Who Were the Leaders of Chinese Intelligence? Part 1, Li Kenong

Li Kenong, George Hatem (Ma Haide) and Ye Jianying in Beiping (Beijing), Summer 1946

In modern times, new recruits to Chinese intelligence are schooled in tradecraft, Leninist theory, and the exploits of their early heroes.  By studying the last of these, it is clear that Chinese communist intelligence has made full use of standard espionage techniques throughout its history.  In other words, China spies a lot like other world powers, with a select few, security-cleared individuals.  It is a fallacy to think that the PRC employs millions of ordinary Chinese to perform espionage across the globe.

One of the most prominent heroes of yesteryear is Li Kenong (李克农, Li K'o-nung, 1898-1962), who rivals the infamous Kang Sheng (康生) as a major figure in CCP intelligence history.  Li led the first important espionage ring inside of the Chinese Nationalist (KMT) enemy in 1930-31 [1].  He rose to the top of the CCP spying apparatus during the communist revolution ending in 1949, and led foreign intelligence in the early years of the People’s Republic.  Li is officially depicted as the loyal, competent, and honorable face of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intelligence, in contrast to prominent villains like Kang Sheng and Gu Shunzhang (顾顺章).  While Li did move CCP intelligence away from secret police activity and toward espionage, after 1938 he strove like any other elite leader to survive by anticipating the preferences of Mao Zedong, and did not hesitate to assist in some of Kang’s, and Mao’s, worst acts.

Li joined the CCP in 1926, assisted the Northern Expedition when it arrived in his home area, and fled to Shanghai after the CCP-KMT split in April 1927.[2]  He performed cultural and propaganda work in Shanghai in 1927-29 with another modern-day Chinese intelligence icon, Pan Hannian (潘汉年).  In November 1929 Li met Hu Di (胡底), a fellow communist from his hometown, who introduced him to Qian Zhuangfei (钱壮飞).  

Why was Qian an important connection?  He had just become the assistant of H.T. Hsu (Xu Enzeng, 徐恩增), the new director of the KMT’s Investigations Bureau, charged with hunting communists.  Before long, Li established a spy ring with Qian and Hu that secretly reported to the CCP Special Services Section (SSS,特科, Teke). [3] The inside knowledge gained by Li and his spy ring may have drastically reduced CCP casualties in 1930-31. [4]  In 1930 Li also recruited Mo Xiong (莫雄), a KMT army staff officer whose information five years later enabled the Red Army in Jiangxi to escape the KMT’s encirclement campaigns and begin their epic Long March. [5]

Idealized portrait of Hu Di, Li Kenong, and Qian Zhuangfei at the time of their operation inside the KMT, 1930-31

But luck ran out on 25 April 1931 with the defection of SSS director Gu Shunzhang, who told the KMT everything he knew, including the true identities of Li, Qian and Hu.  However, the quick action of Li’s ring gave the CCP about 36 hours to evacuate from locations that would quickly become compromised.  The trio are today known as Longtan sanjie (龙潭三杰), The Three Heroes of the Dragon’s Lair. [6]

Years later, Li Kenong was noted by Edgar Snow, author of Red Star Over China, as chief of the "communications department", a cover for his duties as a senior officer in the Red Army Political Protection Bureau (政治保卫局, Zhengzhi baowei ju).  Li further expanded his portfolio during the 1936 Xi’an Incident, taking on a negotiator role for which he later became known abroad: in united front talks with the KMT in 1936-37; in the CCP-KMT negotiations during the 1945-46 Marshall Mission and in the 1951-53 Panmunjom Peace Talks; and during the Geneva Talks of 1954. [7]

CCP intelligence was reorganized in 1939 to become the Social Affairs Department (社会部, Shehui bu).  Li Kenong and Pan Hannian became deputy directors, Pan running espionage work in Japanese-occupied areas, and Li managing the rest of China.  Li established a series of Eighth Route Army Liaison Offices in Nationalist cities, which facilitated CCP-KMT communications during the Anti-Japanese War (1937-45).  Each liaison office had senior representatives for the CCP’s core functions: organization, propaganda, military, and intelligence.  They served as a model for PRC diplomatic missions after 1949, according to Li Kenong’s biographer. [8]

Even as a senior officer, Li took time for occasional operations of his own, such as wooing the third Soong sister, Song Ailing (wife of KMT finance minister H.H. Kung) to support the United Front in 1937.  It was characteristic of CCP efforts to combine united front work with espionage, taking advantage of the intelligence officer’s skills in spotting and assessing candidates for recruitment to the communist cause, arranging secret information exchanges, and skillfully maneuvering someone to the point where discreet, mutual cooperation could be established. [9]

However 1942-44 were also dark years for the CCP’s espionage apparatus, as Mao and Kang Sheng, assisted by Li Kenong, began the Rectification (1942-44) Campaign and the “Salvation” (anti-spy) Movement of 1943, attaining countless false denunciations and confessions through torture. [10]

Kang Sheng lecturing in Yan'an, c. 1943

Opium may have blotted the record of Li Kenong. The Soviet author Peter Vladimirov, who was the GRU representative in Yan’an, wrote that CCP Politburo member Ren Bishi (任弼时) briefed him in September 1943 on the “vanguard, revolutionary role” played by the drug in the difficult economic situation, asking the Russian to solicit Moscow’s understanding.  Li Kenong allegedly played an important role by maintaining liaison with criminal secret societies in the KMT and Japanese areas in order to assure safe passage and sale of the product. Research by the Taiwan scholar Chen Yung-fa two decades after publication of Vladimirov’s Diaries supported the allegations and concluded that exports of the “special product” (特产, techan) from the CCP base area were of significantly higher value than other goods.  While Mao later considered planting this “certain thing” (某物, mowu) to be a mistake, the Red Area economy would have suffered a considerable setback without it. [11]

In December 1943 the Russians convinced Mao, via the Dimitrov Telegram, to cease the anti-spy campaigns.  Popular resentment against Kang Sheng, perhaps their most public advocate, led Mao to publicly apologize for spy campaign excesses and gradually ease Kang out of his top positions, in favor of Li Kenong.  In October 1946 Li was at the helm and guiding CCP intelligence into a new era. [12]

With civil war looming, Li Kenong moved away from internal investigations to refocus on espionage and military intelligence.  He placed a renewed emphasis on inserting “inner line” (内线, Neixian) agents within the KMT, calling an “emergency conference” of CCP Intelligence organs the day Japan surrendered to make that work the top priority.  In addition, he instructed all SAD personnel to seek information on KMT military armaments, movements, plans to reoccupy cities, and offensive strategies. Though the apparatus was slow, or officers were reticent to volunteer for hazardous duty, Li continued pushing for more inner line insertions. [13]

Ultimately the weaknesses on the Nationalist side and the skills of Li Kenong and Pan Hannian resulted in comprehensive penetration of the KMT military and government in 1947-49.  As they did earlier in the decade, the CCP kept hostile intelligence services at bay in their occupied areas, a legacy that carried over into the People’s Republic as foreign services found it difficult to run agent networks on the mainland. [14]

In 1949, Li Kenong wrote an accounting of intelligence work during the revolution that remains classified and unavailable outside of China, but probably informed the work of the CCP historians cited herein.  Before China’s intervention in Korea (October 1950), Mao decided to split his intelligence and security functions into several parts.  The largest was the Ministry of Public Security (August 1949-present), which took over domestic counterintelligence from SAD, abolished at the same time.  Li headed foreign intelligence but it was split into elements under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the CCP Central Committee, and the Central Military Commission, for reasons that remain officially unstated.  The Korean War, the use of Li Kenong as a chief negotiator in the Panmunjom Peace Talks until July 1953, and Li’s heart ailment probably delayed the consolidation that eventually followed. [15]

The year 1955 brought a long-anticipated reorganization, albeit coinciding with a devastating purge of the intelligence ranks. Between March and July, Li Kenong was identified as the leader of a reorganized and consolidated intelligence organ directly subordinate to the Central Committee, the Central Investigation Department (CID, 中央调查部, Zhongyang Diaocha bu). Its personnel were drawn from the military's Liaison Department and the Central Committee.  In September, Li Kenong was promoted to General (上将, Shangjiang). He pursued standardization of tradecraft and improvements in interagency cooperation of the sort we see today in other national intelligence agencies.  However, a stroke sidelined him on 25 October 1957.  Li died on 9 February 1962. [16]

Evaluating Li Kenong is difficult because of the scripted narrative of CCP intelligence aimed at preserving the legitimacy of Mao Zedong.  Li’s accomplishments in the face of ill health seem clear, but had he lived a decade longer, his demise might have been less peaceful.  Two years after the end of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), one of the CCP's surviving elders, Li Xiannian, suggested that if Li Kenong had been alive in 1966, “he would surely have been branded a big tewu” (spy) by leftist radicals.[17]  If Chinese communist intelligence has any major departures from the espionage organs of other countries, it's not their tradecraft - it is the wild ride of the Cultural Revolution, and the burden of Mao Zedong Thought and Leninism itself that still colors their analysis. 

1. Kai Cheng, Li Kenong, Zhonggong yinbi zhanxian de zhuoyue lingdao ren [Li Kenong, Noted personage in the CCP Hidden Battlefront] (Beijing: Zhongguo Youyi Chuban Gongsi, 2011), pp. 1-2.

2. Kai Cheng, Li Kenong, pp. 6-7.   Shen Xueming (ed.), Zhonggong diyijie zhi shiwujie zhongyang weiyuan (Hereafter, Zhongyang weiyuan) [CCP Central Committee Members from the First to the Fifteenth Congress] (Beijing: Zhongyang Wenxian Chubanshe, 2001), p. 322. Donald W. Klein and Anne B. Clark, Biographic Dictionary of Chinese Communism, 1921-1965, Vol. 1 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 509.

3. Kai Cheng, Li Kenong, pp. 7-10.  Chang Jun-mei (ed.), Chinese Communist Who’s Who, vol. 2, p. 438.

4. Mu Xin, Chen Geng tongzhi zai Shanghai, pp. 34-40.  Barnouin and Yu, Zhou Enlai, pp. 45-46. Maochun Yu, OSS in China, pp.34-35; Hao Zaijin, Zhongguo mimi zhan, p. 9.  Warren Kuo, Analytical History of the Chinese Communist Party, Book Two (Taipei: Institute of International Relations, 1968), pp. 55, 92nn 18, 19.

5. “Yifen juemi qingbao cushi hongjun tiaoshang changzhenglu” [Secret Intelligence Prompted Red Army to Embark on Long March], Zhongguo Gongchandang xinwenwang, http://dangshi.people.com.cn/GB/144956/9090941.html , sourced from Shijie junshi zazhi (August, 2012)

6. Hao Zaijin, Zhongguo Mimizhan, Zhonggong qingbao, baowei gongzuo jishi (Beijing: Jinchang Chubanshe, 2010), pp. 10-20.  The “Order the Arrest of Gu Shunzhang…” was issued in Ruijin on 10 Dec 1931, about when Zhou Enlai arrived there.  Stuart Schram, Stephen C. Averill and Nancy Hodes, Mao’s Road to Power: Revolutionary Writings 1912-1949, vol. 4 (Armonk: ME Sharpe, 1992); pp. 163-165. 

7. Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China (New York: Grove Press, 1938), p. 69. Kai Cheng, Li Kenong, pp. 374, 396, 406. Fan Shuo, Ye Jianying zai guanjian shike [Ye Jianying in Crucial Moments] (Shenyang: Liaoning renmin chubanshe, 2001), pp. 197-200.  Chang Jun-mei (ed.), Chinese Communist Who’s Who, vol. 2, p. 439. While in Ruijin, Li Kenong was simultaneously the head of the Enforcement Department of the PPB (Zhengzhi baoweiju zhixingbu buzhang) and of the PPB in the First Front Army. http://cpc.people.com.cn/GB/34136/2543750.html   paragraph 2, and  http://www.xwwb.com/web/wb2008/wb2008news.php?db=15&thisid=95528 , paragraph 8. Accessed August, 2012.

8. The division of their duties may have included some overlap in KMT areas of China, but Pan is clearly identified as having charge of clandestine operations in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and all Japanese occupied and Wang Jingwei puppet government areas.  Military intelligence would have been separate.  Hao Zaijin, Zhongguo mimi zhan, pp. 54, 59.  Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun lishi ziliao congshu bianshen weiytuanhui, Ba lu jun huiyi shiliao, pp. 18, 19, 21; and Zhonggong Qingbao Shounao, Li Kenong, pp. 304-306.  Kai Cheng, Li Kenong, p. 127.

9. Kai Cheng, Li Kenong, pp. 127-129; and Yin Qi, Pan Hannian de qingbao shengya, p. 92. Zhonggong zhongyang wenxian yanjiushi, Zhou Enlai nianpu, pp. 341-371; Kai Cheng, Li Kenong, pp. 127-129; and Zhongguo renmin jiefangjun lishi ziliao congshu bianshen weiytuanhui, Ba lu jun huiyi shiliao, p. 19.

10. Gao Hua, Hong taiyang shi zeyang shengqi de [How did the Red Sun Rise Over Yan’an: A History of the Rectification Movement] (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2000), p. 509; and “Zhongyang guanyu shencha ganbu de jueding” [Central Committee Decision Concerning Cadre Examination] 15 August 1943 in Zhongyang dang’an guan, Zhonggong zhongyang wenjian xuanji [Selected Documents of the CCP Central Committee] (Beijing: Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe, 1992), Vol. 14, pp. 89-96.

11. Vladimirov, The Vladimirov Diaries, op. cit., pp. 100, 154, 218. Chen Yung-fa, “The Blooming Poppy Under the Red Sun: The Yan’an Way and the Opium Trade” in Saich and Van de Ven (eds.), New Perspectives on the Chinese Communist Revolution, pp. 273-275.

12.  Gao Hua, Hong taiyang shi zeyang shengqi de, p. 465. Teiwes and Sun, “The Formation of the Maoist Leadership: From the Return of Wang Ming to the Seventh Congress,” p. 374. Roderick MacFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution 3: The Coming of the Cataclysm, 1961-1966 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), pp. 292-293; Zeng Qinghong (ed.) Zhongguo gongchandang zuzhishi ziliao, vol .4, no. 1 [Materials on Chinese Communist Organizational History] (Beijing: Zhongguo gongchandang zuzhishi ziliao bianshen weiyuanhui, 2000), p. 41; Vladimirov, The Vladimirov Diaries, pp. 486, 488, 514, 517; Byron and Pack, Claws of the Dragon, pp. 189, 192; and Kai Cheng, Li Kenong, pp. 295-296, 364.

13. Kai Cheng, Li Kenong, pp. 266-268.

14. David Chambers, “Edging in from the Cold: the Past and Present State of Chinese Intelligence Historiography,” in Studies in Intelligence, V. 56, No. 3, September 2012 (https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol.-56-no.-3/pdfs/Chambers-Chinese%20Intel%20Historiography.pdf). Interview, 2004.

15. Michael Schoenhals, “The CCP Central Investigation Department—A Brief History,” in 当代中国与它的发展道路 (Dangdai Zhongguo yu ta de fazhan daolu) [Modern China and Its Road to Development] (2010), pp. 252-272.  See http://lup.lub.lu.se/record/1719951

16. Kai Cheng, Li Kenong, pp. 405-408.  Zhu Zi’an, “Chuanqi Jiangjun Li Kenong” [Legendary General Li Kenong] in Dangshi Zonglan [Party History Survey], No. 9, 2009, p. 7.  Liu Runsheng, "Li Kenong" in Wang Qi (ed.), Zhonggong dangshi renwu zhuan [Personalities in Chinese Communist History], Vol. 59 (Xi'an: Xi'an Renmin Chubanshe, 1996) pp. 50-54.

17. Schoenhals, op. cit.