Ministry OF State Security (MSS) . Chinese Security Agency

The Ministry of State Security (MSS) is the intelligence agency and security agency of the People's Republic of China (non-military area of interests), responsible for counter-intelligence, foreign intelligence and political security. It is headquartered in Beijing.

Article 4 of the Criminal Procedure Law gives the MSS the same authority to arrest or detain people as regular police for crimes involving state security with identical supervision by the procuratorates and the courts.

The National Intelligence Law of 2017 grants the MSS broad powers to conduct many types of espionage both domestically and abroad, it also gives the MSS the power to administratively detain those who impede or divulge information on intelligence work for up to 15 days.

The network of state security bureaus and the Ministry of State Security should not be confused with the separate but parallel network of public security bureaus, administered by the Ministry of Public Security.

History

The headquarters of the Ministry of Public Security near Tiananmen Square are reported to also function as MSS headquarters, but the degree to which operations are run out of the official address of No.14 Dong Chang'an Jie versus the secretive Xiyuan compound is disputed

The precursor of the modern MSS was the Central Department of Social Affairs (CDSA), the primary intelligence organ of the Communist Party of China (CPC) before its accession to power in 1949. The CDSA operated from the communist base area of Yan'an in Shaanxi Province in northern China during the 1937–45 Second Sino-Japanese War. The CDSA provided the CPC with assessments of the world situation based on news reports and furnished the Communists with intelligence that proved important in the 1946–49 Chinese Civil War against the Nationalist forces.

The CDSA was thoroughly reorganized in the summer of 1949. It ceased to exist in name, and some of its most prominent officers were transferred to senior positions in the new Ministry of Public Security of the CCP Central Revolutionary Military Affairs Commission (after the founding of the People's Republic of China renamed the Ministry of Public Security of the Central People's Government). After an extended transition during which segments of the former CDSA came within the purview of the People's Liberation Army, it was fully re-established as an organ directly under the Communist Party Central Committee in 1955, now with the new name Central Investigation Department (CID).

The MSS was established in 1983 as the result of the merger of the CID and the counter-intelligence elements of the Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China. One of its longest-serving chiefs was Jia Chunwang, a native of Beijing and a 1964 graduate of Tsinghua University, who is reportedly an admirer of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He served as Minister of State Security from 1985 until March 1998, when the MSS underwent an overhaul and Xu Yongyue was appointed the new head of the organization. Jia was then appointed to the Minister of Public Security post, after a decade of distinguished service as head of the MSS.

MSS facilities in Xiyuan, Haidian District, Beijing

Mission[edit]

According to Liu Fuzhi, Secretary-General of the Commission for Politics and Law under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and Minister of Public Security, the mission of the MSS is to ensure "the security of the state through effective measures against enemy agents, spies, and counter-revolutionary activities designed to sabotage or overthrow China's socialist system