Features | Society | East Asia

Understanding China’s Party-State Intelligence System

It’s not “whole of society” – and calling it that risks discrimination against ethnic Chinese.

Over the past three decades, observers have become far better at documenting the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s global espionage and influence activities, from U.S. Navy sailors selling warship secrets and employment ads that presage espionage pitches to the hacking of infrastructure. Hundreds of prosecutions, intelligence assessments, cyber investigations, and indictments have revealed how Chinese intelligence officers and their collaborators recruit agents, acquire technology, conduct cyber intrusions, and pursue influence operations around the world. 

The affidavits supporting these indictments are particularly detailed in the United States. Prepared by experienced FBI and other federal investigators working alongside assistant U.S. attorneys, they often provide unusually detailed, evidence-based accounts of how investigations unfolded and how suspects allegedly incriminated themselves.

This growing body of evidence has transformed our understanding of the scope and methods of Chinese intelligence operations. Nicholas Eftimiades and other researchers have compiled an extensive literature documenting Chinese espionage cases, identifying who was recruited, what was targeted, where and when operations occurred, and what patterns emerged. Their work has been indispensable in demonstrating the scale of the challenge and the economic and national security costs it imposes.

The literature is evolving, reflecting a maturing understanding of the challenge itself. The earliest studies sought to establish that Chinese intelligence posed a significant and growing threat. Later scholarship assembled hundreds of individual cases into an empirical record from which recurring patterns could be identified. More recent work has shifted again, asking a different question: What kind of political and institutional system consistently produces these operations? The field has evolved from documenting espionage to explaining the party-led system behind it.

Building on this empirical foundation, scholars such as Peter Mattis, Alex Joske, Samantha Hoffman, Adam Kozy, and Nigel Inkster have shifted attention from individual espionage operations to the CCP’s objectives, institutions, and organizational mechanisms. Rather than asking only what happened, they ask why the party conducts intelligence as it does, how intelligence activities are organized and directed, and who participates beyond the formal intelligence services.

That perspective reveals something fundamental. Chinese espionage is best understood not as the activity of a handful of intelligence agencies. It is the product of a CCP-led political system that treats intelligence as one instrument of governance. The Ministry of State Security (MSS), the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) are indispensable components, but they operate within a much larger party-state system that integrates political authority, intelligence collection, influence operations, technology acquisition, and selected elements of Chinese society in pursuit of regime security and national power.

China’s Party-Led Intelligence Ecosystem

The MSS, MPS, and PLA remain the principal professional intelligence and security organizations. The MSS serves as China’s primary civilian intelligence and counterintelligence service. The MPS and its subordinate provincial Departments and local Public Security Bureaus focus primarily on domestic security but increasingly support overseas intelligence collection and transnational repression, particularly where local jurisdictions maintain ties to overseas Chinese communities – e.g. the dozens of overseas “police stations” exposed by Safeguard Defenders and others. The PLA contributes military intelligence, technical collection, cyber capabilities, and support to military modernization.

Yet these organizations constitute only the professional core of a much broader CCP-directed ecosystem. Around them operates a network of state-owned enterprises, private technology firms, universities, research institutes, United Front organizations, commercial contractors, and individual “non-traditional collectors.” Recent leaks involving the cyber contractor iSOON and analysis of them by Natto Thoughts illustrated how ostensibly private companies can perform state security missions while providing varying degrees of deniability for government agencies.

Describing this as a “whole-of-society” effort risks overstating the case and alienating diaspora communities needed to resist the CCP’s illegal efforts. The party does not mobilize Chinese society in its entirety. Most Chinese citizens understandably avoid politics whenever possible. Rather, the CCP selectively mobilizes those sectors of society most useful to its objectives – government agencies, technology firms, universities, research organizations, professional associations, overseas organizations, and selected individuals. It is therefore more accurate to describe this as a party-directed, whole-of-system approach than a genuinely whole-of-society one.

The “Why” and “How” of China’s Intelligence Operations

The CCP’s intelligence system serves political objectives before operational ones. At its center lies regime security: preserving the party’s monopoly on political power. Intelligence collection, political influence, technology acquisition, military modernization, and economic development are not separate missions but mutually reinforcing components of a single political strategy.

This integrated approach explains........

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