[7][8][6] The current commissioner of the Intelligence Bureau of the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission is suspected to be Xu Youming (Chinese: 许有明) who took control of the agency upon its establishment in 2016.

[16] From the early 1970s and until the end of the Cold War, beginning with the tactical alliance of Mao Zedong and U.S. President Richard Nixon to jointly oppose the Soviet Union, the 2nd Bureau unofficially collaborated with the American CIA in certain cases, most notably in Afghanistan, where Chinese intelligence (both civilian and military) played a central role in funding, arming and training Afghan guerrillas against the Soviets.

[17] In a joint operation of the 2nd Bureau and the Ministry of State Security, Chinese assistance expanded to eventually include heavy machine guns, mortars, recoilless rifles, rocket launchers and anti-aircraft artillery.

Protected by diplomatic immunity, the two agents, Hou Desheng and Zhang Weichu were asked to leave the country and did so "after finishing their tenures in the United States" according to the Chinese Consulate General in Chicago.

"[25] After providing testimony to the FBI and a House Committee, Chung was eventually convicted of bank fraud, tax evasion, and two misdemeanor counts of conspiring to violate election law in one of the more prominent cases of the 1996 campaign finance controversy.

[28] In February 1999, Chinese citizen Yao Yi, who was in the employ of the PLA's 2nd Department, was arrested by U.S. federal agents for attempting to smuggle back to China fiber-optic gyroscopes vital to missile guidance systems with his Chinese-Canadian associate Collin Xu.

"[29] Yi's arrest occurred just hours after the Clinton administration had decided in a major decision to prevent Hughes Electronics from exporting a $450 million USD communications satellite to an organization with links to the People's Liberation Army fearing the technology would improve the accuracy of Chinese missiles.

[29][31][32] In 2000, head of PLA's 2nd Department Major General Ji Shengde was convicted for embezzlement and bribery in, what was at the time, one of China's most politically sensitive corruption cases.

[33] The case, unrelated to his prior involvement in illegally donating to President Clinton's reelection, stemmed from Ji's acceptance of bribes from China's most-wanted fugitive, Lai Changxing, and embezzlement of millions of dollars from military-run corporations, all while occupying the vital national security post of director of the PLA's 2nd Department.

[34][35] The case, which removed a significant number of senior government officials, led to Lai's flee to Vancouver where he was detained and extradited to China in 2011 on the agreement he wouldn't be executed and was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2012.

[36] Ji's charges included embezzlement of funds appropriated for military-run corporations through investments in the stock market and real estate.

[37] Also in 2007, an operative of the 2nd Department tricked a cleared American intelligence analyst into providing classified information on planned weapons sales to Taiwan.

The Taiwanese-born naturalized American citizen Tai Shen Kuo who had been living as a furniture salesman in Louisiana for more than 30 years convinced Gregg W. Bergersen, a cleared weapons systems policy analyst and director of C4ISR programs at the United States' Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), to share information on all planned sale of weapons and military technology to Taiwan for the next five years and details of Taiwan's Po Sheng communications and defense systems thinking he was providing the information to the Republic of China though Kuo forwarded all the information back to the 2nd Department.