New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. ix, 266 pp. (Figures.) US$29.99, paper. ISBN 978-1-107-60344-8.
Michael Schoenhals’ newest work offers a rich and elegant examination of the surveillance and control apparatus of the People’s Republic of China in the two decades after revolution. Through the compilation of operational training manuals, archival accounts and never-before-seen “garbage materials”—grassroots, gray-market archival materials bought and sold by private peddlers—Schoenhals reconstructs the quotidian texture and day-to-day realities of China’s early surveillance operations. As the functional equivalent of the Soviet KGB, the Central Ministry of Public Security (CMPS) of the Central People’s Government was formally ratified on October 19, 1949, vested with exclusive authority to recruit and deploy agents for domestic operational purposes. How were they identified, trained, deployed and dismissed? How did the scope and influence of this organization change over time? What was the extent of its power and influence in the mid-1950s, at a time when China’s national railroad network alone saw more than ten thousand public security agents serving in a variety of capacities? What ensued in the wake of the Sino-Soviet split, when CCP authorities established their own surveillance textbooks and operational protocols based upon “Chinese characteristics?” What was the system’s fate at the outset of the Cultural Revolution, when Mao Zedong emphasized what Schoenhals somewhat euphemistically describes as the “widespread outsourcing of investigation, interrogation, and similar tasks to organizations of the revolutionary masses” (71–72). Schoenhals addresses these and many other questions, helping his readers gain a much fuller account of Chinese politics and society in the critical first two decades of the People’s Republic.
Schoenhals’ account is peppered throughout with concise, evocative case studies—too abundant to synthesize here—that humanize and enrich the story. One exemplary line of inquiry in the study pertains to the selection and recruitment of operatives at a time of great sociopolitical flux in the immediate post-revolutionary period. The CMPS was committed from its inception to developing what Schoenhals describes as “specialized and entirely covert operational resources” (52), with recruitment of operatives divided between three pools of candidates: the bad guys, the good guys, and those whose political and socioeconomic statuses were still very much in question at the time. The first group, also referred to as the “black masses,” encompassed those socioeconomic classes deemed hostile to the cause of socialism, and in particular, former Guomindang enemy combatants and surveillance operatives. Like many state-builders before and after it, the CCP was determined to leverage rather than eliminate those enemies who could render intelligence services deemed essential for the state’s protection. One prime recruitment area was within the country’s prison system, wherein detained individuals might be offered probationary status provided they were willing to collaborate. Mass mobilization campaigns constituted another prime recruiting ground, as in the October 1950 Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries campaign wherein service to the new regime was sometimes provided as an “exit strategy” to those who had been corralled. Former enemy combatants with known ties to enemy intelligence services were so valuable to the Communist regime, indeed, that they were at times specifically identified as “off limits” during political mass movements, and “de facto enjoyed protection in the course of every political campaign since 1949” (91).
The second group, or the red masses, encompassed members of the Party itself, as well as the Communist Youth League. Ideologically versed and politically committed to the cause, these individuals were in many ways the ideal candidates. In practical ways, however, they often proved less useful than their “black element” counterparts, standing out conspicuously within precisely those questionable contexts and communities they were charged with infiltrating.
The third group, or “gray masses,” was one of the most promising recruitment grounds for the state. Protestant “elements,” for example, could be utilized to infiltrate the Christian communities, themselves already under suspicion and close watch by the nascent regime. Similarly, those with longstanding connections to China’s foreign and embassy communities could be drawn upon to keep close watch on expatriates and foreign diplomats. There was an acute concern with finding operatives from non-Han Chinese backgrounds, as well, particularly in the southwest where Guomindang cells continued to operate between and along the Sino-Burmese border.
The development of surveillance operations involved not only organizational and logistical challenges, but also political and ideological debates. Was the employment of a covert force compatible with the Party’s self-fashioned identity as a revolutionary force of the people—particularly the use of the “black classes” and questionable elements? Was there a place for this form of covert organization within New China? The answer was a resounding yes, and what is more, the CCP proved unwilling to entrust its security solely with this formal surveillance infrastructure. By as early as 1953, the Party had developed its own parallel operation: the “specialized ideological policing unit,” or the Political Department of the CMPS. Among the most surveilled were CMPS agents themselves.
Spying for the People builds upon, and will undoubtedly contribute greatly to, Schoenhals’ deservedly towering reputation as a penetrating and precise analyst of the People’s Republic.
Thomas S. Mullaney
Stanford University, Stanford, USA
pp. 696-698