Ministry of State Security (China)

The Ministry of State Security (MSS) is the principal civilian intelligence and security service of the People's Republic of China, responsible for foreign intelligence, counterintelligence, and political security of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). One of the largest and most secretive intelligence organizations in the world, it maintains powerful semi-autonomous branches at the provincial, city, municipality and township levels throughout China. The ministry's headquarters, Yidongyuan, is a large compound in Beijing's Haidian district.

The origins of the MSS date to the beginnings of the CCP's Central Special Branch, which was established in 1927. It was replaced by the Central Social Affairs Department from 1936 through the proclamation of the People's Republic of China in 1949. In 1955, the department was replaced with the Central Investigation Department, which existed in various configurations through the Cultural Revolution to 1983, when it was merged with counterintelligence elements of the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) to form the Ministry of State Security, marking the first time a Chinese intelligence organ was placed under the State Council instead of the party.

An executive department of the State Council, the contemporary MSS is an all-source intelligence organization with a broad mandate and expansive authorities to undertake global campaigns of espionage and covert action on the so-called "hidden front." Within China, the ministry leverages extrajudicial law enforcement authorities to achieve its domestic objectives: the State Security Police serve as a secret police authorized to detain and interrogate people in what is known as an "invitation to tea." Those remanded by state security are detained in the ministry's own detention facilities.

Outside the mainland, the ministry is best known for its numerous advanced persistent threat groups, some outsourced to contractors, which carry out prolific industrial and cyber espionage campaigns. The ministry has also been implicated in political and transnational repression and harassment of dissidents abroad. Its influence operations, carried out with the United Front Work Department in accordance with the "three warfares" doctrine, have produced some of the country's most pervasive diplomatic rhetoric including "great changes unseen in a century" and "China's peaceful rise." Estimates of the ministry's size range from 110,000 to 800,000 employees, with most of the workforce spread between the dozens of semi-autonomous bureaus across the country.