Spymaster: Dai Li and the Chinese Secret Service

Frederic E. Wakeman

University of California Press, 2003 - Biography & Autobiography - 650 pages

The most feared man in China, Dai Li, was chief of Chiang Kai-shek's secret service during World War II. This sweeping biography of "China's Himmler," based on recently opened intelligence archives, traces Dai's rise from obscurity as a rural hooligan and Green Gang blood-brother to commander of the paramilitary units of the Blue Shirts and of the dreaded Military Statistics Bureau: the world's largest spy and counterespionage organization of its time.

In addition to exposing the inner workings of the secret police, whose death squads, kidnappings, torture, and omnipresent surveillance terrorized critics of the Nationalist regime, Dai Li's personal story opens a unique window on the clandestine history of China's Republican period. This study uncovers the origins of the Cold War in the interactions of Chinese and American special services operatives who cooperated with Dai Li in the resistance to the Japanese invasion in the 1930s and who laid the groundwork for an ongoing alliance against the Communists during the revolution that followed in the 1940s. Frederic Wakeman Jr. illustrates how the anti-Communist activities Dai Li led altered the balance of power within the Chinese Communist Party, setting the stage for Mao Zedong's rise to supremacy. He reveals a complex and remarkable personality that masked a dark presence in modern China--one that still pervades the secret services on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

Wakeman masterfully illuminates a previously little-understood world as he discloses the details of Chinese secret service trade-craft. Anyone interested in the development of modern espionage will be intrigued by Spymaster, which spells out in detail the ways in which the Chinese used their own traditional methods, in addition to adapting foreign ways, to create a modern intelligence service.

Contents

• Images of Dai Li: 1
• Living off the Land: 12
• Touben: 24
• The League of Ten: 36
• Vigorous Practice The Chiang Freemansonry: 46
• The Founding of the Lixingshe: 55
• The Lixingshe and the Blue Shirts: 66
• The Blue Shirts Fascism: 85
• Ideological Rivalries The Blue Shirts and the CC Clique: 98
• The Blue Shirts in the Provinces: 110
• The Shanghai Station 193235: 132
• Death Squads: 157
• Assassinations: 168
• Police Academies: 187
• 15 Sleeping in Their Coffins: 206
• Skirts and Sashes: 221
• War and the Special Movement Corps: 237
• The Training Camps: 250
• Codes: 272
• Dai Li Milton Miles and the Foundation of SACO: 285
• SACO Training Camps: 294
• 22 Spying: 308
• Dai Lis Wartime Smuggling Networks: 320
• Juntong in Wartime Chongqing: 330
• Falling Star: 347
• Daemons: 367
• ORGANIZATION OF THE GENERAL UNIT OF SPECIAL TRAINING: 369
• ORGANIZTION OF JUNTONG HEADQUARTERS 194345: 371
• TERMS OF THE SINOAMERICAN SPECIAL TECHNICAL COOPERATION AGREEMENT: 377
• SAGO TRAINING UNITS: 379
• NOTES: 385
• BIBLIOGRAPHY: 539
• GLOSSARYINDEX: 579

About the author

Frederic Wakeman Jr. is Haas Professor of Asian Studies in the Department of History at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of The Shanghai Badlands: Wartime Terrorism and Urban Crime, 1937-1941 (1996), Policing Shanghai, 1927-1937 (California, 1995), and The Great Enterprise: The Manchu Reconstruction of Imperial Order in Seventeenth-Century China (California, 1985), among others.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Spymaster: Dai Li and the Chinese Secret Service
• Author: Frederic E. Wakeman
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: University of California Press, 2003
• ISBN: 0520928768, 9780520928763
• Length: 650 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / General; Biography & Autobiography / Military; History / Asia / China; History / Asia / General; History / World; Social Science / Regional Studies; True Crime / Espionage