The Central Social Affairs Department (SAD) () was the intelligence & counter-intelligence organ of the

Chinese Communist Party The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victorious in the Chinese Ci ...

(CCP) leadership prior to established in 1936 and is considered the predecessor of the contemporary Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS), the nation's largest and most powerful intelligence body. The SAD, known at times as the Zhongshebu, Shehuibu, or Zhongqingbu, was composed of a Special Branch, the Political Security Bureau, and the Guard Office.

History

The creation of the Central Social Affairs Department (SAD) followed a decision taken by the

Secretariat of the Chinese Communist Party The Central Secretariat of the Chinese Communist Party, officially the Secretariat of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, is a body serving the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party and its Standing Committee. The secretariat is ...

on 18 February 1939. The decision assigned to the department some five major tasks, including those of overseeing CCP counter-intelligence work and

intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can ...

. An alternative designation of the department at this early stage was the "Central Commission for Enemy Area Operations." The first director of the SAD was Kang Sheng. By the time the

Chinese Civil War The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang-led government of the Republic of China and forces of the Chinese Communist Party, continuing intermittently since 1 August 1927 until 7 December 1949 with a Communist victory on main ...

flared up again after World War II, Kang had been replaced by his senior deputy

Li Kenong Li Kenong (; 1899–1962) was a Chinese general and politician, one of the creators of the security and intelligence apparatus of both the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People's Liberation Army. Notably, he served as Director of the C ...

as acting director. Li was officially department director in August 1949, when the SAD was dissolved and its tasks parceled out to other agencies. After the founding of the PRC, domestic counter-intelligence work was at the central level managed by the Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China, while the task of collecting political and military intelligence overseas was assigned to the Intelligence Department of the Central Military Commission. In 1955, the task of political intelligence work was transferred to a newly created Communist party body, the CCP Central Investigation Department (CID) with Li Kenong as its first director. Today, China's Ministry of Public Security and Ministry of State Security of the People's Republic of China (which succeeded the CID in 1983) both trace their institutional origins to the SAD. Worth noting in an institutional history context is the fact that some of the SAD's sub-national counterparts (e.g., the Department of Social Affairs of the CCP Committee of province X) continued to exist as party bodies for quite some time after the founding of the PRC. In the

Tibet Autonomous Region The Tibet Autonomous Region or Xizang Autonomous Region, often shortened to Tibet or Xizang, is a province-level autonomous region of the People's Republic of China in Southwest China. It was overlayed on the traditional Tibetan regions ...

, the Department of Social Affairs of the regional CCP Committee (orig. Work Committee) was not abolished until 2 May 1961.

Leadership

Directors: Kang Sheng (October 1939 – 1948?),

(acting dir. May 1948-?; - May 1951?) Deputy directors:

Kong Yuan Kong may refer to: Places * Kong Empire (1710–1895), a former African state covering north-eastern Côte d'Ivoire and much of Burkina Faso * Kong, Iran, a city on the Persian Gulf * Kong, Shandong (), a town in Laoling, Shandong, China * Kong, ...

(October 1939-),

Pan Hannian Pan Hannian (; 18 January 1906 – 14 April 1977) was a major figure in the Chinese Communist intelligence by the early 1930s and until 1955. He began his work with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1926 as a propagandist with the editorial dep ...

(October 1939-),

(March 1941-), Chen Gang (November 1945-August 1949),

Tan Zhengwen Tan or TAN may refer to: Businesses and organisations * Black and Tans, a nickname for British special constables during the Irish War of Independence. By extension "Tans" can now also colloquially refer to English or British people in general, es ...

(June 1948-November 1949),

Liu Shaowen / ( or ) is an East Asian surname. pinyin: in Mandarin Chinese, in Cantonese. It is the family name of the Han dynasty emperors. The character originally meant 'kill', but is now used only as a surname. It is listed 252nd in the classic text ...

(May 1948-)

References

Citations

Sources

* Wang Jianying (ed.), "中国共产党组织史资料汇编" (''Collected Material on the Organizational History of the Chinese Communist Party''), revised and expanded edition. Beijing: Zhonggong Zhongyang Dangxiao Chubanshe, 1995. * "中国人民公安史稿" (''Draft History of China People's Public Security''). Beijing: Jingguan Jiaoyu Chubanshe, 1997. Chinese intelligence agencies History of the Chinese Communist Party Organization of the Chinese Communist Party {{espionage-stub