained a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the prestigious Polytechnic University of New York. When this was done, the man's name was retrieved, along with all the information available on him.

There was no address for him, but that was to be expected.

In the end, Ling Liu could only obtain the file from the user and send copies to the other officers in her squad, the others who would be responsible for monitoring the target over time.

There would be no need for constant close surveillance of him or his computer, so the manpower issue would be solved.

The user himself would be a more difficult task. With all the data being stored and analyzed, it would be possible to build a detailed profile of him, but such a thing was not available to her at the moment.

Her access permission level is not high enough. Even if she could get her hands on a report on the man in question, it would only be a summary, not the rich database that she needed to cross-reference different data points.

A report on the target would have to be written, and that report would have to be approved by her immediate superior. It would not be a simple request, but it could be done.

Her computer pinged and vibrated as she received a new message. A very important one.

It was from her superior, a man known as Chen Zhong.

The subject line of the email read: "Urgent: New information has come to light regarding the activities of Maoist Communist Party of China."

A chill went down her spine.

She clicked on the message and waited.

The message was short.

"Information has come to light that the target is, in fact, a spy for the People's Liberation Army. He has been working with the PLA's Strategic Support Force."

Her mouth went dry.

"What... What are you talking about? What information? Who's the target? What are you saying?"

The message continued, but she stopped reading as her fingers flew across the keyboard.

The email was just the start.

It is not only the surveillance state that is amassing too much power in China. It is the whole world that is in danger.

Her superior had done his homework.

"Come to the office and stop the investigative surveillance of the former Chinese Maoist Communist Party."

Her heart sank.

"Excuse me? How can something like this even be possible?"

"I'll explain in person. See you soon."

Ling Liu had no doubt that Chen Zhong was serious. This news came as such a shock that she did not know how to respond.

She looked over at the wall clock. It was time to leave.

Ling Liu sat in the conference room, her head tilted toward the entrance as she peered through the glass wall that separated her from the outer office. It was a common enough sight for her to see her superior enter and then leave, but she had no idea what to expect.

The door opened and Chen Zhong entered, all business-like.

His appearance was the very opposite of what she expected. While he was wearing a suit and sat very straight, he looked nothing like the stern and serious men she was used to seeing.

He is a bit fat compared to the somewhat thin Director Cheng Zhihua, who is that image of an administrative bureaucrat, a naive shrewd element on the surface.

Chen Zhong's face was unshaven and his black hair was a mess.

"Miss Liu, this way, please."

He led her down a hallway and into the conference room.

"Have a seat. Would you like some tea or coffee?"

"No, thank you. I have some work to do."

He sat down and waited for her to take a seat.

"I received your request for some more information, and I have complied."

"Information? You mean you have a file on me?"

He nodded. "But don't investigate that illegal Maoist party for now."

"Maoist Communist Party?"

"That's right. The group has been designated a terrorist organization by the Ministry of Intelligence."

"Oh."

Ling Liu's heart skipped a beat.

"But we must still investigate. We have a target to hit and an informant who has given us a lead."

He nodded slowly. "But not now, do you understand? This illegal party still has some support and cannot be investigated without an order from the top."

"Understood."

"Also, I must ask you not to share any of this information with anyone else."

"Yes, sir."

"I trust you will not divulge the information you gather in this investigation to anyone else."

"Of course not, sir."

"Very well. You may begin your work."

Ling Liu nodded.

This was why she had come to work for the Ministry of Intelligence.

"No, sir."

"Good. You may leave."

Ling Liu left the room and went back to her office.

She could not believe this.

This was some kind of mistake.

She went back to her desk and opened the folder that her superior had given her.

Inside were three pages.

She read the first page carefully.

It was a profile of the organization that she was investigating.

The Maoist Communist Party.

The information was sparse, but they had compiled a fairly thorough dossier on the party.

The next two pages were summaries of different aspects of the party's work.

Ling Liu was no expert on the history of the Chinese Communist Party, but she had been a member of the party for fourteen years.

She knew the basic tenets. Equality among all people. Opposed to private property. Advocates for the "welfare of the people." Advocates for "agricultural reform." Supports "standing up to American imperialism."

It was all the standard Communist Party rhetoric.

Her eyes scanned the documents.

The party was a tiny one, with only eight members.

The majority of them were based in the city of Guangzhou, where their main goal was to publish a magazine, They had no real power and most of the time remained peaceful, but they occasionally staged protests to draw public attention to their work.

Liu Ling put down the document, she thought of what Machiavelli wrote in the monarchy, that for the Ottoman Empire, everyone was an equal slave except the sultan; therefore, almost no one but the sultan could naturally gain the unconditional trust of the whole people.

Only a tyrant could do that.

She thought how many times she had listened to the party's rhetoric.

Its words had echoed hollowly in her ears.

It said it wanted to make the world safe for democracy, but did it mean anything more than words?

Its members had been peaceful protesters in the Guangzhou Incident, and she remembered how they had been beaten and imprisoned.

Wasn't violence ever the answer?

She picked up the phone and dialed a number.

A woman with a southern accent answered.

"Hello. How may I help you?"

"I'm looking for information on the Maoist Communist Party."

"What kind of information?"

"...Specifically, their plans."

"That kind of information would be within the scope of the Ministry of Intelligence, you should contact them directly."

"I understand. Thank you."

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