Xi Jinping consolidates power by elevating intelligence and police chiefs to key roles

Xi named Chen to the Politburo of the CCP’s Central Committee, made up of two dozen members, and Chen was also picked to the seven member Secretariat of the CCP’s Central Committee, which runs many of the CCP’s day-to-day efforts. Chen is widely believed to be in line to now run the CCP’s Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, too.

The commission oversees the Supreme People’s Court, the Ministry of State Security, and the Ministry of Public Security.

The Pentagon said last year the Ministry of State Security is China’s “main civilian intelligence and counterintelligence service” and that it helps China’s influence efforts.

Wang, China’s top police chief, was also named to the Central Secretariat and is part of the Standing Committee of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the CCP’s alleged “anti-corruption” body. Wang is a close ally to Xi and was public security director in Fujian when it was governed by Xi during the 1990s. He went on to run Beijing’s police department before becoming Minister of Public Security.

The appointments were overshadowed by the treatment of Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, during the closing ceremony.

Hu, who led China from 2002-2012, was sitting next to Xi until he was directed out of his chair and somewhat forcibly walked out of the hall. Hu seemed perplexed and unwilling to leave, but he was marched away regardless, as Xi looked ahead.

The stunning move was widely seen as a power play by Xi, although Chinese state media claimed Hu, 79, was ill.

Two security chiefs now being part of the CCP’s Central Secretariat is unprecedented, but not surprising, as Xi solidifies his power.

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Alex Joske, formerly of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and author of Spies and Lies: How China’s Greatest Covert Operations Fooled the World, said Chen is the first Ministry of State Security, or the MSS, head named to either the Politburo or the Central Secretariat.

“Having a high-level backer in Chen Wenqing will help the MSS win resourcing,” Joske, whose book focuses on the MSS, told the Washington Examiner. “As Chinese intelligence agencies seek to exploit big data and artificial intelligence, they’re going to require more funding and access to data and capabilities from across the Chinese government. Chen’s promotion should help the MSS win cooperation from other parts of the Chinese government, which might have otherwise resisted pressure to assist in operations by providing cover and other forms of support.”

Xi stressed “security” in his speech to the CCP Congress this month.

“We must take the people’s security as our ultimate goal, political security as our fundamental task, economic security as our foundation, military, technological, cultural, and social security as important pillars, and international security as a support,” Xi said. “We will take coordinated steps to ensure external and internal security.”

Joske said: “Xi’s extreme emphasis on security and Chen’s promotion will probably give the MSS backing to carry out more extensive and aggressive operations around the world.”

Chen started as a police officer in 1984 and quickly began taking bigger roles in police departments. Just after Xi became China’s leader in 2012, Chen was made deputy secretary for the CCP’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection until 2015 and was picked to lead the Ministry of State Security in 2016, which he has done since.

Chen helped with the massive government crackdown in Hong Kong following the passage of the “national security law” in 2020.

“We are confronted with more and more non-traditional security threats,” the Minister of State Security wrote that year. “Faced with the schemes of hostile forces at home and abroad to challenge our core interests, we have to make a clear stand and be unafraid of showing our hand.”

Joske wrote in Spies and Lies that “a recent deluge of court cases, leaks, and media exposes has revealed the MSS’s appetite for trade secrets, sensitive technology, and intelligence on foreign politics and dissident communities.”

He said: “The greatest of these covert operations was the MSS effort to convince influential foreigners that China would rise peacefully and gradually liberalize.”

FBI counterintelligence leader Alan Kohler said this year that the MSS is a national security threat when it operates in the United States, adding: “The Ministry of State Security is more than an intelligence collection agency. It executes the Chinese government’s efforts to limit free speech, attack dissidents, and preserve the power of the Communist Party.”

The Justice Department has repeatedly exposed MSS operations.

The DOJ announced Monday that three MSS officers were charged “in connection with a long-running intelligence campaign targeting individuals in the U.S. to act as agents of” China, with the officers using the “purported academic institute at Ocean University of China” as cover when they “targeted professors at American universities and others in the U.S. with access to sensitive information and equipment.”

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A Chinese national working as an illegal foreign agent at the behest of the MSS was charged in September, four MSS officials were indicted in May related to an espionage and transnational repression scheme, and MSS spies were charged in March related to using harassment and intimidation to undermine the congressional candidacy of a former Tiananmen Square protest leader who is now a former U.S. Army chaplain.

MSS officers were charged in a host of other criminal schemes, including cyber campaigns and espionage, over the past few years.