Over the next few years there were a series of other failed penetrations. Among them was the Chinese refugee MITOU, former head of the Department of Chinese Literature at a technical institute, who had fled to the Soviet Union in 1968 at the height of the Cultural Revolution when centres of higher education were closed for several years. After being recruited as a KGB agent and trained in the use of dead letter-boxes (DLBs), radio communication, ciphers and photography, he was smuggled into the XUAR across the Mongolian frontier in August 1971. Though MITOU collected money and food coupons which had been left for him in a DLB, no more was heard from him. His file concludes that he was probably too frightened to carry on working as an agent.57 LIVENTSOV was another Chinese agent infiltrated into the XUAR through Mongolia. In 1972 he was used for operation STRELA which was intended to carry out visual reconnaissance of nuclear and defence industry plants. He was taught to distinguish different kinds of smoke and effluents from factory chimneys, take soil and water samples and make careful notes of what he observed. As in the case of MITOU, however, LIVENTSOV’s deployment ended in complete failure.58
Probably because of the high failure rate among Chinese agents infiltrated over the border, the KGB devised an unusual method of testing their reliability under operational conditions. In operation ZENIT the agents being tested were told they would be crossing the Chinese border in an area near the Ussuri river first to locate a DLB and replace a malfunctioning radio which had been left in it with a working model, then to meet an agent operating inside China at a pre-arranged location in order to pass on instructions. The agents being tested, however, were unaware that the area where they were carrying out these operations was actually inside the Soviet Union and that they were being closely observed from surveillance posts equipped with night-vision equipment and tape recorders. ZENIT was one of five border zones in which similar tests took place. In 1974 sixty-six agents were put through their paces; in 1975 their number rose to 107.59 In addition to sending agents on foot across remote areas of China’s northern borders, the KGB also investigated two other methods of infiltration: by sea using inflatable dinghies which could be hidden after landing and, more ingeniously, by concealing an agent in the ventilation pipe of the mail carriages of trains crossing the Chinese border. The latter method was thought to be practicable only in summer because of the danger in winter that the agent would freeze to death.60 The files seen by Mitrokhin do not make clear whether either of these methods was actually used.
Operational conditions in the PRC were simply too difficult for cross-border infiltration by any route to achieve significant success. As Jung Chang was later to write in Wild Swans, ‘The whole of China was like a prison. Every house, every street was watched by the people themselves. In this vast land there was nowhere to hide.’61 Strangers and strange behaviour quickly aroused suspicion. A Chinese agent smuggled across the Amur river in the Soviet Far East after a ten-year absence from the PRC discovered that the cigarettes he had been given to take with him were now available only in hard-currency shops reserved for foreigners. He made the further mistake, when out of cigarettes, of asking strangers for a smoke - a habit he had picked up in the Soviet Union which immediately attracted attention in the PRC. Having become accustomed to the metric system, the agent also ran into difficulties with Chinese weights and measures and found himself hesitating in mid-sentence while he attempted the necessary mental arithmetic. Even asking for directions caused problems. In Russia he had learned to think in terms of ‘left’ and ‘right’, instead of referring to points of the compass as was usual in China. On one occasion, when told that the entrance to an eating place was the south door, he asked where the south door was - only to be informed that it was opposite the north door.62
Probably late in 1973 the Centre sent a directive to residencies around the world entitled ‘Measures designed to improve work against China from third countries’ during the period 1974-78. Residencies were instructed to cultivate PRC citizens living abroad, as well as members of the Chinese diaspora, Taiwanese citizens and foreigners with contacts in the PRC. They were also told to penetrate Maoist groups and centres of Chinese studies, to plant ‘operational devices’ (bugs) on appropriate cultivation targets, identify active-measures channels and report on agents who could be sent on missions to the PRC.63 The KGB residency in Prague reported in 1975 that it was using thirty agents to cultivate the Chinese embassy. Of seventy-two Czechoslovak citizens who attended a reception at the embassy in October 1975 to mark the anniversary of the foundation of the PR C, twenty-three were agents of the KGB or the Czechoslovak StB.64 There is no evidence in any of the files noted by Mitrokhin that either this or any similar cultivation achieved any significant results. Most Chinese embassies appear to have proved as difficult targets as the PRC itself.
Unsurprisingly, the files seen by Mitrokhin do not identify a single KGB agent in Beijing with access to classified Chinese documents. The Beijing residency did, however, obtain some material from a senior disaffected North Korean diplomat codenamed FENIKS, who was privately critical of the Mao cult (and, no doubt, the even more preposterous cult of Kim Il Sung in North Korea). A Line PR officer under diplomatic cover, A. A. Zhemchugov, began cultivating FENIKS at diplomatic receptions and in the course of other routine diplomatic contacts. On several occasions Zhemchugov arranged for them to meet in his apartment. The residency reported that FENIKS showed great skill in disguising the purpose of his contacts with Zhemchugov, maintained careful security and appeared confident and calm during their meetings, which gradually increased in frequency. Due to the close relations between the Beijing and Pyongyang regimes in the mid-1970s, the North Korean embassy was given copies of a series of secret Chinese Central Committee documents, some of which were passed on by FENIKS. Among other material which he provided was a letter from the Politburo member Yao Wenyuan, later to become infamous after Mao’s death as one of the disgraced ‘Gang of Four’. Though documents supplied by FENIKS were cited in a number of KGB reports to the Politburo, he made clear to Zhemchugov that he wished to preserve his freedom of action and was not prepared to become a KGB agent. None the less, because of his willingness to supply classified material and from 1976 to have clandestine contact with a case officer, FENIKS was classed from that year as a confidential contact. From November 1976 he passed material to Zhemchugov during brush contacts in a Beijing department store. 65
In the summer of 1976, with Mao’s death correctly judged to be imminent, the Politburo set up a high-level commission to assess the future of Sino-Soviet relations. Chaired by the chief Party ideologist, Mikhail Suslov (then considered Brezhnev’s most likely successor), the commission also included Gromyko, the Foreign Minister, Ustinov, the Defence Minister, Andropov, the KGB Chairman, and Konstantin Chernenko, then head of the Central Committee General Department which, despite its innocuous name, controlled the Party’s secret archives. Following Mao’s death on 9 September, Soviet press attacks on China were suspended until the policy of his successors had been clarified. KGB residencies around the world were instructed to report any sign of changed attitudes towards the Soviet Union by Chinese officials66 and sent a lengthy brief ‘On certain national-psychological characteristics of the Chinese and their evaluation in the context of intelligence work’ which was intended to improve the dismal level of agent recruitment:
Experience has shown that success in agent-operational work with persons of Chinese nationality depends to a large extent on the possession by intelligence personnel of a sound knowledge of their national-psychological peculiarities. A sound appreciation of the traits of the Chinese national character is essential for the study of potentially interesting sources of information, for progress towards a satisfactory recruitment, and for agent running.
Though emphasizing the importance of ‘establishing a solid, friendly relationship with the Chinese based on respect for the individual and Chinese culture’, the brief simultaneously made clear the Centre’s loathing for the citiz
ens of the PRC. They were, the brief reported, deeply imbued with an egocentric view of the world; became ‘uncontrollable’ when their pride was hurt; were ‘distinguished by their hot temper, great excitability, and a tendency to sudden changes from one extreme to another’; possessed an innate ability to dissemble which made them ‘a nation of actors’; had characters in which, in most cases, ‘the negative qualities of perfidiousness, cruelty and anger are inherent’; were ‘noted for their spitefulness’; and were indifferent to the misery and misfortunes of other people. Because of the obsession with ‘loss of face’, however, ‘the use of compromising material is a strong lever to make a Chinese collaborate’.67 Similar views, enlivened by the swear words in which the Russian language is unusually rich, were common in conversations about China at the Centre. Underlying the KGB’s attitude to the PRC was thinly disguised racial loathing as well as ideological and strategic rivalry.
Less than a month after Mao’s death, his widow Jiang Qing and her main radical associates, the so-called ‘Gang of Four’, were arrested and denounced as traitors in the service of the Chinese Nationalists. KGB officers must privately have recalled the equally absurd claim in Moscow after Beria’s arrest and execution that he had been a British agent. Over the next few years, as the Cultural Revolution was finally brought to a conclusion, the Gang of Four became convenient if improbable scapegoats for all the horrors of the Mao regime which could be publicly acknowledged. As the BBC correspondent, Philip Short, noted:
Every Chinese official knew that the ‘Gang of Four’ had been Mao’s closest followers; and every Chinese official without exception depicted them as Mao’s most vicious enemies . . . Every official conversation began with the words, ‘Because of the interference and sabotage of the Gang of Four . . .’ - followed by a litany of the sins they were alleged to have committed.68
Service A attempted to cause confusion among Maoist parties outside China by fabricating a final testament from Mao to Jiang Qing calling on her to ‘continue the work I had started’. The forgery was circulated in the name of supporters of the Gang of Four, calling on Marxist-Leninists everywhere to condemn the betrayal of Mao’s legacy by the current regime.69
Though Moscow welcomed the disgrace of the Gang of Four, it remained pessimistic about the prospects for reconciliation with Mao’s successors. The Centre’s list of intelligence requirements for 1977 concluded that ‘the ruling circle in China remains, as before, nationalistic, hegemonistic and anti-Soviet’. China, it admitted, remained a ‘conundrum’. The FCD wanted intelligence on power struggles within the Party leadership and the People’s Liberation Army, the future prospects of Deng Xiaoping (the most senior survivor of those purged in the Cultural Revolution) and policy changes in the post-Mao era. While it saw no prospect of major improvements in Sino-Soviet relations, it hoped for a ‘gradual overhaul of Maoism and for a partial abstention from its more odious aspects’, leading to ‘a more sober approach’ to China’s dealings with the Soviet Union. 70
In July 1977 a red wall poster sixty feet long with black characters two feet high placed on an official building announced that the Central Committee had reinstated Deng Xiaoping. The broadcast of an official communiqué confirming his reinstatement was followed by the sound of firecrackers across Beijing and jubilant flag-waving, gong-banging, drum-beating demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. Though the demonstrations were orchestrated, the jubilation was genuine. To the demonstrators the diminutive figure of Deng, the shortest of the major world leaders, represented the hope of a better life after the horrors of the past.71 Deng’s rehabilitation and subsequent emergence as the dominant Chinese leader caused mixed feelings in the Centre. Though he was believed to be a pragmatist rather than an ideological fanatic, his past record suggested that he was also strongly anti-Soviet. The FCD concluded that Deng had two main foreign objectives: first, to gain concessions from the United States; second, to make a show of improving relations with the Soviet Union in order to blame Moscow for the lack of real progress. His economic modernization programme, with its initially heavy reliance on Western technology, capital and expertise, caused further distrust in Moscow.
In January 1978 KGB residents were informed by a circular from the Centre that the Deng regime was on ‘a collision course with the USSR’, and that the modernization of Chinese armed forces with Western help represented ‘a particular danger’. Intelligence operations against the PRC, however, were seriously hampered by ‘the continuous intensification of the counter-intelligence measures in Beijing’. It was therefore urgently necessary to compensate for the weakness of intelligence collection within the PRC by stepping up operations against Chinese targets abroad. Though some ‘residencies in third countries’ were said to have achieved ‘positive’ results, the ‘lack of the essential agent apparatus’ remained a severe handicap. Residents were admonished for their lack of energy in Line K work and ordered to redouble their efforts. 72
The Centre gave particular emphasis to increasing operations against PRC targets in Hong Kong. In April 1978 residents were sent a detailed target list:
There has been a marked increase in the number of PRC official missions in Hong Kong over the past few years and, equally, of various local organizations and undertakings which are under the control of Beijing. Thus, the PRC controls more than forty Hong Kong banks, a large number of trading and industrial firms, together with a number of local newspapers. Chinese influence is also strong in the Hong Kong trades unions.
Additional targets included foreign missions in Hong Kong, British and American intelligence posts, and scientific institutions whose students were regarded as potential Line X agents. Though some of the potential targets were shrewdly chosen, there were also some curious omissions which suggested significant gaps in the KGB’s information on Hong Kong. Its references to the Hong Kong newspapers ‘best informed on the Chinese scene’, for example, made no mention of the Ming Pao, which was considered by some Western Sinologists to be the best informed of all.73
Active measures as well as intelligence collection proved more difficult against Chinese than against Western targets. The KGB’s failure to recruit agents able to provide authentic documents from the Chinese Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Defence and Public Security, for example, made it impossible for Service A to produce plausible fabrications of material from these ministries comparable to its forgeries of CIA, State Department and Pentagon documents. The Centre complained in January 1978 that, ‘The future improvement of the level and efficiency of active measures on China is adversely affected by the lack of essential agent apparatus.’74 The Party documents provided by FENIKS (and perhaps by others), however, enabled Service A to imitate the format of speeches by Deng Xiaoping and other Chinese leaders at closed Party meetings. In operation AUT transcripts of speeches supposedly made by Deng and a Deputy Foreign Minister in Beijing on 29 September 1977 to leading supporters of the PRC among the Chinese diaspora, which emphasized their role as the ‘connecting link of world revolution’ in undermining the ‘reactionary regimes’ of South-East Asia, were sent to the embassies of Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia in Singapore.75 To compensate for its lack of official Chinese documents to use as templates for forgeries, Service A also frequently fabricated hostile reports on the PRC from those foreign intelligence agencies and foreign ministries of which it had sample documents on file. In August 1978, for example, a bogus Malaysian intelligence report, purporting to contain details of the subversive activities of Chinese agents sent to Malaysia and Thailand by Beijing, was given to the ambassador of Thailand in Kuala Lumpur.76 A month later further disinformation was fed to President Asad of Syria (apparently in the form of an Iranian report on talks with a Chinese delegation), supposedly revealing a secret meeting between the Chinese Foreign Minister, Huang Hua, and an emissary of the Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin. Asad was reported to have been completely deceived. ‘I always treat the Chinese with suspicion’, he told his Soviet informant, ‘but, even so, I d
idn’t expect this of them.’77
The Centre also used active measures in an attempt to disrupt China’s relations with Communist regimes outside the Soviet bloc. In 1967 it devised an operation to channel to the Romanian leader, Nicolae Ceauşescu, a bogus version of Zhou Enlai’s private comments after his return from a visit to Bucharest in the previous year. Zhou was said to have praised the ability of the Romanian Prime Minister, Ion Gheorge Maurer, ‘the real leader of the Party and government’, his deputy Emil Bodnaraş, who ‘hates Ceauşescu’, and several other members of the Romanian Presidium. He dismissed Ceauşescu, by contrast, as ‘an uncultured upstart’ who, despite his notorious vanity, ranked only fifth in influence in the Presidium. The Centre had no doubt that Ceauşescu would be so outraged at this personal insult that there would be a ‘sharp change in [Romanian] relations with the Chinese People’s Republic’.78
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