CHINA-ESPIONAGE AND COVER ORGANISATIONS

In the recent case of espionage in the US, the affidavit filed by the FBI revealed that Mallory told FBI agents in May that he had been contacted in February on a social media site by a recruiter for a Chinese think tank, the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. He spoke on the phone with the recruiter and was then introduced to a potential client, whom he traveled to Shanghai to meet in both March and April." A number of Chinese think tanks are known to "host" or, more appropriately, "provide cover" for Chinese intelligence officers. There are think tanks that are outright owned or part of the intelligence apparatus as analytic or open-source collection officers, like the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (one of the Ministry of State Security (MoSS)'s numbered bureaus, not an external affiliation like MFA's China Institute for International Studies or the PLA's China Institute for International and Strategic Studies. The Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences is joined by other provincial academies of social science and the China Academy of Social Sciences as cover providers for case officers who are directly involved in operations. A few years ago, Taiwan's National Security Bureau privately identified the CASS Institute of Taiwan Studies as the MoSS operational bureau focused on Taiwan. The Center for Asia-Pacific Studies at a university in Guangdong has also been used as cover for military intelligence officers handling assets like Chi Mak, Kuo Tai-shen, Gregg Bergersen, and James Fondren. The Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (SASS) has a direct connection to the Shanghai municipal government, but the local MoSS unit, called the Shanghai State Security Bureau, can use it as a resource and place officers inside it. The SASS also does some research for the MoSS.





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