China’s Intelligence Shakeup Boosts Information Warfare
Top general purged in breakup of key electronic spying agency
IN A MAJOR SHAKEUP at the top of China’s intelligence and security apparatus, President Xi Jinping last Friday unexpectedly abolished its key eavesdropping and codebreaking agency, the Strategic Support Force (SSF) and replaced it with three new agencies put directly under the Chinese Communist Party’s military oversight body, the Central Military Commission.
It’s the rough political equivalent of President Biden abolishing the NSA and creating three new powerful spy agencies under the direct purview of the White House National Security Council.
Analysts told SpyTalk that rumors of an intelligence shakeup have been floating around for at least several weeks, but the creation of three separate “forces,” as China calls them, from the SSF, including a new information warfare agency, was a surprise. It reflected Xi’s dissatisfaction with the rate of progress in the development of China’s “intelligentized warfare,” or what the U.S. calls Joint Doctrine, the fusing of ground, air, space, cyber and naval forces operations through digital networks bolstered by artificial intelligence.
The shakeup includes the creation of a new information warfare unit, the Information Support Force, or ISF. It appears to encompass signal intelligence (SIGINT), signal security and network security, while cyber intrusion operations are likely handled by a separate new service, the Cyberspace Force.
China has long sought to unify and add new technology to its traditional military forces. In 2019, the People’s Liberation Army published a national defense white paper, “China’s National Defense in the New Era,” which noted that “War is evolving in form towards informationized warfare, and intelligent warfare is on the horizon.” Now it looks to be standing on the precipice.
The SSF’s leader, General Ju Qiansheng, has been dismissed, the latest chapter of Xi Jinping’s ongoing purge of the party and army. Ju’s deputy, General Bi Yi, will now reportedly command the new ISF, along with a senior political commissar.
Ju has been seen only once since July, performing the relatively lowly task of taking notes on a routine “inspection” of Guizhou province in January. There’s been no word from Beijing on his current whereabouts or status since.
Ju was known to be under investigation for corruption, a former intelligence official from an East Asian nation told SpyTalk, but his punishment was light and he appears not to be under detention. Ju’s removal, and the breakup of the SSF were prompted by discussions last year at the top of the Peoples Liberation Army. Senior leaders, including Xi, were dissatisfied at the slow pace of the SSF’s preparations for future conflicts, as it was responsible for crucial operations in space, the cyber realm, and signal intelligence, the former official said.
Xi Jinping’s wide-ranging purge of the party has been ongoing since his rise to national power in 2012, and in recent months has grown more intensely focused on the military. It has harvested a number of high profile figures as well as thousands of others, including ex-Foreign Minister Qin Gang, the former Minister of National Defense General Li Shangfu, and other top officers, including from the PLA Rocket Forces.
Who’s up and who’s down indicates that the former SSF might have been partly on the right track but moving too slowly for Xi and his preparations to confront the U.S. and Japan over Taiwan.
(Recent news reports say China is close to developing laser beams to replace spinning propellers. ”Theoretically, the development could allow a submarine to travel faster than the speed of sound without producing the mechanical noise vibration that usually gives away its location, according to the researchers,” the South China Morning Post reported.)
Periodic Shakeups
Wholesale reorganizations of CCP intelligence organs have been a regular feature in the party’s history. As described in Chinese Communist Espionage (coauthored by myself and Peter Mattis in 2019), they happened because of an intelligence failure that almost destroyed the party (in 1927), the collapse of clandestine networks in China’s cities (in 1935), abuses blamed on the brilliant but criminal black sheep of CCP Intelligence, Kang Sheng (in 1949), changing international dynamics demanding better foreign intelligence (in 1955), and an unprecedented influx of foreigners and foreign diplomatic missions in China (in 1983).
But under Xi, there have been two major reorganizations of the party’s intelligence agencies in less than a decade.
The first was the 2015 reordering of China’s military regions and the reorganization of the PRC Intelligence Community. It created the short lived SSF, demoted the status of the PLA’s foreign espionage program, and enhanced the foreign intelligence responsibilities for the Ministry of State Security, probably in response to increased intelligence requirements regarding the U.S. and its allies.
Now comes this additional major reorganization, only eight years later.
The three new agencies were announced in an apparent order of seniority, as is the habit of the Chinese Communist Party and the PLA: the Military Space Force, the Cyberspace Force, and the Information Support Force. According to the Chinese media and a press briefing by the PLA, they are drawing their personnel from three departments in the defunct SSF.
Placing these new organizations directly under the CCP’s Central Military Commission gives Xi more direct control over the military’s efforts in information warfare, space operations, and cyber.
“The relative success of the functions they moved under the CMC has convinced them that they will have the control they want,” said Joe McReynolds, a top U.S. expert on China’s cyber operations and a Fellow at the Jamestown Foundation (where I, too, am a Fellow)
A former Western intelligence analyst told SpyTalk that the Information Support Force, or ISF, may be based on the SSF’s Unit 61001, which is engaged in network and signal security work, according to the few Chinese media accounts that have emerged about it. It may also be responsible for SIGINT, though the Chinese media are understandably mum on that sensitive question. Curiously, though, the unit has a social media presence.
Home Movies
“The Eternal Wave” is Unit 61001’s blog on China’s popular social media app Weibo, It depicts sub-units “from the snowy north to the south seas” engaged in generic military training, propaganda performances for the troops, and such benign activities as teaching hygiene to local villagers. It also indicates that the new Information Support Force may continue to employ the 61001 cover designator.
The blog’s prominent photos include a woman operator “on-poz” (on position), in the lingo of SIGINTers, and troops setting up radio equipment in the field. Also included are insights about everyday life in the unit, its nationwide deployment, and the security messages they are pushing to the PLA’s ranks. One is a version of the World War Two slogan, “loose lips sinks ships.” It depicts soldiers tempted by the convenience of their mobile phones to violate security regulations—including a 27-year-old soldier being nagged by his mother to exchange photos with a girl whom she located through a matchmaker. “Don’t blow it,” she tells him. In another vignette, a private is urgently asked by his squad leader to take a picture of a secret document and send it over by text.
The squad leader, of course, is testing the private’s security awareness (and he passes with flying colors. Message: taking a selfie in uniform for a prospective girlfriend is verboten. Even more so, of course, trafficking in classified documents.
Analysts will be closely watching what changes at the top mean for the effectiveness of the party’s military and civilian intelligence organs, and whether these are the final shoes to drop, or the last senior officials to be purged, as Xi Jinping continues to push the party and army toward conflict with China’s neighbors and major trading partners.
SpyTalk Contributing Writer Matthew Brazil is a Fellow at the Jamestown Foundation and a China analyst at BluePath Labs, LLC. With Peter Mattis, he is the co-author of Chinese Communist Espionage, An Intelligence Primer.
"laser beams to replace spinning propellers." Either the writer knows much more about physics than I do (four years at a University) or much less and either way this does not make sense. What do the lasers do?
Thoughtful comments by the author on a somewhat unexpected development that I think caught allot of people by surprise especially those being downgraded. I'm certain there will be many explanations about why this happened from people must closer to the facts than me, but as an old timer I can't help but believe that the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Rocket Force folks never liked the idea of these new "support" guys being their equal.