Yu Qiangsheng
俞强声
Yu circa 1960
Born
Yu Qiangsheng

1940 (1940)
Republic of China
Disappeared1986
United States
StatusWhereabouts unknown
CitizenshipPeople's Republic of China
United States (from 1985)
Alma materUniversity of International Relations
Employers
Parents
Family
TitleEspionage activity
AllegianceUnited States (from 1985)
AgencyCentral Intelligence Agency
CryptonymPLANESMAN

Yu Qiangsheng (Chinese: 俞强声; born 1940, disappeared 1986) is a former high-ranking Chinese intelligence officer who defected to the United States in 1985. As head of the North America Bureau of the Ministry of State Security (MSS), Yu secretly passed information to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) which exposed CIA officer Larry Wu-Tai Chin as having been a mole for Chinese intelligence for more than 40 years.

Yu is the Princeling son of two communist revolutionaries, Huang Jing and Li Yunhe (later married to Mao Zedong) and is the elder brother of Yu Zhengsheng, a prominent retired Chinese politician.

In the U.S., Yu is reported to have gone by the pseudonym "Mr. Zhang".[1]

Early life and family

Yu was born to mother Li Yunhe (李云鹤) and father Huang Jing (黄敬). Yu's mother, later known as "Madame Mao", was born Li Shumeng (李淑蒙) in 1914 to a carpenter in Shandong Province; his father, born Yu Qiwei (俞启威), was born in 1912 to a prominent family in Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province. Yu Qiwei and Li Yunhe met at National Qingdao University (now Shandong University) while Yu was a physics student three years her senior, fell in love, and were married. Yu introduced Li to the communist movement.

Following the couple's divorce and the Marco Polo Bridge incident, Li fled to the Yun'an district of Guangdong Province where she first dated CCP spymaster Kang Sheng, and later, married Mao Zedong, becoming Jiang Qing, the inaugural first lady of the People's Republic of China and leader of the radical political alliance known as the Gang of Four.[2]

Huang remained friends with Kang Sheng, and went on to marry an "unusual" journalist, Fan Jin, who, along with her friend Gong Peng, was part of Zhou Enlai’s circle of female Chinese spies in the United States, which became close friends to Pearl S. Buck and Eleanor Roosevelt.[2]

Yu had four siblings including his younger brother Yu Zhengsheng, now a retired senior Chinese politician whose career included assignments as the Communist Party Secretary of Hubei Province and Shanghai, and 8th Chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultive Conference. The survival of the younger Yu's political career following the defection is attributed to either the influence of Zhang Aiping, his father-in-law, who at the time was Minister of Defense, or his friendship with Deng Pufang, the eldest son of Deng Xiaoping, who was confined to a wheelchair after being thrown out of a window by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution.[2][3]

Intelligence career

Yu's career in Chinese intelligence is believed to owe much to his father's dying request to his friend, CCP spymaster Kang Sheng, that he make then-18 year old Yu his adoptive son.[2][3] Soon after, Yu found a seat in the University of International Relations, the foreign affairs school in Beijing run by Chinese intelligence.[4][5] After graduating, and a period of being sent down to the countryside, he joined the Waishiju, the counterintelligence branch within the Foreign Affairs Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) in 1974 under Deputy Minister Yu Sang.[2][3] Despite not having participated in any of the violent abuse that was Kang Sheng's trademark, he quickly rose through the ranks and moved to the fledgling Ministry of State Security soon after it split from the MPS in 1983.[2][6]

Defection

As a member of the MPS sent down to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, Yu was unable to protect his mother from degradation at the hands of Red Guards. Having failed to prevent her humiliation, Yu became increasingly resentful of her treatment until he finally decided to contact the CIA.[3]

In 1980, Larry Wu-tai Chin told his handlers about the arrival of a new undercover CIA officer assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.[2] As chief of counterintelligence within the North America Department of the MSS, Yu was sent to try to recruit the new arrival, but instead opted to use the imprimatur of the officially sanctioned contact with a member of the CIA to defect to the United States himself.[2] The intelligence he passed to the Americans enabled the CIA to identify Chinese moles within US intelligence, including Chin. In the words of Roger Faligot, "thanks to Yu's perfidy, Larry had signed his own death certificate when he faithfully reported to his Chinese paylords that a new US agent was in town."[2]

According to a testimony before the U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission, Yu was the first to provide the United States Intelligence Community with an understanding of PRC intelligence operations.[7]

In early 1982, Yu provided specific information regarding a Chinese mole: On February 6, 1982, the spy would arrive in Beijing on a Pan Am flight, stay in Room 553 of the Qianmen Hotel in Beijing, and call Zhu Entao, deputy director of the Foreign Affairs Bureau of the MPS, after which the spy will be appointed as a deputy bureau-level official. On February 27, the spy would return to the United States.[8] The CIA decided then that the counterintelligence threat needed to be turned over to the FBI.

In September 1982, I.C. Smith, head of the China Counterintelligence Team of the FBI, received a message from the CIA that said the U.S. Intelligence Community had been penetrated by a longstanding Chinese mole. That's basically all it said. Didn't reveal the person's ethnicity, gender, nothing." Smith gave the source the codename PLANESMAN, a term for the person who operates the diving plane, a control surface which determines the elevation and depth of a submarine.[8]

According to I.C. Smith:

"PLANESMAN was not just an ordinary Chinese citizen employed by the MSS. He was one of China’s “golden youth”, the offspring of China’s political elite. I became convinced that the “golden youth” were in a better position to see the hypocrisy of the Communist system under which they lived … I believe PLANESMAN saw this hypocrisy and at some point decided to hit back in his own way. His actions were simply audacious. He strolled around MSS headquarters, routinely photographing documents on desks, pulling files, and making inquiries, and being the son of those with influence, he benefited from special treatment. He even pilfered the desk of his supervisor, whom he referred to as the “Beijing Bitch”, where he was able to gain access to the most secret of the information contained within the [MSS]. … PLANESMAN in the flesh was a gregarious, animated individual who spoke in fractured English, but who seemed to have a very real zest for life. When we met at last after Operation Eagle Claw was over, he confirmed my long-held suspicion that he was the ultimate risk taker. I had the impression he would have paid the CIA to allow him to be their spy."[2]

Escape

In October 1985, Yu fled China for the United States via Kai Tak Airport in British Hong Kong.[6] At the time, he was on a visit to British Hong Kong to see his French girlfriend, reportedly a U.S. State Department employee.[2]

Impact

Yu provided a number of state secrets to the Central Intelligence Agency, most famously revealing China's top spy in Washington, former analyst at the CIA, Larry Wu-Tai Chin,[9] and French diplomat Bernard Bouriscot, who had been recruited by Chinese intelligence using a honeypot.[10]

In China, Yu's defection prompted a reorganization of the MSS and the sacking of the inaugural director of the MSS, Ling Yun.[11][6] When his successor, Jia Chunwang was asked to comment on the defection of Yu, Jia only responded, "It’s very regrettable."[3] It led to even greater restrictions on overseas MSS operations at a time when Deng Xiaoping, already wary of stirring controversy as China opened-up to the west, had grown fond of using People's Liberation Army military attaché's as the primary intelligence resident of China's overseas embassies.[11]

Declassification

On September 1, 1986, the news of Yu Qiangsheng's escape to the United States was exclusively reported by Agence France-Presse, and was subsequently reported by the Los Angeles Times and other American media as well as Hong Kong media.[12]

Later life

Details of Yu's life following his debriefing remain unclear.[13]

In the 1990s, the Chinese government spread likely fictitious rumors that of a successful assassination of Yu. Chinese state media claimed that Yu had been pursued by five special agents and drowned in the sea off the coast of South America. Other accounts allege Yu was fed radioactive salt while in South America.[14]

According to Roger Faligot: "Yu was put under witness protection; he assumed a new identity and was sent to live in a safe house near San Francisco. He apparently remained in contact with his cousins in Taiwan."[2]

In December 2015, I.C. Smith, former head of the FBI Chinese counterintelligence group provided Voice of America with additional details regarding Yu's disappearance and dispelled rumors of his killing, adding that he spent a number of evenings moving pub-to-pub with Yu in Georgetown, Washington D.C.[8]

  • David Ignatius, foreign affairs contributor to the The Washington Post and spy novelist, published a four-part serialized fiction novella titled The Tao of Deception which provides a fictionalized account of Yu Qiangsheng's defection to the United States and extraction from Hong Kong.[15]

References

  1. ↑ "解密时刻：中情局里的红色间谍（最终回）" [Declassification Moment: Red Spies in the CIA (Final Chapter)]. Chinese Pen (in Chinese (China)). 11 December 2015. Retrieved 14 November 2023.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Faligot, Roger (2019). Chinese Spies: From Chairman Mao to Xi Jinping. Translated by Lehrer, Natasha. C. Hurst & Co. pp. 126–131. ISBN 978-1787380967.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Smith, I.C.; West, Nigel (2021). Historical Dictionary of Chinese Intelligence (2nd ed.). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. pp. 176, 181, 393, 440. ISBN 9781538130209.
  4. ↑ 動向119-124，百家出版社，1995年，第36页
  5. ↑ 聞東平，正在進行的諜戰，明鏡出版社，2009年，第306页
  6. 1 2 3 "China's Ministry of State Security". Stratfor. 1 June 2012.
  7. ↑ Major, David (9 June 2016). "Testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission Hearing on Chinese Intelligence Services and Espionage Operations" (PDF). U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
  8. 1 2 3 Su, Li (12 December 2015). "解密时刻：中情局里的红色间谍" [Time for Declassification: The CIA’s Red Spies]. Voice of America (in Chinese). Retrieved 14 November 2023.
  9. ↑ Lim, Benjamin (19 June 2007). "China princeling emerges from defection scandal". Reuters. Retrieved 7 September 2012.
  10. ↑ Smith, I. C.; West, Nigel (2012). Historical Dictionary of Chinese Intelligence. Scarecrow Press. p. 29. ISBN 978-0-8108-7370-4.
  11. 1 2 Joske, Alex (2022). Spies and Lies: How China's Greatest Covert Operations Fooled the World. Hardie Grant Books. p. 187. ISBN 9781743797990.
  12. ↑ Wines, Michael (5 September 1986). "Chinese Defector Reportedly Named Spy". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 7 May 2021. Retrieved 15 November 2023.
  13. ↑ Denlinger, Paul (4 June 2021). "The Disappearance of Yu Qiangsheng". Chinese Crime.
  14. ↑ Brown, Kerry (2014). The New Emperors: Power and the Princelings in China. I.B.Tauris. pp. 159–161. ISBN 978-0-85773-383-2.
  15. ↑ Ignatius, David (5 July 2023). "The Tao of Deception". The Washington Post.
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