Country
China
A bifurcated structure — the civilian Ministry of State Security and Ministry of Public Security, and the military-intelligence and cyber capabilities of the People's Liberation Army — under unified Communist Party authority.
The People's Republic of China's intelligence and security services are organised across civilian and military pillars, all answering — formally to the State Council and Central Military Commission, and in practice — to the senior political leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. The Ministry of State Security (MSS), established in 1983, is the principal civilian foreign-intelligence and counter-intelligence service. The Ministry of Public Security (MPS), founded with the People's Republic in 1949, is the domestic policing service with a substantial political-security and surveillance mandate. Military intelligence and cyber operations were consolidated from December 2015 under the People's Liberation Army Strategic Support Force (SSF); the SSF was reorganised in April 2024 into three new branches — the Information Support Force, the Aerospace Force, and the Cyberspace Force — each reporting directly to the Central Military Commission.
The post-2014 establishment of the Central National Security Commission, the 2017 National Intelligence Law, the 2020 Hong Kong National Security Law, and the 2023 revisions to the Counter-Espionage Law together produced the most substantial expansion of Chinese state-intelligence authority in the post-Mao period. The legal framework now imposes obligations on Chinese citizens and entities to support state-intelligence work — a provision distinct from comparable Western statutes and the subject of substantial Western analytical attention. The pattern of Chinese state cyber and influence activity directed at Western governments and economies has been the principal subject of Western public-record attribution for the post-2010 period.
Ministry of Public Security
The People's Republic of China's principal domestic policing service, with substantial political-security functions through its Domestic Security Department and a leading role in mass-surveillance and transnational-policing operations.
Ministry of State Security
The People's Republic of China's principal civilian foreign-intelligence and counter-intelligence service, established in 1983 by the merger of the Central Investigation Department and counter-intelligence units of the Ministry of Public Security.
PLA Strategic Support Force
A 2015–2024 PLA service-level branch consolidating space, cyber, signals-intelligence, electronic-warfare, and psychological-operations capabilities. Reorganised in April 2024 into three new arms — the Information Support Force, the Aerospace Force, and the Cyberspace Force.
How to read a country page
This is the institutional landscape of China's intelligence apparatus as it is documented in the public record. Each card above links through to a full agency profile — the service's founding date, statutory basis, jurisdiction, parent ministry, headquarters, official channels, and a structured account of role, history, and notable operations footnoted to primary sources. The agencies on this page may overlap institutionally (a foreign-intelligence service and a signals-intelligence service often share missions and personnel) and may operate against one another in counter-intelligence terms; the country page does not impose a hierarchy among them, only an inventory.
If a particular operation or scandal is what you are looking for rather than the institutional background, see the Dossiers — long-form pieces that cross agencies and countries. The methodology page documents how operations are categorised as confirmed, alleged, or disputed, and what the public record can and cannot tell us. The Lexicon defines the terms that recur across these pages — HUMINT, SIGINT, covert action, plausible deniability, station, asset, finding.
Coverage here grows as new declassifications expand what can responsibly be said about services that remain partly closed. Some agencies have full reference entries; others are stub entries pending the full treatment. Stubs are kept on the index so navigation between related services is preserved while the detailed text is written.