In recent years, the international community has continued to pay attention to the Chinese Communist Party’s overseas police stations, cross-border intelligence activities, and surveillance and suppression of dissidents.
Countries such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, and others have launched investigations in recent years. Several international human rights organizations have also been closely monitoring the Chinese Communist Party’s cross-border suppression of overseas dissidents.
Against this backdrop, Epoch Times recently released an exclusive report titled “Study on the Structure of the Chinese Communist Party’s Security Apparatus,” which has garnered attention.
Professor Song Guocheng, a senior researcher at the Center for International Relations Studies at National Chengchi University in Taiwan, highly praised the academic value of the report in a recent episode of “News Decoded.” He stated that the report is highly valuable for gaining a deep understanding of the Chinese Communist Party’s overseas infiltration and operations, describing it as an encyclopedia that reveals the evils of the Party.
According to Song, the report breaks through the limitations of past scattered information by synthesizing public documents, leaked internal files, and testimonies from defectors, victims, and eyewitnesses, cross-validating them to comprehensively depict the full picture of the Chinese Communist Party’s security and intelligence system.
He emphasized that the report covers the entire security system of the Chinese Communist Party, including entities like the Political and Legal Affairs Committee, National Security Commission, Ministry of State Security, and even local security units at the provincial and municipal levels. It meticulously analyzes the organizational structure and coordination within the entire command chain.
After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, institutions such as public security, national security, and the Political and Legal Affairs Committee underwent multiple expansions and reorganizations. Particularly since the establishment of the Central National Security Commission in 2013, the security system has further centralized, widely seen as a core pillar for maintaining the Party’s rule. Song believed that the report is the first systematic presentation of the operational structure of this vast system.
Song highlighted three major contributions of the research report. Firstly, it established a significant historical database and evidence base for the Chinese Communist Party’s security system, detailing its operational patterns from the central to local levels, personnel composition, budget sources, and implementation.
When discussing the use of the term “Transnational Repression” commonly used by Western countries like the United States in recent years, Song expressed his reservations. He argued against using the term “repression” as it implies acknowledging jurisdiction or police power, suggesting alternative phrases like “cross-border violence,” “cross-border illegal activities,” or “authoritarianism and exports across borders” but avoiding “repression.”
Secondly, he believed that the research could serve as essential foundational material for international investigations into human rights issues related to the Chinese Communist Party. He stated that the report’s second contribution lies in its potential to promote international investigations and escalate international sanctions against the Chinese Communist Party.
In recent years, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States has investigated the Chinese Communist Party’s overseas police stations in New York. Countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and Spain have also initiated related investigations. International bodies like special rapporteurs at the United Nations and Amnesty International continue to scrutinize the increasing cross-border suppression of dissidents by the Chinese Communist Party.
Song believed that this research report provides structural analysis that offers vital references for Western governments, human rights organizations, the U.S. Congress, and administrative branches, providing justifications for sanctions and furthering international investigations into the Chinese Communist Party’s egregious human rights violations.
The report also exposes how the Chinese Communist Party has established networks of influence overseas through embassies, overseas Chinese associations, scholar and student unions, chambers of commerce, and media, engaging in activities such as intelligence gathering, cross-border threats, political infiltration, and eliciting high vigilance from democratic nations.
According to Song, the most valuable aspect of the book lies in its detailed exposition of how the Chinese Communist Party operates through embassies, overseas Chinese associations, scholars, student federations, chambers of commerce, and media. He pointed out that the Party’s security agencies would establish offices abroad to collect intelligence, track dissidents, and engage in listening activities. Furthermore, their intelligence operations aim to influence American politics and businesses through a form of so-called influence operations.
Song believed that the greatest contribution of this research is in revealing the true nature of the Chinese Communist Party’s grey operations to Western societies.
He described the report as a seminal work that unveils the risks posed by the Chinese Communist Party’s infiltration and subversion through its state security apparatus both domestically and overseas.
In Song’s view, the most significant academic breakthrough of the study is its departure from the traditional reliance on official materials. Instead, it incorporates a significant amount of first-hand testimonies from victims, persecuted individuals, and grassroots law enforcement personnel, forming a “bottom-up” research perspective that not only presents microscopic details but also constructs an overarching framework.
He viewed the report, encompassing topics from detention centers and brainwashing camps to online surveillance, as a comprehensive depiction of the operational image of the Chinese Communist Party’s security system. He likened it to a “encyclopedia of the study of the evils of the Chinese Communist Party.”
When providing an overall assessment of the book, Song succinctly summarized it with four words: “A must-read.”
He concluded by urging everyone interested in international affairs and China-related issues to acquire a copy for themselves, citing the book as the ultimate compendium on the study of all the Chinese Communist Party’s evils, even likening it to an encyclopedia.
“The Study on the Structure of the Chinese Communist Party’s Security Apparatus” is a heavyweight research work recently released by Epoch Times, spanning nearly 90,000 words. It was compiled over several years through data collection and analysis, systematically outlining the organizational structure, operational mechanisms, and social control systems of the Chinese Communist Party’s security apparatus.
The book, authored by intelligence and security scholar Chen Yuqi, delves deep into how the public security, national security, cyberspace security, united front work, and grassroots departments of the Chinese Communist Party collaborate to establish a surveillance network that covers Chinese society and extends overseas.
It reveals how the Chinese Communist Party has permeated political security concepts into social governance, digital surveillance, cross-border repression, and intelligence infiltration.
By combining a plethora of public information, official documents, and case analyses, the study sketches out the organizational structure and operational logic of the Chinese Communist Party’s security system. It offers a systematic reference of research value for understanding its internal stability maintenance models and violations of international law through overseas infiltration and suppression.