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, defense of the political security and honor 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 begin with the CCP's Central Special Branch, better known as the Teke, which was replaced by the Central Social Affairs Department from 1936 through the proclamation of the People's Republic 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 MSS.

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: Its 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, often orchestrated in collaboration with the United Front Work Department, have led national policy, originating phrases like "China's peaceful rise" and "great changes unseen in a century", which have become staples of Chinese diplomatic rhetoric internationally.

Once rarely acknowledged, in recent years the ministry has drastically increased its public profile, publishing a manga series, and a recruitment video starring Li Yifeng. While its inner workings remain opaque, propaganda posters about national security branded with the ministry's seal are now a common sight on billboards and public transit in Chinese cities, and its daily WeChat posts receive millions of views. Estimates of the ministry's size range from 110,000 to 800,000 employees, with most believed to be spread across the dozens of semi-autonomous bureaus located across the country.