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The Chinese Intelligence Services

Ministry of State Security

The main civilian intelligence service is answerable to the State Council and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Politburo Standing Committee, with a remit to operate both domestically and abroad. Unlike the UK intelligence Agencies, it has executive powers.

SIS has told the Committee that it understands the strength of the Ministry of State Security (MSS) to be in the low hundreds of thousands. In June 2018, a White House report examining the Chinese threat to technology and Intellectual Property cited open source reporting stating that the MSS deployed around 40,000 intelligence officers abroad and more than 50,000 in mainland China.

The vast majority of its work is spent on domestic security and the 'Five Poisons'. It divides its work along thematic lines, headed by individual bureaux.

The People's Liberation Army

The People's Liberation Army (PLA, China's armed forces) has a significant intelligence collection role and answers to the Central Military Commission, which is chaired by President Xi Jinping.

The Strategic Support Force ***, set up in 2016, is China's SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) agency and has responsibility for the PLA's previously disparate cyber and SIGINT capabilities (e.g. defensive cyber operations, disruptive and destructive cyber effects, cyber espionage, SIGINT collection and technology research). It is a highly capable organisation: GCHQ cites China as being "alongside Russia, the most capable cyber adversary we face and they put significant effort into it ***."

*** the human intelligence arm of the PLA, persistently and aggressively targets government, military and commercial interests across the world, deploying *** covert tradecraft. *** *** ***