The contemporary MSS is an all-source intelligence organization with a broad mandate and expansive authorities to undertake global campaigns of espionage and covert action on the so-called "hidden front.

Its influence operations, often orchestrated in collaboration with the United Front Work Department, have led national policy, originating phrases like "China's peaceful rise" and "great changes unseen in a century", which have become staples of official PRC political rhetoric.

[12] Once rarely acknowledged, in recent years the ministry has drastically increased its public profile, publishing a manga series, and a recruitment video starring Li Yifeng.

[7] While its inner workings remain opaque, propaganda posters about national security branded with the ministry's seal are now a common sight on billboards and public transit in Chinese cities, and its daily WeChat posts receive millions of views.

Nonetheless, Teke had to compete with the newly established KMT Bureau of Investigation and Statistics (BIS) under the notorious Dai Li whose nickname as the "Chinese Himmler" lives on for his horrific torture record which included death in excruciating agony and forced heroin overdosing.

[22] Under Dai Li, the BIS created vast networks of 100,000 operatives across and outside the borders of China and mastered new means of intercepting communist communications — an art taught to the KMT by American cryptographer Herbert Yardley for use against the Japanese.

The overwhelming advantages of the KMT were challenged only by the extensive and thorough infiltration of the security services by Teke agents including Qian Zhuangfei, Li Kenong, and Hu Di.

Having been born in Shanghai on "the wrong side of the tracks" according to French author Roger Faligot, Gu lived crudely out of bars smoking opium, having affairs, and joining the Green Gang but made a name for himself as a magician.

[citation needed] While performing the typical magic show for young children that usually covered for his espionage missions, a nationalist informer who had turned on the CCP recognized Gu from a photograph and alerted the KMT authorities.

On 21 June 1931, presumably with help from Gu's defection, the KMT captured CCP General Secretary Xiang Zhongfa hiding in a jewelry store with his cabaret dancer mistress.

[17][22] In 1936, the CCP established the Social Affairs Department (often abbreviated as SAD in English) in Yan'an, Shaanxi to consolidate the party's foreign intelligence and counterintelligence efforts.

Convinced that at least 30 percent of his organization were counterrevolutionaries and spies, Kang established a counterintelligence quota which contributed greatly to the practice of bigongxin, forcing a false confession in order to build a case against the accused.

Following a visit to Democratic Kampuchea by Wang Dongxing in early November 1978, he and head of the new Central Investigative Department Luo Qinchang praised the ten-year friendship with the Khmer Rouge and helped Kaing Khek and Ta Mok to establish the neighboring communist party's notorious S-21 interrogation and extermination camp where around 20,000 Cambodians would be killed under Pol Pot's genocide.

[citation needed] Perhaps by ideological closeness to Pol Pot and his followers, Chinese intelligence under the Central Investigative Department, and consequently PRC leadership, was caught by surprise by the Vietnamese invasion.

[17] There were serious political reasons behind the merger, as Luo Qingchang, who had been Director of the CID since 1973 and was a powerful player in Chinese Communist intelligence since the 1940s, was a fierce opponent of Deng Xiaoping.

The MSS also maintained a number of concentration camps (Chinese: 劳改; pinyin: Láogǎi) where apprehended enemy spies like the Taiwanese "Society of the Continent" network in Tianjin.

The MSS' 3rd Bureau was responsible for nearby areas the People's Republic of China wished to draw back into the CCP's control: Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau.

The 8th Bureau took control over the former branch of the Central Investigative Department called the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR) whose members denied any connections to the Chinese intelligence apparatus.

The so-called Office of Foreign Affairs also took up duties to surveil visiting tourists, diplomats, and journalists who began to enter the country after China's opening to the world.

"[22] One of the longest-serving Ministers of State Security was Jia Chunwang, a native of Beijing and a 1964 graduate of Tsinghua University, reportedly an admirer of the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

[citation needed] He served as Minister of State Security from 1985 until March 1998, when the MSS underwent an overhaul and Xu Yongyue, a former secretary of party elder Chen Yun was appointed the new head of the organization.

[34] Since CCP general secretary Xi Jinping assumed power in 2012, the MSS gained more responsibility over cyberespionage vis-à-vis the PLA, and has sponsored various advanced persistent threat groups such as Double Dragon.

[38] On May 28, 2021, a federal grand jury in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California returned an indictment against four People's Republic of China (PRC) citizens for their alleged roles in a long running campaign of computer network operations targeting trade secrets, intellectual property, and other high value information from companies, universities, research institutes, and governmental entities in the United States and abroad, as well as multiple foreign governments.

Lu Zhongwei was not formally charged, but that incident was said to have infuriated Hu Jintao and led to a tightening on information dissemination and increased counterintelligence activities in Beijing and abroad.

[63] In December 2023, a joint investigation by Financial Times, Der Spiegel and Le Monde reported that Belgium former senator Frank Creyelman accepted bribes from MSS for three years to influence discussions within the European Union.

[64] In March 2024, the MSS warned that overseas intelligences services had used foreign consulting firms as a cover to steal classified information and pose "major risks to national security.

[76]: 121 According to Nicholas Eftimiades, "[o]ne of the MSS's responsibilities has been penetrating Chinese dissident groups abroad — what they call the 'five poisons': democracy advocates, Taiwan, Tibetans, Uyghurs and Falun Gong.

[87] In December 2023, a joint investigation by Financial Times, Der Spiegel and Le Monde reported an agent of the Zhejiang branch of the MSS had been tasked with discrediting German anthropologist Adrian Zenz.

Joske added that "united front networks are a golden opportunity for Party's spies because they represent groups of Party-aligned individuals who are relatively receptive to clandestine recruitment.

[93] Although the Chinese government has not publicly acknowledged CICIR's connection to the MSS, numerous press reports, scholars, and think tanks within and without China have detailed the relationship between the two organizations.