The Shanghai State Security Bureau (SSSB; Chinese: 上海市国家安全局) is a municipal bureau of China's Ministry of State Security (MSS) charged with intelligence operations in the country's most populous city.[2] With tens of thousands of employees, it is one of the most aggressive and internationally active units of the MSS, conducting long-term global foreign espionage operations and major cyberespionage campaigns which stretch far beyond the Shanghai metropolis.[3] The bureau acts in concert with the Shanghai Municipal Party Secrecy Committee, and the two represent themselves publicly as one institution, a front called the Shanghai Secrecy Administration Bureau (SSAB, Chinese: 上海市国家保密局).[4]
The Shanghai bureau is one of the most prolific MSS units targeting the United States; it also conducts elaborate operations to target and influence the Buddhist community in Asia.[5][6][3] The bureau maintains an "immense business empire" of front companies in property development, international shipping and telecommunications,[3] and operates at least 18 subordinate branch offices, one in every administrative division of the city.[5]
The headquarters of the SSSB is 1 Ruining Road in the Xuhui District near the Lupu Bridge. The building is bordered on three sides by water, situated at the confluence of the Huangpu river which bisects the entire city, and the Rihui river which serves as the border between the Xuhui and Huangpu districts.[3] The building is a glass high rise office tower with space for 10,000 employees. It is the largest of several large SSSB facilities in the city.[3]
History and domestic operations
The work of the Shanghai State Security Bureau was originally performed by the Investigation Department of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the CCP, which was established in June 1955, this later evolved into the Shanghai Public Security Bureau (PSB) of the Ministry of Public Security (MPS). In April 1984, the MSS was established, taking over intelligence functions previously handled by the MPS. With it, the Public Security Bureau transferred its counterespionage and intelligence components to the new State Security Bureau.[7]
Due to its location in Shanghai, the Bureau benefits from local access to world class universities, think tanks, businesses and infrastructure from which it recruits staff and recruits foreigners.[8]
The listing address of the SSSB is in this former police precinct at 185 Fuzhou Road in the Huangpu District.
According to The New York Times, in 2003 and 2004, the SSSB blackmailed a cryptographer at the Japanese Consulate in Shanghai who had an affair with a prostitute to provide the personal information of a Japanese diplomat. In 2004, the staff member committed suicide. According to a report from the Shūkan Bunshun, a suicide note addressed to the consul general said that Chinese intelligence agents threatened him with providing Japanese diplomatic secrets on the grounds that he had an abnormal relationship with a girl in a karaoke bar, but he was unwilling to sell state secrets.[3]
In recent years it's approached numerous current and retired US government officials, as well as scholars and journalists, successfully recruiting some and paying them to hand over sensitive information.[3]
The SSSB has long been heavily involved in espionage against the United States, particularly in recruiting human intelligence (HUMINT) sources. High-profile American agents of the SSSB caught by US authorities have included Kevin Patrick Mallory, Candace Claiborne, Glenn Duffie Shriver, and Alexander Yuk Ching Ma. The intelligence sought by SSSB case officers in these cases have tended to involve internal US policy deliberations and internal State Department reactions to talks with China.[10]
FBI officials in the Mallory case testified that "since at least 2014, the FBI has assessed that the…SSSB…has [had] a close relationship with Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and uses SASS employees as spotters and assessors" and "has further assessed that SSSB intelligence officers have also used SASS affiliation as cover identities."[10][11]
Sinologist Peter Mattis described the Shanghai bureau's method of recruiting as "a high-volume model of casting a wide net to see whoever they can reel in. If they get one in 10 or one in 20 to bite, that works for them."[10]
Separately, a freelance journalist focused on Asian affairs received SSSB requests for information from the US State Department or National Security Council related to US policy in Burma, contacts with North Korea, and talks with Cambodia related to the South China Sea.[10]
Directors of the Shanghai State Security Bureau
Unlike other MSS components, the SSSB is believed not to provide much upward career mobility to other parts of the ministry. Cai Xumin is the only former SSSB director to have been promoted to MSS vice minister in Beijing, he was later moved back to Shanghai as the city's deputy procurator.[5]
Founding SSSB chief Ding Shenglie (丁升烈) came from a background in the Central Investigation Department. As an ethnic Korean, during the Korean War he had been sent to Seoul to carry out clandestine operations.[12]
