[Yao Yao Jiang] Why did the Ministry of State Security suddenly become an "influencer"? A three-year plan hidden behind it

This video explores the political signals behind the transformation of the Chinese state security (MSS) in recent years from a clandestine agency into an internet-famous department frequently trending on hot searches. By analyzing the career background of state security (MSS) Minister Chen Yixin, the revision of the new Anti-Espionage Law, and the evolution of the holistic view of national security, it traces how Xi Jinping has expanded the internal political security mechanism. The video further compares Kang Sheng and the rescue campaign during the Yan'an Rectification Movement, discussing whether an atmosphere of universal suspicion is being reactivated.

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Hello everyone, I am Yao Yaojiang. The state security (MSS) was originally an invisible front in China, belonging to a secret agency. However, on July 31, 2023, the state security (MSS) opened a WeChat official account, and from that day on, it would make headlines and trending searches every few days, becoming a genuine influencer department. What political signal does this sudden mutation hide for the ruling machine of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)? What is the underlying logic of Xi Jinping's actions? Today we are going to make some deductions.

The very first article published after the WeChat official account of the state security (MSS) opened stated that counter-espionage requires the mobilization of the entire society, followed by a promotional video answering reporters' questions and reporting guidelines. This was no ordinary propaganda, but rather pushing a secret agency to the forefront. I have listed some of the most impactful titles of this official account over the past 3 years for everyone to experience: Seeing through the spy tactics in campus spring recruitment. This article tells recent graduates that the resumes they submit online might fall into the hands of overseas spies. Then there is another one: A reminder to military fans again. This piece says that military enthusiasts are a high-risk group for military-related leaks. Another one: Beware of the shadows of spies in the comment section. This piece states that overseas spies use comment sections to steal state secrets. After this piece was published, it triggered various comments on Weibo. Some netizens said, could it be that my secret of unpaid overtime on two-day weekends has been stolen? Others said, I haven't been paid for four months, is this considered a state secret? Another one is particularly popular this year: Those who incite lying-flat are busy running off their feet. This piece says that the online lying-flat discourse is funded by overseas organizations, and overseas organizations also fund lying-flat influencers to systematically instigate Chinese youth to all lie flat. There is also an article warning of being turned after retirement, where Feng was sentenced to 6 years and had 500,000 confiscated. This piece tells a real case where a retired elderly person was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 6 years, and the involved amount? Only ¥50 RMB. Yes, you read that right, ¥50 RMB.

Every single one of these articles gets over 100,000 reads! The official WeChat account of the Ministry of State Security has churned out many viral internet memes, and its reach is undeniably strong. For example, the Ministry of Public Security became the Ministry of Propaganda's walking 500,000 RMB. This 500,000 RMB refers to the maximum reward of 500,000 Chinese yuan someone can get for reporting a spy in China. If we observe all these phenomena together, a question naturally arises: Why would a secret agency suddenly start chasing web traffic? Why would a department famous for keeping secrets start frequently calling out to the public? Why would an organization that used to hide underground start actively creating a sense of presence? More importantly, this change was not accidental; it erupted intensively in a very short period of time. From 40 years of silence to high-frequency occurrences, from the secret front to the whole population participating in catching spies, from internal systems to public communication, this change itself is an anomaly. And one of the most important lessons in political observation is that wherever an anomaly appears, there is usually some shady business truly worth investigating.

If we trace further back along the timeline, we find an intriguing coincidence. The Ministry of State Security's WeChat account was launched on July 31, 2023. If we push back another nine months to October 30, 2022, on this very day, the Ministry of State Security completed an important personnel replacement. The former minister, Chen Wenying, left, and the person who took over is named Chen Yixin. Many viewers have heard this name because in recent years, whether in Wuhan during the epidemic, or later in the rectification of the political and legal systems, and the special campaign to crack down on organized crime and eliminate evil, this name frequently appeared in news reports. But if you carefully study his resume, you will find another anomaly. The person who later came to control China's state security system had almost no trace of work experience related to state security in his previous life. Chen Yixin's life trajectory is completely different from traditional intelligence cadres. He studied physics and graduated from Lishui Teachers College. After graduation, he stayed on to work at the school, and then entered the Lishui Prefectural Committee Office. In 1992, he was transferred to the General Office of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee, which is the core writing and document-drafting institution of the local party committee. The first post Chen Yixin entered was research and writing, writing reports and speeches for leaders. In other words, he actually came from a background of wielding a pen.

In July 2003, Chen Yixin was personally promoted by Xi Jinping as the Deputy Secretary-General of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee. At that time, Xi Jinping had just arrived in Zhejiang as the Provincial Party Secretary for half a year. That year, Chen Yixin was 44 years old. In June 2006, Chen Yixin concurrently served as the Director of the Policy Research Office of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee. The Policy Research Office is the think tank for the top leader of the provincial party committee, directly drafting research reports, ideological documents, and internal speeches for Xi Jinping. In other words, Chen Yixin first entered Xi Jinping's core horizon not because he knew how to handle cases, but because he knew how to write materials and could translate the leaders' ideas into documents, speeches, and policy-oriented language. After Xi Jinping left Zhejiang, Chen Yixin transitioned from a secretary position to several prefectures and cities to accumulate a resume, successively serving as the party secretary of Jinghua and Wenzhou. In December 2014, he was promoted to a member of the Standing Committee of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee and concurrently served as the party secretary of Wenzhou, being promoted to the deputy ministerial level. Later on, he was transferred by Xi Jinping to the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission as Deputy Secretary-General, and after the 20th National Congress, he was parachuted into the Ministry of State Security as Minister. So, why did Xi Jinping let a man of the pen take charge of the

Let's take a look at the Ministry of Public Security (MPS). At the time of its founding in 1949, there was a department under the MPS called the Political Security Bureau. When the Ministry of State Security (MSS) was established in 1983, the counter-espionage functions were split off, and the remaining parts stayed within the MPS to continue domestic political security work. After the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, this department was officially named the Political Security Bureau, designated as the First Bureau of the MPS. This department is quite interesting; its history actually reflects the changes in the CCP's political climate, as its name has been changed several times over the past few decades. In 1997, the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China was amended to abolish the crime of counter-revolution, replacing it with the crime of endangering national security. The term "political security" seemed a bit too sensitive at the time, so in 1998, the First Bureau was renamed the Domestic Security Protection Bureau, abbreviated as "Guobao" (Domestic Security). Then, in 2020, during Xi Jinping's second term, the department was renamed again to the Political Security Protection Bureau. This is a cycle of three name changes: starting from the Political Security Bureau, it was called the Domestic Security Protection Bureau for 22 years, and finally, it was changed back to Political Security Protection. It may seem like just a change of a few characters, but behind every name change is an adjustment in the CCP's assessment of national security risks, revealing the trajectory of the CCP's perception of internal political risks.

So, what exactly does the Domestic Security (Guobao) unit, which focuses on domestic political security, do? Simply put, it handles all people and events that might affect the stability of the regime, including dissidents, Falun Gong practitioners, rights defense lawyers, petitioners, NGOs, religious infiltration, risks of color revolutions within the country, and Hong Kong and Taiwan affairs. Almost every police station in every city in China has a corresponding domestic security detachment or political security detachment, and every county-level police bureau has a domestic security brigade. This is a political surveillance network that covers the grassroots level across all of China. In contrast, the responsibilities of the Ministry of State Security (MSS) have been much more stable. From 1983 to 2016, a period of 33 years, the MSS had four ministers: Ling Yun, Jia Chunwang, Xu Yongyue, and Geng Huichang. During their tenures, the role of the MSS was very clear: to operate on the covert front, conducting counter-espionage and intelligence warfare abroad. The people in Chinese embassies abroad who hold titles like "second secretary" or "third secretary" may actually belong to the MSS system. Overseas Chinese associations, student organizations, and commercial intelligence networks have also always been the focus of the covert front. These operations have existed for decades but rarely appear in public news. For the state security system, the greatest success is not making the headlines; rather, it is best to never appear in the newspapers at all. Therefore, for a long time, China actually had these two parallel systems: the First Bureau of the MPS responsible for domestic affairs, and the MSS responsible for foreign affairs. One watched internal risks, the other watched external threats; one was for political security, the other for secret operations. Both sides kept to their own boundaries, and for decades, they could be said to have lived in peace. This pattern lasted until before the 18th National Congress.

However, the 18th National Congress broke this pattern, and the person who broke it was Xi Jinping. Interestingly, Xi Jinping did not adjust the structure first; what he adjusted first was the personnel. Let's look at the timeline: when Xi Jinping took over in November 2012, what lay before him was a legal and political system with extremely powerful authority and a massive workforce. The then-Secretary of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, Zhou Yongkang, had long served as a member of the Politburo Standing Committee. From the police, procuratorates, and courts to the armed police and judicial systems, and even the Ministry of State Security, the entire political and legal apparatus was under this command structure. For any top leader who had just taken office, this was an unsettling reality. On July 29, 2014, the Central Committee announced that it was placing Zhou Yongkang under investigation. A former member of the Politburo Standing Committee was investigated for corruption and serious violations of political discipline. There was no precedent for this in the history of the CCP.

After this adjustment by Kang, the purges did not stop. In January 2015, Vice Minister of Public Security Ma Jian was investigated. Ma Jian was the vice minister in charge of counter-espionage operations within the Ministry of Public Security, having served in that role for nine years since 2006. This was the first time since the establishment of the Ministry of State Security (MSS) that an official at or above the vice-ministerial level had been investigated. Immediately following this, in 2016, the Director of the Beijing Municipal State Security Bureau, Liang Ke, was expelled from both the Party and public office. The Beijing State Security Bureau is one of the most important local state security agencies in the country. The Liang Ke case signified that the purge had extended from the ministry level to the local system. If the first phase was about clearing out the old guard left behind in the MSS during the Zhou Yongkang era, then the second phase began to touch the core of the political security system of the First Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security. On April 19, 2020, Vice Minister of Public Security Sun Lijun was investigated. What made Sun Lijun most unique was not his rank, but his position. He had long been in charge of the First Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security, which is the domestic security (guobao) division we just mentioned. After the Sun Lijun case, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) created a very specific political concept: the "Sun Lijun political clique." When this term appeared, many people within the system immediately realized that the nature of the case had changed. In the Party's political language, a "clique" is not an ordinary corrupt group, but a concept implying political alliances, political organization, and even challenging the authority of the central leadership. The "Sun Lijun political clique" eventually had six people publicly named, all of whom came from the powerful "knife handle" (the security and legal apparatus) of the public security and political-legal systems.

However, the more critical figure was the seventh person, Liu Yanping from within the MSS. We mentioned Liu Yanning before; he was the head of the discipline inspection and supervision group stationed at the MSS by the CCDI and the National Supervisory Commission, wearing two hats: the MSS and the CCDI. The wording in the official CCDI notification regarding the Sun Lijun political clique is quite intriguing. It stated that Sun Lijun had "extremely inflated political ambition," "extremely vile political character," "undermined the unity and solidarity of the Party," "seriously endangered political security," "forgot the major policies of the Party Central Committee," "manufactured and spread political rumors," "took advantage of crises to act," and "controlled key departments." This set of terminology is not standard anti-corruption language; within the CCP's discourse, it corresponds to the suspicion of "usurping the Party and seizing power." These 10 years have told Xi Jinping one thing: he cannot fully trust the political-legal system. The next question is, to whom should he entrust the internal political security he desires?

What Xi Jinping wants is an internal political security mechanism that bypasses the political-legal system, a mechanism directly presided over by people he personally trusts. Although the First Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security is China's largest internal political security agency, it has an inherent attribute: it is part of the Ministry of Public Security. The Ministry of Public Security is a ministry under the State Council, which is a government agency. Government agencies have their own ways of working; for example, when the Ministry of Public Security arrests someone, it must open a case and be constrained by the Criminal Procedure Law. When detaining people, these are the boundaries drawn for public security by China's Constitution and Criminal Law. The domestic security (guobao) units of the Public Security Bureau have operated for decades, and their internal law enforcement has been visible. But the MSS is different; the MSS is on the "covert front," a secret agency. From the first day of its establishment in 1983, its way of working has been non-public. Its surveillance does not require prior public authorization; it can make a person suddenly disappear without filing a record; its counter-espionage trials can even be held in secret; and all its work records can be kept confidential. It is far less constrained by the Criminal Procedure Law than the public security organs. Therefore, when we compare the MSS and the Ministry of Public Security, what Xi Jinping wants is to make internal political security larger, more secretive, and deeper, to legalize surveillance, to make arrests and sentencing opaque, and to make nationwide snitching a daily routine. Using a government department to do this, such as the Ministry of Public Security, involves too many constraints and too many boundaries. So he thought of using a secret agency, which is the MSS, because the tools are more complete, the boundaries are more blurred, and the constraints on him are smaller. Thus, the First Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security continues to manage the on-the-ground law enforcement it has always managed, but Xi Jinping has given the MSS new responsibilities, using the inherent opacity of a secret agency to extend the boundaries of internal control infinitely outward.

This brings us to the protagonist of this episode, Chen Yixin. Chen Yixin served as the Secretary-General of the CCP Central Committee Political and Legal Affairs Commission for four years. As we mentioned earlier, his background is in the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee's Policy Research Office, serving as a speechwriter who drafted documents for Xi Jinping. His years of working experience in the Political and Legal Affairs Commission were, in essence, as eyes sent by Xi Jinping to monitor the legal and political system. In a sense, he understands a bit about the operational mechanism of the "knives" (the security apparatus), but he is much better at the work of the "pens" (propaganda and drafting), which embodies Xi Jinping's profound political mysteries. The expansion of the Ministry of State Security (MSS) toward domestic affairs is not meant to replace the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), but rather to establish a new layer of political security mechanism directly controlled by Xi Jinping himself, placed on top of the Domestic Security Protection Bureau (Guobao) of the First Bureau of the MPS. The First Bureau of the MPS continues to carry out its ongoing tasks—such as arresting people, deploying surveillance, monitoring, and stability maintenance (weiwen)—and they are still doing so. However, the Ministry of State Security has taken over another layer: work that defines daily life as a high-risk scenario, treats online comment sections as espionage scenes, and incorporates retirement, job hunting, playing video games, watching advertisements, and self-media all into the counter-espionage framework.

Xi Jinping's transformation of the Ministry of State Security can be summarized as follows: although he worries every day about domestic economic negotiations and countermeasures, deep down he feels that the threat to his ruling security does not come from abroad—not from the persistent hostile foreign forces unwilling to give up—but rather from the domestic bureaucratic system and the populace. He has weakened the entire external functions of the state while greatly strengthening its internal functions. This is yet another abnormal manifestation of Xi Jinping's national security. Through dissecting the texts of Xi Jinping's speeches concerning national security, we can examine the origins and development of this abnormality. To understand what Xi Jinping wants to achieve regarding national security, we must first look at what the three previous generations of leaders—Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao—wanted in terms of national security, so that we can explain this unreasonable abnormality of Xi's amidst the changes.

On February 22, 1993, China passed its first National Security Law. That year, Deng Xiaoping was 88 years old, having just concluded his Southern Tour one year prior. This version of the National Security Law had a total of 41 articles, with its core definition in Article 2: state security organs are the competent authorities for counter-espionage work. Article 4 stipulates five types of espionage activities, including plotting, subverting the government, joining espionage organizations or accepting missions from espionage organization agents; stealing, spying on, buying, or illegally providing state secrets; instigating, seducing, or bribing state personnel to turn traitor; and other destructive activities endangering national security. This was the national security view of the Deng Xiaoping era. State security organs were like a security guard standing at the front gate; their task was to prevent people from climbing over the wall from the outside to watch the door, and they did not care about what happened inside the house.

The leadership of the Jiang and Hu generations was not unconcerned about the ruling security of the CCP, but their perspective on risks had a distinct characteristic: many problems were seen primarily as development issues rather than security issues. If the economy was faltering, they pursued reform and opening-up; if efficiency was low, they introduced market mechanisms; if there was international pressure, they joined the WTO, attracted foreign investment, and believed that development was of overriding importance. As long as the economy was growing and people's livelihoods were improving, the ruling foundation remained secure. Within this logic, national security was a professional domain, unrelated to finance, industry, culture, or society. The 1993 version of the National Security Law was essentially the embodiment of this logic, and this law remained in use for 21 years.

On April 15, 2014, Xi Jinping chaired the first plenary session of the CCP Central Committee's National Security Commission. This was the first time such an institution was established within the CCP system, reporting directly to the General Secretary. At the meeting, Xi Jinping proposed a new concept: the core of overall national security is that we must adhere to a holistic approach to national security, taking the safety of the people as our purpose, political security as our foundation, economic security as our base, and military, cultural, and social security as our guarantees, relying on the promotion of national security. It sounds like national security is divided into several parallel fields, but the actual effect of Xi Jinping's stroke is not classification, but expansion—it is the expansion of national security. In the past, national security was like a flashlight, shining on spies in the dark secretly photographing documents with cameras; today's national security is like a nationwide surveillance system, which not only looks to see if anyone is breaking in from the outside, but also checks every beam, pillar, and crack in the house. Finance is no longer just a financial issue; it has become a financial security issue. Chips are no longer just industrial competition; they have become a technological security issue. Grain is no longer just agriculture; it has become a food security issue. Online public opinion is no longer just propaganda management; it has become an ideological security issue. Real estate bubbles are no longer just economic cycles; they have become systemic financial security risks. Population decline, youth unemployment, and changes in social sentiment can all be incorporated into the horizon of national security. In the past, China faced a series of specific problems; today, all problems are uniformly placed into a larger framework of security. Behind this change is Xi Jinping's redefining of governance risks. From Deng Xiaoping's perspective, the greatest threat was poverty, so his answer was that development is of overriding importance. From Xi Jinping's perspective, development itself may create risks, capital expansion may form economic power, and traffic lights must be installed for capital; the internet may form uncontrollable public opinion, financial markets may accumulate systemic risks, and reliance on foreign technology supply chains may become a strategic vulnerability. Problems that were previously handled by professional technocrats in various ministries of the State Council were all redefined by Xi Jinping into security issues concerning the life and death of the party and the state.

In a speech on April 15, 2015, Xi Jinping also made another remark: the security of the people is the purpose of national security, political security is the fundamental of national security, and the supremacy of national interests is the criterion of national security, achieving peace and contentment for the people, the long-term governance of the Party, and the long-term stability of the country. The words the long-term governance of the Party were listed for the first time as the ultimate goal of national security, and most ordinary people would misinterpret these six phrases.

In the context of modern political science, political security is generally understood as national stability, social order, and effective government governance, but in the political lexicon of the CCP, political security has a very specific meaning. First and foremost, it refers to the security of the ruling position of the Chinese Communist Party, the stability of the existing political system and power structure, and the fact that the Party's leadership position will not be challenged. Xi Jinping's defining of political security as the fundamental meaning of overall national security means that the most prioritized thing above all security fields is the Party Central Committee. Anyone familiar with Chinese politics should know the Two Upholds and the Two Establishes; after the promulgation of these two highest political discourses, the Party Central Committee is Chairman Xi Jinping. Following this speech, the CCP began systematic legislation.

On November 1, 2014, the Anti-Espionage Law was passed, and on the same day, the 1993 version of the National Security Law was abolished. On July 1, 2015, the newly promulgated National Security Law came out, with eighty-four articles across several chapters. For the first time, it gave a very broad definition of national security in law. The original text is that national security refers to a state in which the state's regime, sovereignty, unity, territorial integrity, people's well-being, sustainable economic and social development, and other major interests of the state are relatively free from danger and internal and external threats. This definition has far exceeded anti-espionage; regime, territory, economy, society, culture, technology, cyberspace, ecology, and overseas interests can all be packed into the pocket of national security.

Articles 8 to 32 of the 2015 version divide national security into eleven fields: political security, territorial security, military security, economic security, cultural security, social security, technological security, information security, ecological security, resource security, and nuclear security. Article 1 of the 2015 version states that in order to safeguard national security, defend the people's democratic dictatorship regime and the socialist system with Chinese characteristics, and protect the fundamental interests of the people, the primary purpose is to defend the regime and the system. Article 1 of the 1993 version only stated maintaining national security. Article 3 of the 2015 version states that national security work should adhere to the holistic approach to national security, taking the safety of the people as our purpose and political security as our foundation. The seven words political security as our foundation from Xi Jinping's speech on April 15, 2014, were written word for word into Article 14 of the newly promulgated National Security Law of 2015 one year later. Every April 15 is designated as the National Security Education Day; this day is the anniversary of the so-called holistic national security proposed by Xi Jinping in 2014.

Two years later, on June 27, 2017, the National Intelligence Law was passed. Article 7 stipulates that any organization or citizen shall support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence work in accordance with the law. Article 14 stipulates that national intelligence agencies may require relevant organs, organizations, and citizens to provide necessary support, assistance, and cooperation, which has become a universal obligation for all citizens. This article is equally valid for overseas Chinese, even if you are a permanent resident of your host country. National security has completed a full path under Xi Jinping, from defending the country to defending the regime, to defending the system, to defending the Party, and finally to defending Chairman Xi. This path also has an invisible accompanying project: the restructuring of the Party-state power architecture. Because when fintech, internet culture and education, and social governance are all defined as national security issues, it is no longer something that a professional department can handle independently; it will likely intervene in everything. For example, many committees have been established, such as the Central National Security Commission, the Central Financial Commission, the Central Science and Technology Commission, and the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission. This series of Party committees is the top-level decision-making platform. The historical precedent for this change is actually very familiar in the political history of the CCP: Emperor Yongzheng establishing the Grand Council. At that time, Yongzheng also had the Six Ministries, but he believed that the traditional bureaucratic system was too slow and unreliable for handling major national affairs. So, he established a small decision-making body next to the Six Ministries that was directly responsible to the Emperor. The various ministries still existed, but the route of power operation had changed. This is the entire national security project that Xi Jinping has completed in 10 years, but there is one thing he has not yet done.

On October 30, 2022, Chen Yixin took over the Ministry of State Security (MSS). The first major task Chen Yixin took on was to revise the Anti-Espionage Law. On April 26, 2023, the new version of the Anti-Espionage Law was passed. Chen Yixin presided over the revision work, and he himself defined this revision as the first comprehensive amendment in the history of the law. The abstract universal obligation in the 2017 National Intelligence Law was concretized this time, namely the mass line plus the people's defense line. The 2023 version also added an entire special chapter called the Special Chapter on Security Precautions. Article 12 in this chapter stipulates that state organs, people's organizations, enterprises, public institutions, and other social organizations shall assume the primary responsibility for anti-espionage security precautions within their units. Every unit has become an anti-espionage agency. This version of the Anti-Espionage Law, revised under Chen Yixin's leadership, has implemented all the key concepts of Xi Jinping's national security, such as the centralized and unified leadership of the Party, the holistic approach to national security, the mass line, the people's defense line, and the primary responsibility of units, all into legal provisions.

After the new Anti-Espionage Law was implemented on July 1, 2023, the legislative project did not stop. The Law on Guarding State Secrets was revised in February 2024, the Regulations on the Implementation of the Law on Guarding State Secrets were revised in July 2024, and on May 12, 2025, the State Council Information Office released the White Paper on China's National Security in the New Era, which is the first national security white paper in the history of the CCP. On June 18, 2025, Xinhua News Agency published an article stating that indirectly assisting espionage activities is also illegal, pushing the coverage of the Anti-Espionage Law one step further. On April 29, 2024, nearly one year after the implementation of the new Anti-Espionage Law, Chen Yixin published an article on the front page of the Central Party School's publication, Study Times, throwing out a new concept: "no worries in the heart." Anti-subversion, anti-hegemony, anti-separatism, anti-terrorism, and anti-espionage; each "anti" is matched with a battle. Anti-subversion is a defensive war, anti-hegemony is a total war, anti-separatism is a proactive war, anti-terrorism is a blocking war, and anti-espionage is an offensive and defensive war. The article has six characters: "digging nails, instantly no worries." The hard core is the holistic approach to national security proposed by Xi Jinping in 2014. Anti-subversion corresponds to political security, anti-hegemony corresponds to international security, anti-separatism corresponds to homeland security, anti-terrorism corresponds to social security, and anti-espionage corresponds to the essence of the Ministry of State Security. The abstract framework proposed by Xi Jinping back then was broken down by Chen Yixin into five specific actions. This chain started from Xi Jinping's speech on April 15, 2014, and landed on April 29, 2024, taking exactly 10 years. Every abstract concept Xi Jinping has spoken about has been turned into specific legal provisions by Chen Yixin, and what Chen Yixin did was not creation, but implementation.

Speaking of this, we have actually seen a complete chain. Xi Jinping first proposed the holistic approach to national security, placing political security at the fundamental position of national security, and then through the 2015 National Security Law, the 2017 National Intelligence Law, and the 2023 new version of the Anti-Espionage Law, wrote abstract political judgments into law step by step. Finally, when Chen Yixin took over the Ministry of State Security, he completed the last mile. It is no longer just a secret agency, but has become a public account, with promotional videos, short video language, the mass line and the people's defense line, and legal tools for the whole population to participate in anti-espionage. As a result, the Ministry of State Security has transformed from a secret front hidden in the shadows into an influencer department that openly incites an atmosphere of catching spies.

The most notable aspect of this change is not how many real spies he has caught, but the social atmosphere of spy-hunting he has created. The so-called 'special' (te) is an abbreviation for 'spy suspect' (tewu); it does not refer to spies whose guilt has been proven, but to people who might be problematic. In the past, spies might have appeared in embassies, military units, or research institutions. Now, they might appear on recruitment websites, social media, comment sections, online games, academic exchanges, or even in ordinary people's social circles, job hunting, dating, retirement comments, gaming, or self-media. These areas, which previously belonged to ordinary social life, are gradually being reframed within the context of counter-espionage and national security. It is hard not to associate this with another scene in the history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP): the 'Rescue Movement' during the later stages of the Yan'an Rectification Movement. That movement did not initially claim to be about creating large-scale miscarriages of justice; the language it used was also about 'investigation,' 'rescue,' and 'anti-espionage.'

However, once the movement was launched, the real logic quickly shifted from catching real spies to catching 'special' suspects. Anyone with a complex background, unclear social connections, someone from the Nationalist-controlled areas, or someone who did not speak with enough enthusiasm could become a so-called 'special.' The most terrifying thing about this 'special' label is that it does not require complete evidence; it only requires that you look suspicious. But it is not enough to understand the Rescue Movement as an invention of the CCP itself, because the political technique of spy-hunting did not originate in Yan'an, but in Moscow. It came from the Great Purge of the Soviet Union and the suppression mechanisms of the Stalin era. The reason Kang Sheng is important is not just because he later presided over the Rescue Movement in Yan'an, but because he brought Soviet purge techniques back into the CCP, with astonishing results. In July 1933, Kang Sheng arrived in Moscow from Shanghai. The extra name he used at the time was Konstantin, and the Kang Sheng that the Chinese-speaking world later became familiar with actually carried the shadow of this Moscow period. That year, Kang Sheng was 35 years old, and his position was Deputy Head of the CCP delegation to the Comintern; the head was Wang Ming. Kang Sheng stayed in Moscow for a total of four years and four months. This time period is crucial because it almost precisely overlapped with the darkest period in Soviet history, the Great Purge orchestrated by Stalin.

On December 1, 1934, Kirov, a member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee and First Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee, was shot at the door of his office. This case became the trigger for the Great Purge. Stalin used Kirov's assassination to turn the 'anti-Stalin conspiracy' into the core charge for attacking rivals within the party. By July 1936, Stalin began to use a term that would later cost countless lives: 'enemies of the people.' From then on, being identified as an 'enemy of the people' was no longer just a political mistake, but an object that could be directly eliminated. In August 1936, the first Moscow show trial began. The defendants were Zinoviev and Kamenev. Both were veterans of the Bolshevik Party and had once stood by Lenin's side, but in the show trial, they were accused of organizing an anti-Stalin conspiracy and eventually confessed voluntarily, only to be executed eight days later. These trials sent a signal to the entire Soviet society: if party veterans could become enemies, then theoretically anyone could be an enemy. The enemy was not necessarily outside the borders; they could be inside government agencies, factories, schools, or even within the highest levels of the party.

By February 1937, Stalin delivered a very critical speech at the February Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). He said that in all or almost all organizations in the Soviet Union, there were, to some extent, sabotage, destruction, and espionage activities by foreign agents. He also said that foreign agents had not only infiltrated grassroots organizations but had also stolen certain important positions. The real effect of this speech was to transform the entire society into a map of suspicion, a signal that all of them had to be investigated. Five months later, on July 30, 1937, the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs of the Soviet Union issued Order No. 00447. This order was the hallmark of the mechanization of the Great Purge, requiring localities to arrest so-called 'enemies of the people' according to quotas. In other words, the purge became an administrative task with indicators, quantities, and deadlines. Whether there was evidence was not important; what mattered was completing the quota. The Great Purge lasted for two years, from 1937 to 1938. Hundreds of thousands of people in the Soviet Union were executed, and even more were arrested, exiled, or sent to labor camps.

But what is more terrifying than the numbers is the social atmosphere it created. Zhukov later wrote in his memoirs that the repressions of 1937 to 1938 created a terrifying situation in the country where people distrusted and guarded against each other, avoiding contact and discussing problems. If they were forced to talk, they tried to have a third person present. People's minds were trained to obey and echo, and even turned echoing into some kind of natural reaction. This is the deepest destructive power of the purge; it destroyed the most basic trust between human beings. When everyone could be an enemy, society no longer needed real enemies, and fear would point at everyone by itself. In order to prove that he was not an enemy, a person would try hard to expose others, and in order to clear himself of suspicion, he would shift the suspicion to others. Thus, reporting others became a form of self-protection, and framing others became proof of loyalty. Once this atmosphere was formed, the secret police no longer needed to personally watch everyone, because everyone would automatically start watching the people around them.

Kang Sheng was not only a bystander in Moscow, but also a participant. One of the most important tasks during his time in Moscow was to investigate Chinese Communist students studying abroad. Among these people, some disagreed with Wang Ming's line, some had intra-party competition with Wang Ming, and some simply had complex historical backgrounds. Kang Sheng and Wang Ming defined all these people as so-called Trotskyists. In Stalin's Soviet Union, a Trotskyist was not an ordinary political label, but a label close to a death sentence. Zhou Dawen was one of the typical cases. Zhou Dawen was one of the earliest students sent by the Chinese Communist Party to Moscow in 1924. He opposed Wang Ming's sectarian line, and was therefore labeled a Trotskyite by Wang Ming and Kang Sheng, and was later exiled to the Siberia region. In 1934, on the Siberian steppe, Zhou Dawen was executed. Chinese Party history left such a record: before his death, what he sang was The Internationale. This detail is particularly ironic. A man who died singing The Internationale was denounced as an enemy of communism by another group of communists.

Therefore, what Kang Sheng brought back from Moscow was a political methodology: first define the enemy, then expand the suspicion; first create a label, then look for confessions; first create fear, then launch denunciations; and finally let the whole society enter an internal circulation of self-censorship, self-denunciation, and self-intimidation. The core of what Kang Sheng learned was not how to catch real spies, but how to create a political atmosphere where there were spies everywhere. In November 1937, Kang Sheng and Huang Ming returned to Yan'an together, and soon, Mao Zedong put him in a crucial position. In 1938, Kang Sheng served as the president of the Central Party School, and in the same year, he also served as the head of the Central Social Department, the head of the Central Intelligence Department, and the deputy director of the Regional Work Committee. By 1942, Mao Zedong appointed him as the deputy director of the Central Study Committee, actually presiding over many specific tasks in the rectification movement. The Party School, intelligence, cadre review, and secret work lines were all concentrated in Kang Sheng's hands at once, and he practically became the core figure of the Yan'an rectification machine.

At the beginning of the Yan'an Rectification Movement, the surface theme was to unify thinking and oppose subjectivism, sectarianism, and stereotyped Party writing, but in October 1942, Mao Zedong added a sentence at the border area senior cadres' meeting: we must pay attention to the anti-espionage struggle. This sentence was a turning point. On April 3, 1943, the CCP Central Committee issued a decision on continuing the rectification movement. The document contained a key tone: the Japanese invaders and the Kuomintang were implementing spy policies on a large scale, and a large number of inner traitors had already infiltrated the CCP's party and government study organs everywhere. The structure of this sentence was almost identical to Stalin's statement back then. Just two days before the release of this document, late at night on April 1, 1943, Kang Sheng ordered mass arrests in Yan'an, and overnight more than 400 people were arrested. Three months later, on July 15, 1943, the organs directly under the Central Committee held a cadre meeting, and Kang Sheng gave a report entitled "Rescue Those Who Have Stumbled." You can see the cleverness of this movement from this name: who could oppose rescue? But the premise of the so-called rescue was to first define a group of people as those who had stumbled, and once they were defined as such, they must make honest confessions and expose others to render meritorious service, and the rescue movement thus entered its craziest stage.

Kang Sheng replicated the Moscow-style purge logic in Yan'an, but he also made his own localized adaptations. He needed a model to tell everyone that confession brought a way out while resistance was dangerous, and that model was Zhang Keqin. Zhang Keqin, originally named something else, was sent to Lanzhou by the Eighth Route Army's Xi'an Office to do underground work after the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War in 1937. In 1939, he was transferred to Yan'an and entered the Northwest Public School. After the rectification movement began, someone exposed him, claiming his father had been arrested by the Kuomintang in Xi'an and surrendered. In fact, this so-called surrender of Zhang Keqin was likely a fabricated list intentionally manufactured by the Kuomintang, but Kang Sheng did not care about these details. For him, the most important thing was not the facts, but the model. After Zhang Keqin was arrested, he was subjected to interrogation for six consecutive days and nights without being allowed to sleep. On the sixth day, Zhang Keqin finally collapsed and confessed that he was a spy sent by the Kuomintang. When the interrogators continued to press him about which organization he belonged to, Zhang Keqin, who had been tortured almost beyond recognition, casually blurted out a name: the Red Flag Party. This Red Flag Party was utterly absurd yet extremely useful; it meant a Kuomintang spy organization disguised as Communists while flying a red flag. As soon as this name appeared, Kang Sheng had an organizational framework that could be continuously expanded.

After Zhang Keqin confessed, his treatment changed immediately. He was no longer interrogated, but instead invited to various units to give reports on how he had defected to the spy organization, how he had operated undercover, and how he had been "rescued." Shi Zhe later described in his memoirs that Zhang Keqin rode a big foreign horse with a large red flower pinned to his chest on the podium. This is the psychology of political movements: turning a forced spy into a glorious model of confession. Once the model was established, the movement gained momentum, and within half a month, Yan'an dug up more than 1,500 spy elements. Hu Qiaomu later gave a total number when recalling Mao Zedong, stating that there were 15,000 spies in Yan'an during the entire early purge period. This number itself indicates that this "rescue movement" could no longer be about catching real spies, but about manufacturing them. Kang Sheng had a saying that well illustrated this logic: he said materials are needed precisely because you are interrogating; it is precisely because things are unclear that people are locked up for questioning, and interrogation is meant to clarify issues. Ordinary judicial logic holds that evidence comes first, followed by interrogation, but Kang Sheng's logic was completely reversed—because things were unclear, people were arrested and interrogated first, and because there was no evidence, interrogation was used to manufacture evidence. At this point, investigation was no longer detective work, but turned into a political movement.

In early 1944, the miscarriages of justice caused by the rescue movement were so numerous that Mao Zedong had to step in to correct the course. He later admitted the mistakes in the form of nine apologies and lifted the labels off many people who had been wrongly targeted. On the surface, the rescue movement came to an end, but this set of political methods was not abolished. During the Anti-Rightist Campaign in 1957, it appeared again; the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976 pushed it to its peak; and the Inner Mongolia People's Party purge from 1968 to 1969, driven by Kang Sheng, Xie Fuzhi, and others, led to hundreds of thousands of cadres and civilians being persecuted, with over 10,000 persecuted to death. Every time, it changed its name, changed its slogan, and changed the label of the enemy, but the underlying logic remained unchanged: first manufacture the enemy, then mobilize the masses, and then let fear self-replicate. By 1980, the Chinese Communist Party finally officially repudiated Kang Sheng. In October of that year, the CCP Central Committee decided to expel Kang Sheng from the Party and remove his ashes from the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery. Kang Sheng's name was also directly mentioned in the indictments of the Lin Biao and Jiang Qing counterrevolutionary cliques. In other words, the CCP itself once admitted that Kang Sheng's system was disastrous and should be liquidated.

Yet the most ironic part of history is right here: more than forty years later, when Chen Yixin wrote the mass line and the people's defense into the Anti-Espionage Law, when he proposed the "new five-antis" in the Study Times, and when he reused language like digging out "nails" and "spies," people found that the liquidated political source code seemed to have been reactivated. Of course, today's China is not the Yan'an of 1943, and Chen Yixin is not simply Kang Sheng in the traditional sense; we cannot mechanically equate the two. But precisely because today is not Yan'an, the problem is bound to be even more serious. The Yan'an of 1943 was merely a base area in northern Shaanxi with limited population scale, limited geographical scope, and limited communication tools, whereas today's state apparatus entirely covers national-level security institutions spanning the whole country, facing a population of 1.4 billion, armed with official accounts, short videos, Weibo trending topics, reporting hotlines, unit responsibility systems, and the new version of the Anti-Espionage Law. The toxic atmosphere of 1943 could only spread through mountain valleys, but today's toxic public atmosphere can spread through mobile phone screens into the hands of every single person.

More importantly, the current mechanism is not isolated. Behind it lies the Ministry of Public Security, supported by local domestic security branches and brigades, the cyberspace administration system, institutional confidentiality responsibilities, and the security and prevention obligations of schools, enterprises, government agencies, and social organizations. If such a system were to truly operate, its destructive power would far exceed the reality of Yan'an. Therefore, what is truly worth questioning is not whether Chen Yitian is the next Kang Sheng, but whether Xi Jinping has reopened the political toolkit of Kang Sheng. There are indeed several alarming similarities between Chen Yixin and Kang Sheng: for instance, neither was a professional intelligence officer in the traditional sense, both entered the vision of the top leader through writing, and both built trust by transforming the leader's intentions into political language. More importantly, both were later placed in powerful positions that should not have been managed by scholars—one in charge of the Central Social Affairs Department and the intelligence system, the other in charge of the Ministry of State Security.

But what is even more similar is their working style. What Kang Sheng truly created in Yan'an was not just a few spy cases, but an atmosphere where secret agents were everywhere; what Chen Yitian has truly created in the Ministry of State Security is not necessarily a few specific spy cases, but an atmosphere where everything is suspicious. Another similarity lies in the nature of the institutions: Kang Sheng led the 'Rescue Movement' using the Central Social Affairs Department, an intelligence agency directly controlled by the Party Central Committee that did not belong to any public government or judicial system, operating without public disclosure or transparent procedures. Today, the Ministry of State Security, which Chen Yixin manages, although nominally under the State Council, is in reality a secret agency directly responsible to the Party Central Committee, with non-public working methods, and counter-espionage cases can be tried in secret. Mao Zedong chose the Central Social Affairs Department to hand over to Kang Sheng, and Xi Jinping chose the Ministry of State Security to hand over to Chen Yixin. When both leaders chose tools to ensure regime security, they bypassed the public administrative and judicial systems and selected an opaque, secret agency.

Therefore, what this chapter ultimately proposes is not a simple judgment, but a dangerous question: after Xi Jinping has resurrected the underlying logic of Kang Sheng's 'spy-catching' tactics, will he create a second Yan'an Rectification Movement and 'Rescue Movement' in today's China? The answer cannot be definitively stated yet, but the risk is already before us. Because once national security is defined infinitely broadly and ordinary life is described as a high-risk scenario, the boundary between catching spies and catching 'special agents' will become increasingly blurred. Then, Kang Sheng will no longer be just a historical figure, but may become a piece of underlying code restarted within today's Chinese political machine. It is not easy to reach the peak against the current. Our channel has finally reached 50,000 subscribers.

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