Michael Schoenhals

Eyes and Ears

Secret Agent Work in Cold War China

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

This essential primary-source reader brings together documents collected over decades of research into security agency tradecraft and Chinese Cold War-era human intelligence. Michael Schoenhals' expert translation of the texts teases out meanings from memoranda, decodes marginal notes from senior officers, and unpacks the hastily scribbled communications of covert human sources. Together, these sources trace the resilience of covert human intelligence as an institution, even when faced with revelations of major misconduct and calls for its reform. With editorial introductions providing valuable context, this collection offers an informed interpretation of the domestic recruitment and running of agents that sheds critical new light on Chinese security agencies' intelligence gathering operations and capacity building during the Cold War.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Cambridge University Press
• Seitenzahl: 268
• Erscheinungstermin: 30. November 2025
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781009604413
• ISBN-10: 1009604414
• Artikelnr.: 74966306

Autorenporträt

Michael Schoenhals is Professor Emeritus of Chinese at the Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University. He is author of Doing Things with Words in Chinese Politics (1992), Mao's Last Revolution (with Roderick MacFarquhar) (2006), and Spying for the People: Mao's Secret Agents, 1949-1967 (2013).

Inhaltsangabe

Preface
Part I. Agent Recruitment: 1. The target's own story
Part II. Capacity Building: 2. A director of public security remembers
3. Developing doctrinal terminology
4. Trial and error
5. Big brother dispenses operativnyy experience
Part III. Best Practice: 6. Agent files: management and utilisation regulations
7. Recruitment: one template and two profiles
8. Agent termination
9. Tradecraft dos and don'ts
Part IV. From the Agent Work File: 10. Raw intelligence: all quiet in the northeast linen mill
11. Welfaring agent 107: 'She now has misgivings...'
12. Tasking agent 371: active measures
13. Debriefing agent 594: monitoring campus unrest
Part V. From the Agent Personal File: 14. Operational brief: on the recruitment of Yang X
15. Yang X's Offer of service
16. Private correspondence monitored
17. Give and take: apologies and a nanny
18. Agent validation: professional and 'leftist'
19. Declining performance? A two-day brush-up course
Part VI. Component Chiefs: Feedback and Direction: 20. On a case officer's contact reports: 'why never anything negative?'
21. On courses of action proposed
22. Whose collection requirements should enjoy priority?
Part VII. Crisis Management: 23. Agent work: findings and recommendations of an inquiry: 24. Opponents: 'shitting and pissing on the heads of the people'
25. Proponents: 'an indispensable operational resource'
26. The government advocates a return to the status quo ante
27. Deconfliction: provisional guidelines on informant capacity building
Glossary
Notes
Index.