Ministry of Public Security (China)
Based on Wikipedia: Ministry of Public Security (China)
The World's Largest Police Force Has Global Ambitions
In 2022, investigations began popping up across Europe, North America, and beyond. The target? A network of mysterious "overseas police service stations" that China had quietly established in cities around the world. These weren't embassies or consulates. They were something new—and deeply troubling to the governments that discovered them.
The organization behind these stations is the Ministry of Public Security, or MPS. It commands more than 1.9 million officers, making it the largest police force on Earth. But calling it simply a "police force" misses something essential about what it actually does.
This is an organization that fights crime, yes. But it also conducts counterintelligence operations, monitors political dissent, runs sophisticated disinformation campaigns on social media, and—according to the United States Department of Justice—engages in "illicit, transnational repression schemes" that extend far beyond China's borders.
Born from Revolution
The Ministry of Public Security came into existence almost simultaneously with the People's Republic of China itself. In July 1949, as Communist forces were completing their victory in the Chinese Civil War, the party created a transitional security body. By November of that year, the MPS began operations.
Its first home was telling. The ministry moved into the heart of Beijing's former foreign legation quarters—the diplomatic compound where foreign powers had maintained their presence in China since the nineteenth century. The symbolism was unmistakable: the new Chinese state was taking control of spaces that had once represented foreign domination.
The initial staff numbered fewer than five hundred people, mostly drawn from regional party security apparatus. But the organization would grow into something vast.
The Soviet Blueprint
Like many institutions in early Communist China, the MPS was modeled on Soviet and Eastern Bloc examples. This meant something specific: the ministry was responsible for everything related to security. Not just catching criminals, but gathering intelligence, conducting counterintelligence, and—crucially—suppressing political opposition to Communist Party rule.
Its first minister was Luo Ruiqing, a Grand General in the People's Liberation Army. The military connection was no accident. In the Communist system, the boundary between police work and political control was always blurry, sometimes nonexistent.
The ministry's role in political suppression would have dark consequences. During the Great Leap Forward, the catastrophic economic campaign that caused tens of millions of deaths between 1958 and 1961, the MPS produced classified internal bulletins that documented the truth: China was experiencing devastating food shortages, social unrest, and famine. These reports directly contradicted the rosy picture that Mao Zedong was painting for the world. The truth was too dangerous to share publicly.
A Sprawling Bureaucracy
Understanding the MPS requires understanding how deeply it penetrates Chinese society. The ministry sits at the top of a pyramid that extends down through every level of government.
At the provincial level, there are Public Security Departments. Below them, Public Security Bureaus in cities and municipalities. Further down, sub-bureaus in counties and urban districts. And at the very bottom, touching ordinary citizens directly, are local police stations—the paichusuo.
Some observers argue that police influence actually grows stronger as you move down this hierarchy. At the national level, the MPS must navigate complex relationships with other powerful ministries and party organs. But in a small town or urban neighborhood, the local public security office may be the most powerful institution that residents encounter in their daily lives.
The ministry's internal structure reveals its priorities. It maintains twenty-two numbered bureaus, each handling a specific function. The first bureau—the one with pride of place—is the Political Security Protection Bureau. Not criminal investigation. Not economic crimes. Political security.
This ordering matters. In Chinese bureaucratic culture, sequence often indicates importance. The message is clear: protecting the Communist Party from political threats is job number one.
The Alphabet Soup of Chinese Security
To understand the MPS, you need to understand what it isn't.
The Ministry of State Security, or MSS, is China's primary intelligence and counterintelligence agency—roughly equivalent to a combination of the American Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation. When the MSS was created in 1983, it absorbed much of the counterintelligence work that had previously belonged to the MPS.
This reorganization created what some scholars call an "illusion." Because the MSS now handled spy-versus-spy work, outside observers began viewing the MPS as simply a law enforcement body, separate from the intelligence world.
That view was always incomplete. The MPS retained significant counterintelligence functions. And according to analyst Alex Joske, while the ministry lost much of its foreign intelligence role when the MSS was created, it has since "established new units for cross-border clandestine operations."
There's another twist: MPS credentials serve as common cover for MSS officers operating abroad. When a Chinese intelligence operative needs a plausible reason to be somewhere, claiming to be a public security official often works better than admitting to being a spy.
Going Global
For most of its history, the MPS focused on maintaining order within China's borders. That has changed dramatically under Xi Jinping.
Two operations illustrate this transformation: Operation Fox Hunt and Operation Sky Net. Officially, these are anti-corruption initiatives aimed at bringing back officials who have fled overseas with embezzled money. In practice, they have become vehicles for pursuing political dissidents and perceived enemies of the state wherever they may be.
The methods can be brazen. In 2023, the United States Department of Justice charged thirty-four MPS officers with using fake social media accounts to harass Chinese dissidents living abroad. The harassment wasn't subtle—it was designed to intimidate people into silence or coerce them into returning to China.
Then there are the "overseas police service stations." When investigative journalists and government agencies began uncovering these facilities in 2022, they found what appeared to be unofficial Chinese police outposts in dozens of cities worldwide. China claimed they existed to help citizens with routine administrative tasks like renewing driver's licenses. Critics saw something more sinister: infrastructure for surveillance and intimidation that operated outside any legal framework.
Digital Warfare
The MPS has also become a major player in information warfare. A disinformation operation known as "Spamouflage" or "Dragonbridge" has been linked to the ministry. This operation uses networks of fake social media accounts to spread pro-China narratives and amplify divisions in foreign societies.
In the lead-up to the 2024 United States elections, Spamouflage was caught using fake accounts in attempts to exacerbate American political conflicts. The goal wasn't necessarily to support any particular candidate—it was to weaken American society by making its internal divisions worse.
In February 2024, a leak exposed I-Soon, an MPS contractor used for hacking operations. The files revealed the industrial scale of China's cyber operations, with private companies working alongside government agencies to penetrate foreign networks.
Surveillance State
Within China, the MPS sits at the center of what may be the most sophisticated surveillance apparatus ever constructed.
The ministry operates the Golden Shield Project, an enormous system for monitoring and filtering internet traffic in China. You may know it by its more common name: the Great Firewall. But the Golden Shield is more than just a censorship tool—it's an integrated system for tracking online activity and identifying potential threats to the state.
The MPS Third Research Institute focuses specifically on developing artificial intelligence for "smart surveillance." This means cameras that can identify faces, track movements, and flag suspicious behavior automatically. It means systems that can correlate data from thousands of sources to build comprehensive profiles of individuals.
The implications became starkly visible in Xinjiang, where authorities have subjected the Uyghur Muslim population to intense surveillance and control. In 2020, the United States added the MPS Institute of Forensic Science to its Entity List—a blacklist that restricts access to American technology—over human rights concerns related to the Xinjiang situation.
Interestingly, the institute was removed from the list in 2023. The price? Chinese cooperation on combating fentanyl trafficking. It was a reminder that in international relations, human rights concerns often compete with other priorities.
International Partnerships
Despite growing Western concern about its activities, the MPS has been building relationships with law enforcement agencies around the world.
In 2017, Europol—the European Union's law enforcement agency—signed what it called a "strategic cooperation agreement" with the ministry. Between 1997 and 2020, the MPS organized eleven bilateral police diplomacy meetings with African countries alone.
Under Xi Jinping, the ministry has dramatically expanded its training of foreign police officers. This creates relationships—and dependencies. A police chief trained in Chinese methods, using Chinese-provided equipment, naturally develops closer ties with Beijing.
For developing countries, the appeal is obvious. China offers training, technology, and expertise without the lectures about human rights that often accompany Western assistance. For the MPS, these relationships provide influence, intelligence, and legitimacy.
The Ministry's Reach
The sheer scope of what the MPS controls is remarkable. Beyond policing, the ministry has historically managed everything from firefighting to border control to the protection of senior leaders.
A major reorganization in 2018 transferred some of these functions elsewhere. Firefighting duties moved to a new National Fire and Rescue Administration. Border control went to a National Immigration Administration. But the ministry retained its core functions and added new ones—particularly in the digital realm.
Today, the MPS runs police dog training bases, publishes newspapers and magazines, operates film and television production facilities, manages a police equipment procurement system, and maintains universities that train the next generation of officers. It is less an agency than an ecosystem.
What It Means
The Ministry of Public Security embodies a fundamental truth about the Chinese system: the Communist Party views its own survival as inseparable from public order. Maintaining "stability"—a term that encompasses everything from preventing crime to crushing political dissent—is not just one priority among many. It is the priority.
This explains why the ministry's first bureau handles political security. It explains why the MPS conducts counterintelligence even though a separate ministry exists for that purpose. It explains why the organization has extended its reach across borders, following Chinese citizens—and critics of China—wherever they go.
For the outside world, the challenge is navigating the dual nature of this institution. The MPS does genuine police work. It investigates murders, fights drug trafficking, and manages traffic safety. Cooperation on these issues can benefit everyone.
But the same organization that catches criminals also monitors dissidents, runs disinformation campaigns, and operates secret facilities on foreign soil. The line between legitimate law enforcement and political repression runs right through the middle of the ministry—and it is not always clear which side any particular operation falls on.
As China's global influence grows, so does the reach of its security apparatus. The overseas police stations, the social media campaigns, the training programs for foreign police—all of these represent a new phase in the ministry's evolution. What was once primarily a domestic institution has become a global one.
The implications of that transformation are only beginning to be understood.