In the spring of 1922, French authorities in Paris were closing in on a band of Chinese students believed to be planning the communist uprising back home. Among them was a man identified as Stephen Knight, who claimed to be a businessman from Hong Kong. Despite his Englishman’s attire and British passport, Knight matched the description of Wu Hao, a local machinist and principle organizer of the Chinese Communist Party in Europe. As it turned out, “Wu Hao” was also an alias, but it would be two years before the police learned that the two were, in fact, one and the same person: Zhou Enlai, the man who would become the first premier of the People’s Republic of China.
In “Chinese Spies,” Roger Faligot traces the history of the modern Chinese secret service. It is a history of espionage, “first against the French and British in the Shanghai Concessions, then against Chiang Kai-shek ’s Kuomintang and spies from Japan.” It culminates with China’s efforts in waging modern cyber warfare and maintaining what the author argues is the largest—and probably the most assertive—intelligence service in the world. It all began, we are told, with the creation of the Central Committee Special Branch, in November 1927, under the control of Zhou Enlai.
