American espionage in China
This is a list of activities carried out by U.S. intelligence agencies in Greater China.
Activities in the Republic of China[edit]
Chiang Kai-shek, President of the Republic of China, suspected that the United States was plotting a coup against him. In 1950, Chiang Ching-kuo became director of the secret police, which he remained until 1965. Chiang also considered some people who were friends to Americans to be his enemies. An enemy of the Chiang family, Wu Kuo-chen, was kicked out of his position of governor of Taiwan by Chiang Ching-kuo and fled to America in 1953.[1] Chiang Ching-kuo, educated in the Soviet Union, initiated a Soviet style military reorganization in the Republic of China's military, which reorganized and Sovietized the political officer corps, surveillance, and Kuomintang party activities. Opposed to this was Sun Li-jen, who was educated at the American Virginia Military Institute.[2]
Chiang orchestrated the controversial court-martial and arrest of General Sun Li-jen in August 1955, for plotting a coup d'état with the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) against his father Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang. The CIA allegedly wanted to help Sun take control of Taiwan and declare its independence.[1][3]
Activities in the People's Republic of China[edit]
1951[edit]
In order to open a second front in the Korean War, CIA officers decided to rely upon a second plan. CIA operators were fearful of Mao Zedong's entry into the war and estimated that a substantial amount of Kuomintang Nationalist guerillas were available to work with the agency. They also estimated that Muslim horsemen led by Ma Bufang would be willing to launch attacks against China in its western regions. When both of these efforts proved to be overly projected in terms of success and strategic actualities, the U.S., convinced that a third force was available within China, decided to invest resources into securing such a force to its efforts. In order to facilitate resistance against China's involvement in Korea, the CIA invested over $100 million in buying weapons that would be used by "third force" guerillas in China. The Agency scarcely could find any anti-Mao sentiment within their contacts, however, with the only signs of life being a group of refugees in Okinawa, invariably proven to be a group more interested in obtaining their own goals than in truly assisting the United States.[4]
Eventually, the CIA declassified its records and admitted the failures of the Third Force strategy.[5] The list illuminated a quick study on insurgency failures. According to the documents, the CIA began dropping small guerilla units into China, the first Third Force team having been deployed in April, 1952. All four members of the team were never heard from again. The second Third Force team was made up of five ethnic Chinese agents, and dropped into the Jilin region of Manchuria in mid-July 1952. The team eventually reported contact with local rebel leaders. The team was, unbeknownst to the CIA, captured and turned by the Chinese, setting up the ensuing trap. The CIA responded by sending in a rescue unit, only to have its planes shot down and its principal agents assigned to the mission, Jack Downey and Dick Fecteau, captured.[6] Both men were subsequently sentenced to prison sentences in China. Beijing later boasted of the insurgency failures of their United States counterparts. At that point, the CIA had dropped 212 agents into China, resulting in 101 agents killed and 111 captured.[5][7][8] Michael D. Coe, who had been recruited by the CIA and worked within the agency during the Third Force events, stated that the CIA "had been sold a bill of goods by the Nationalists - that there was a huge force of resistance inside of China. We were barking up the wrong tree. The whole operation was a waste of time."[9]