Wikipedia

Guangdong State Security Department

The Guangdong State Security Department (GSSD; Chinese: 广东省国家安全厅) is a division of China's Ministry of State Security (MSS) responsible for intelligence collection and secret policing in the province of Guangdong. Established as one of the original 14 semi-autonomous provincial MSS units in 1983, the department is involved in expansive human intelligence efforts, information operations, and cyber espionage campaigns. It is headquartered in the provincial capital of Guangzhou.

Guangdong State Security Department
广东省国家安全厅
Seal of the Ministry of State Security

Headquarters of the Guangdong State Security Department in Guangzhou.
Department overview
Formed1983; 41 years ago (1983)
JurisdictionGuangdong, China
HeadquartersNo. 163 Dongfeng West Road, Yuexiu district, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China
Department executive
  • Tang Zhenyu, Director
Parent MinistryMinistry of State Security

History

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The Guangdong SSD has been a prominent provincial department since the establishment of the MSS. As one of the original 14 MSS departments established in 1983, Guangdong stood out as one of the largest at the time of its establishment. It remains prominent in the state security system.[1]

The Guangdong SSD is afforded some of the most elite recruits to the MSS, though generally slightly below those assigned to MSS headquarters or the municipal Shanghai bureau or Beijing bureau.[2]

Operations

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The GSSD is prolific in a range of fields of intelligence operations, both within China and abroad. In an anonymous 2021 interview with the Southern Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, the director of the Guangdong SSD described their department's mission as "defending the socialist state power, maintaining social harmony and stability, and protecting the safety of the people's lives and property."[3]

Counterintelligence

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In 2014, the GSSD announced that its counterintelligence unit had disrupted an operation by a foreign adversary which had recruited a Chinese citizen through an online chat room.[4]

Cyber espionage

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BRONZE SPRING

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The Guangdong SSD is understood to be responsible for the advanced persistent threat group BRONZE SPRING, also known as UNC302.[5] In 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted Li Xiaoyu (李啸宇) and Dong Jiazhi (董家志) on an 11-count indictment which alleged that the pair participated in hacking campaigns on behalf of the GSSD conspiring to steal trade secrets and commit wire fraud, commit identify theft, and gain unauthorized access of computers. The government said the pair were first noticed as they penetrated U.S. Department of Energy systems in the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory at the Hanford Site in Washington State but tracked them attacking other targets. They targeted businesses in the tech, education, civil and pharmaceutical industries, as well as U.S. Department of Defense satellite and communications programs. Individuals—including a community organizer in Hong Kong and a former Tiananmen Square protester—were also allegedly targeted.[6][7] The groups targets were located in the United States, Australia, Belgium, Germany, Japan, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Spain, South Korea, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.[8][5] The pair along with additional actors from the GSSD then were identified targeting researchers and organizations working on cures and treatments for COVID-19.[6][9] The group made use of the notorious China Chopper web shell.[8]

Boyusec

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The Guangdong SSD is reportedly responsible for the advanced persistent threat group APT3, also known as Buckeye, UPS, Gothic Panda, and TG-011.[10] The group reportedly made use of the Equation Group tools stolen from the US National Security Agency by the Shadow Brokers. The FBI disclosed the group's suspected headquarters, located at Room 1103, Huapu Square West Tower, Guangzhou, Guangdong.

2018 hack of the US Navy

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Between February and March 2018, hackers from the Guangdong State Security Department compromised the computers of a US Navy contractor, stealing classified information relating to undersea warfare, including plans to equip US submarines with supersonic anti-ship missiles. The hacked computers belonged to a contractor working for the Navy Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, Rhode Island. The contractor improperly stored material relating to the SEA DRAGON supersonic anti-ship missile development, as well as the navy submarine development unit's electronic library, submarine radio room information, information on the navy's cryptographic systems, and signal and sensor data on the contractor's unclassified network.[11]

Human intelligence

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Jerry Chun Shing Lee

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Jerry Chun Shing Lee at the time of his arrest by U.S. federal agents.

In January 2018, the FBI arrested former CIA officer Jerry Chun Shing Lee, charging him with unlawful possession of defense information. He may have compromised the identities of numerous CIA spies in China.[12][13] Lee, a naturalized U.S. citizen, had worked for the CIA with a top secret security clearance from 1994 until 2007. Several years after his departure from the CIA, China began capturing and killing U.S. informants. Officials in the U.S. began investigating whether a mole was responsible for outing the identities of sources working with the U.S. In May 2018, Lee was formally charged with conspiracy to commit espionage on behalf of China.[14] According to the indictment, he met two officers of the Guangdong State Security Department in Shenzhen, and they gave him "a gift of $100,000 cash in exchange for his cooperation", with the promise that "they would take care of him for life".[15][16] Lee received hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash that he deposited into his HSBC bank accounts in Hong Kong between 2010 and 2013,[15] the same time the CIA lost 18 to 20 Chinese informants who were killed or imprisoned for providing sensitive information to the U.S. government.[15] Lee started working for a cigarette company in Hong Kong in 2007, the same year he left the CIA. In 2009, Japan Tobacco International terminated his contract amid suspicions that he was leaking sensitive information about its operations to Chinese authorities. He then set up his own company, also related to the import of cigarettes, which did not succeed. According to court papers, Lee's business partner in Hong Kong arranged meetings and passed messages from Chinese intelligence officers to him. From June 2013 to September 2015, the former CIA agent worked for the cosmetics company Estée Lauder. At the time of his arrest, he was the head of security at the international auction house Christie's in Hong Kong.[15] In May 2019, he pled guilty and was sentenced in November 2019 to 19 years in prison.[17][18][19]

Li Zhihao

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Perhaps the most successful double agent to ever to penetrate Taiwan's Military Intelligence Bureau (MIB), Li staged an elaborate false escape from China by swimming to Hong Kong in the late 1980s, apparently at the direction of the Guangdong State Security Bureau. He was eventually recruited by Taiwanese MIB, and for nearly a decade he operated undercover within Taiwanese intelligence. Li betrayed at least three Taiwanese agents on the Chinese mainland before being caught in 1999. Later that year, a Taiwanese court sentenced him to life in prison. On the eve of the 2015 Ma–Xi meeting in Singapore, Li was traded back to China in a spy swap, in exchange for the release of MIB agents Chu Kung-hsun and Hsu Chang-kuo, who were kidnapped by the MSS in Vietnam in 2006. Taiwanese authorities denied there was an explicit trade.[20]

Shujun Wang

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The GSSD collaborated with the Qingdao State Security Bureau (a subordinate city unit of the Shandong SSD) in handling Shujun Wang as a human intelligence asset in New York City's Chinese dissident community.[21] Wang acknowledged to US investigators that from 1994 to 2022 he gathered information on pro-democracy advocates at the request of the MSS, but claimed that he did not provide valuable, non-public information.[22] Wang passed information to officials at the Chinese consulate and Overseas Chinese Affairs Office.[23] In August 2024, Wang was convicted on four counts of acting and conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government; he had pleaded not guilty.[24][25]

Xu Tianmin

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In the 1990s, Xu Tianmin (许天民), a Ministry of Public Security official who transferred to the Guangdong SSD, was sent to British Hong Kong as a handler for a double agent working for Taiwanese intelligence in the city.[26]

Influence campaigns

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Wham! 1985 tour

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In 1985, the Guangdong International Culture Exchange Center, a branch of China International Culture Exchange Center (CICEC, the cover identity of the 12th Bureau of MSS headquarters) administered by the Guangdong State Security Department, hosted Wham! frontman George Michael during the band's 1985 tour of China. A photo from the banquet shows Michael unknowingly seated beside Wang Shuren, a senior MSS spy who worked in the Chinese embassy in Cambodia before building a specialization in smuggling agents into Hong Kong.[27]

Tradecraft

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For routine corporate matters like purchasing office furniture or contracting builders, MSS officers often use predictable forms of what's known as 'administrative cover.' In casual conversation with a stranger for example, an intelligence officer might claim to work in an unassuming position with the Shanghai Municipal Government Fifth Office. The Guangdong SSD has 18 such numbered offices, which exist only on paper.[28]

Headquarters

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The headquarters of the Guangdong SSD is located in an office tower in the Yuexiu district of Guangzhou. The tower has a helipad on the roof.[29]

Leadership

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The founding head of the Guangdong State Security Department came from a specialized public security unit that ran counterintelligence operations in Hong Kong and Macau, seeking to penetrate rival intelligence agencies from the United States, Taiwan and other nations.[1]

Name Entered office Left office ref. Notes
Zhang Youheng (张友恒) April 1984 April 1987 [30][31]
Ye Jinmei (叶金梅) August 1987 March 1998 [32][33][34]
Huang Guanhua (黄观华) March 1998 March 2000 [35]
Xu An (徐 安) March 2000 unknown [36][37]
Xie Jianhua (谢建华) c. 2001 c. 2001 [38]
Zhang Yuting (张玉婷 March 2008 September 2016 [37][39]
Zhou Yingshi (周英时) September 2016 unknown [39]
Zhao Jian (赵坚) unknown unknown Previously director of the Sichuan State Security Department
Tang Zhenyu (唐振玉) c. 2021 c. 2021 [40]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b Joske, Alex (2023-11-09). "China's State Security Departments and Nationwide System: Insights from Alex Joske" (Interview). Interviewed by Mercy A. Kuo. The Diplomat.
  2. ^ Joske, Alex (2022). "The Revolving Door: Scholars and the MSS". Spies and Lies: How China's Greatest Covert Operations Fooled the World. Melbourne: Hardie Grant. p. 128. ISBN 9781743797990. OCLC 1347020692. China Reform Forum's MSS officers come from the agency's headquarters, where staff are usually the cream of the crop. Many are transfers from other agencies, like the police or military, or top-tier graduates of specialised MSS training institutions like the University of International Relations and other elite universities in Beijing. Capable graduates with local connections and somewhat lower grades might find jobs in Shanghai, Guangdong, Zhejiang and Tianjin.
  3. ^ "国家安全机关是一支怎样的队伍？广东省国安厅有关负责人接受采访_南方网" [What kind of team are the national security organs? The relevant person in charge of the Guangdong Provincial Department of State Security was interviewed]. Southern Daily (in Chinese). Retrieved 2024-12-19.
  4. ^ Mattis, Peter (2014-05-07). "Virtual Espionage Challenges Chinese Counterintelligence". China Brief. 14 (9). The Jamestown Foundation.
  5. ^ a b "BRONZE SPRING (Threat Actor)". Fraunhofer Society. Retrieved 2024-12-19.
  6. ^ a b Roos, Meghan (2020-07-21). "Chinese Hackers Targeted U.S. COVID Vaccine Research, Prosecutors Allege". Newsweek. Retrieved 2024-12-19.
  7. ^ Hymes, Clare (2020-07-21). "Feds charge Chinese state-sponsored cyber criminals who targeted coronavirus vaccine research". CBS News. Retrieved 2024-12-19.
  8. ^ a b "Two Chinese Hackers Working with the Ministry of State Security Charged with Global Computer Intrusion Campaign Targeting Intellectual Property and Confidential Business Information, Including COVID-19 Research". U.S. Department of Justice. 2020-07-21. Retrieved 2024-12-19.
  9. ^ "Targeting of Western entities involved in COVID-19 vaccine development". Council on Foreign Relations. 2020-07-01. Retrieved 2024-12-19.
  10. ^ "APT40 is run by the Hainan department of the Chinese Ministry of State Security". Intrusion Truth. 2020-01-16. Retrieved 2023-08-07.
  11. ^ Smith, I.C.; West, Nigel (2021). Historical Dictionary of Chinese Intelligence (2nd ed.). Rowman and Littlefield. p. 315. ISBN 9781538130193.
  12. ^ Entous, Adam; Osnos, Evan (January 19, 2018). "Jared Kushner is China's Trump card". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on January 25, 2018. Retrieved January 23, 2018.
  13. ^ Goldman, Adam (January 16, 2018). "Ex-C.I.A. Officer Suspected of Compromising Chinese Informants Is Arrested". The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 5, 2022. Retrieved March 4, 2019.
  14. ^ Maza, Cristina (May 11, 2018). "Former CIA agent charged for destroying U.S. spy networks in China". Newsweek. Archived from the original on December 2, 2022. Retrieved March 4, 2019.
  15. ^ a b c d Carvalho, Raquel (May 16, 2018). "Jerry Chun Shing Lee spy trial: China gave ex-CIA agent US$100,000 and promised to take care of him 'for life', US court documents say". South China Morning Post. Archived from the original on December 7, 2022. Retrieved March 4, 2019.
  16. ^ Mattis, Peter; Brazil, Matthew (2019). Chinese Communist Espionage. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 9781682473030. Jerry Chun Shing Lee is a former CIA case officer who retired in 2007 and was recruited by the MSS's Guangdong State Security Department in 2010. According to the affidavit, two MSS officers approached Lee in Shenzhen to offer $100,000. They told him they knew his background and "were in the same line of work" before offering to take care of him for life. Less than a month later, the MSS officers began tasking Lee to collect CIA and national defense information. During a trip to the United States in 2012, U.S. investigators searched Lee's belongings to find notebooks containing classified information about agents recruited by the CIA, agency operational facilities, meeting locations, and operational phone numbers. Lee also provided information about another retired case officer, and the MSS appears to have used that information to approach the case officer in 2013. Lee and his MSS handlers communicated through a series of separate email accounts and phone numbers as well as one of Lee's business associates. The FBI arrested Lee in January 2018.
  17. ^ Hannon, Elliot (May 1, 2019). "Former CIA Agent Pleads Guilty to Spying for China". Slate. Archived from the original on October 7, 2021. Retrieved 2024-02-01.
  18. ^ "Former CIA Officer Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy to Commit Espionage" (Press release). U.S. Department of Justice. May 1, 2019. Archived from the original on November 20, 2021. Retrieved May 7, 2019.
  19. ^ "Former CIA Officer Sentenced for Conspiracy to Commit Espionage" (Press release). U.S. Department of Justice. November 22, 2019. Archived from the original on February 1, 2024. Retrieved 2024-02-01.
  20. ^ Mattis, Peter; Brazil, Matthew (2019). Chinese Communist Espionage. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 9781682473030. Dubbed the most famous communist double agent ever to infiltrate Taiwan's military intelligence bureau, Li betrayed at least three of the bureau's agents on the Chinese mainland before being apprehended in 1999. Li staged an escape by swimming to Hong Kong in the late 1980s, apparently at the direction of the Guangdong State Security Bureau. He was eventually recruited by Taiwan intelligence, which did not discover Li's true loyalties for a decade. In 1999 a Taiwan court sentenced him to life in prison. In 2015 Taipei appeared to trade Li back to Beijing in exchange for the release of two military intelligence bureau officers, Chu Kung-hsun and Hsu Chang-kuo, whom Chinese intelligence kidnapped from Vietnam in 2006. Taiwanese authorities, however, denied there was an explicit trade. Shortly afterward on November 7, 2015, CCP leader Xi Jinping and KMT leader Ma Ying-jeou conducted a scheduled meeting in Singapore.
  21. ^ Joske, Alex (2023). "State security departments: The birth of China's nationwide state security system" (PDF). Deserepi. 0 (1).
  22. ^ Peltz, Jennifer (August 6, 2024). "Man known as pro-democracy activist convicted in US of giving China intel on dissidents". ABC News. Archived from the original on 2024-08-07. Retrieved 2024-08-07.
  23. ^ Tang, Jane; McKelvey, Tara (August 13, 2024). "Five things the Shujun Wang trial revealed about Chinese espionage". Radio Free Asia. Retrieved August 13, 2024.
  24. ^ "Man known as pro-democracy activist convicted in U.S. of giving China intel on dissidents". NBC News. 2024-08-07. Archived from the original on 2024-08-07. Retrieved 2024-08-07.
  25. ^ "Chinese-born academic convicted in US of acting as covert Chinese agent". The Business Times. 2024-08-07. Archived from the original on 2024-08-13. Retrieved 2024-08-07.
  26. ^ Joske, Alex (2022). Spies and Lies: How China's Greatest Covert Operations Fooled the World. Hardie Grant Books. ISBN 9781743797990. Likewise, Ministry of Public Security officer Xu Tianmin (许天民), later a Guangdong State Security Department officer, was sent to Hong Kong to handle a double agent working for Taiwanese intelligence there.
  27. ^ Joske, Alex (2022). Spies and Lies: How China's Greatest Covert Operations Fooled the World. Hardie Grant Books. ISBN 9781743797990. Years earlier, the Guangdong International Culture Exchange Center, a branch of CICEC run by the Guangdong State Security Department, hosted Wham! frontman George Michael on the band's 1985 tour of China. A photo of the banquet held for Wham! shows Michael sitting beside the MSS's Wang Shuren, a senior spy who worked in the Chinese embassy in Cambodia before building a specialisation in smuggling agents into Hong Kong.
  28. ^ Joske, Alex (2022). Spies and Lies: How China's Greatest Covert Operations Fooled the World. Hardie Grant Books. ISBN 9781743797990. Across China, both civilian and military intelligence agencies have numerous units in each major city. For routine corporate matters like purchasing office furniture or contracting builders, they often use predictable forms of what's known as 'administrative cover'. If you chance upon a charming military intelligence officer at a Shanghai bar, she might claim to be from the Shanghai Municipal Government Fifth Office, for example.8 (Shanghai has at least thirteen of these numbered cover offices, and Guangdong has eighteen.) 9 Armed with this knowledge, it's a simple matter of cycling through searches of different numbered offices. Odds are, you're either looking at military spies or MSS spies.
  29. ^ "往上学的路看去". Mapio.net. Retrieved 2024-12-19.
  30. ^ "人事任免 广东省人民政府门户网站" [Personnel appointments and dismissals]. People's Government of Guangdong Province (in Chinese). 1984-04-01. Retrieved 2024-12-19.
  31. ^ "人事任免 广东省人民政府门户网站" [Personnel appointments and dismissals]. People's Government of Guangdong Province (in Chinese). 1987-04-01. Retrieved 2024-12-19.
  32. ^ "广东省人民政府各委办厅局负责人名单 广东省人民政府门户网站" [List of responsible persons of commissions, offices, departments and bureaus of the People's Government of Guangdong Province]. People's Government of Guangdong Province (in Chinese). 1988-08-01. Retrieved 2024-12-19.
  33. ^ "广东省人民政府各委办厅局负责人名单 广东省人民政府门户网站" [List of responsible persons of commissions, offices, departments and bureaus of the People's Government of Guangdong Province]. People's Government of Guangdong Province (in Chinese). 1988. Retrieved 2024-12-19.
  34. ^ "省府人事任免 广东省人民政府门户网站" [Provincial personnel appointments and dismissals]. People's Government of Guangdong Province (in Chinese). 1993-04-01. Retrieved 2024-12-19.
  35. ^ "人事任免 广东省人民政府门户网站" [Personnel appointments and dismissals]. People's Government of Guangdong Province (in Chinese). 1998-03-01. Retrieved 2024-12-19.
  36. ^ "人事任免 广东省人民政府门户网站" [Personnel appointments and dismissals]. People's Government of Guangdong Province (in Chinese). 2000-03-01. Retrieved 2024-12-19.
  37. ^ a b "2008年3月份人事任免 广东省人民政府门户网站" [The Standing Committee of the Provincial People's Congress appointed in March]. Provincial Government of Guangdong Province (in Chinese). March 2008. Retrieved 2024-12-19.
  38. ^ "省政府成立省履行禁止化学武器公约工作领导小组 广东省人民政府门户网站" [The provincial government establishes a province to fulfill the prohibition Leading Group for the Work of the Chemical Weapons Convention]. People's Government of Guangdong Province (in Chinese). 2001. Retrieved 2024-12-19.
  39. ^ a b "省人大常委会2016年9月份人事任免 广东省人民政府门户网站" [Personnel appointments and dismissals]. People's Government of Guangdong Province (in Chinese). 2016-09-01. Retrieved 2024-12-19.
  40. ^ zhuanti (2021-09-09). Warmly welcome Tang Zhenyu, Director of Guangdong Provincial Security Department, and his delegation to visit Futianda headquarters to guide the work! @抖音小助手#团队精神#制造业#团队力量 (Video) (in Chinese) – via Douyin.
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