The Intelligence Bureau of the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission () is one of the People's Republic of China's primary intelligence organizations and the principal military intelligence organ of the People's Liberation Army (PLA).
The organization was formerly referred to as the Intelligence Department of the General Staff Department, the Second Department, or simply 2PLA. In 2016, CMC chairman Xi Jinping implemented substantial military reforms for the armed services, the theater commands, and the Central Military Commission (CMC) that have been compared to the United States' Goldwater–Nichols or Russian Serdyukov reforms. As part of the restructuring of the CMC, the former General Staff Department (GSD) was replaced by the Joint Staff Department (JSD) and subordinate units, to include the Intelligence Bureau, were transferred to the new Joint Staff Department. The Government of the People's Republic of China has not officially acknowledged the existence of Intelligence Bureau.
Overview
Although each of the PLA's military services conduct their own operational and tactical intelligence collection and analysis, the Intelligence Bureau of the JSD is responsible for strategic intelligence collection and analysis, primarily in clandestine and overt human intelligence (HUMINT) operations as well as warning intelligence to the CMC. Other intelligence disciplines such as signals intelligence (SIGINT), and electronic intelligence (ELINT) were previously the responsibilities of the Third and Fourth Bureaus, respectively, of the GSD but have likely moved to the PLA's Strategic Support Force.
The PLA distinguishes "intelligence" (), which refers to strategic, all-source analysis to support national decision-making, from "technical reconnaissance" () which refers to technical intelligence collection in support of military operations. Though the former 2nd Bureau of the GSD was responsible for imagery intelligence (IMINT) through its subordinate Aerospace Reconnaissance Bureau (ARB) which analyzed imagery from Yaogan, Gaofen, and other Earth-observation satellites and Tactical Reconnaissance Bureau which managed strategic, long-range UAVs, these organizations were relocated to the PLA's Strategic Support Force as their role was seen as more supportive of military operations than national decision-making.
The current Commissioner of the Intelligence Bureau of the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission is suspected to be Xu Youming () who took control of the agency upon its establishment in 2016. Xu's position as commissioner of the Intelligence Bureau is, like the existence of the bureau itself, not acknowledged by the Chinese government, but was subtly exposed in an official press release by the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Greening as a participant in a city-wide tree planting event. Prior to his position as commissioner, Xu was a military attaché stationed in the Chinese Embassies in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Brazil and has been referred to by the Chinese government as "a former military attaché of the Chinese Embassy in Brazil" as late as 2021.
The Intelligence Bureau controls several think tanks, such as the China Institute for International and Strategic Studies and the China Foundation for International Strategic Studies, to interact with foreign academics and analysts.
History
In 1931, Zhou Enlai gathered trusted communist comrades that he had personally worked with in Paris or Shanghai to establish an Intelligence Bureau (later called the General Intelligence Department) under its Central Military Commission. The new intelligence service was created specifically to maintain an intelligence body outside the control of the increasingly paranoid and power-hungry influence of Kang Sheng. In 1950, it became part of the PLA General Staff (until 1954 known as the "General Staff of the People's Revolutionary Military Committee"), and was referred to as "the 2nd Bureau" as the PLA adopted the Soviet model of organization.
During the rule of Mao Zedong, and especially under the leadership of General Liu Shaowen (Director of the Intelligence Bureau from 1954 to 1967), the 2nd Bureau was active in funding, arming and training dozens of Asian, African and Latin American militant groups and liberation movements; especially in the case of Africa, the Intelligence Bureau "supplied, at one time or another, nearly all of the various African liberation movements with arms, money, food and medicines". Among those who received military training were Pol Pot (leader of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia) and Abimael Guzmán (leader of the Shining Path in Peru).