Article 10 of the Common Program

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The new authorities have two important tasks in 1949, first to consolidate military control in all Regions and second to obtain political control. In the Common Program, four articles are dealing with public security. Article 7 deals with the suppression of counterrevolutionaries. Article 23 describes the importance of a people’s militia to maintain local order. Article 17 abolishes all oppressive laws of the GMD. The fourth is Article 18 which deals with the combat against corruption. To coordinate all these required actions, the Central Political Juridical Commission was founded, it controlled the Public Security Ministry, the Interior Ministry, the Justice Ministry. Members of this commission were Dong Biwu, Luo Ruiqing, Kang Sheng, and Peng Zhen. The commission did not control the internal intelligence and security section. The Secretariat of the CCP controlled this section and had five departments: Organization, Espionage, Counterespionage, Intelligence, and Training. The task of the police was divided into 2 duties, one secret, the other public. The secret task involved counter-espionage, infiltration, and checking the loyalty of CCP cadres.
The tasks of the PLA will be described in Chapter 3

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"In reviewing the police or security work during the year 1950, Lo Jui-ching, Minister of Public Security, reported that during the first 10 months of 1950, 664 special service cases and 9 cases of international espionage had been unearthed, and 13,812 special agents had been arrested in the whole country, and that a large number of these agents had been severely suppressed." The open task was based upon laws and directives; however, it also involved the prevention of anti-communist movements and the suppression of counterrevolutionaries. The distinction between these 2 tasks was arbitrary. After the Census of 1953, the results of the census we used to control and organize the people. Every household possessed a census record book containing information such as names, gender, occupation, family status, political affiliations, and personal connections. Due to the Communist Party's previous criticisms of the Nationalist government's control mechanisms, they opted not to introduce personal identity cards. Instead, a residence card was allocated to the head of the household. Nevertheless, this didn't exempt individual residents from being monitored by the 'census police' within the household. Consisting of 3 to 11 members of the CCP, public security committees oversaw the monitoring of individuals categorized under special census, including former members of the Nationalist Government, GMD affiliates, journalists, lawyers, physicians, and individuals identified as wealthy landowners. These individuals were subject to multiple visits throughout the day.
A regulation from 1952 mentioned the existence of a complete network of police stations and substations in the Northern Chinese Administrative Region Most of the small, Japanese-style ‘police boxes’ at the neighborhood level were expanded into precinct police stations which also performed some of the civil administrative duties of the former magistrates and wardens. The shortage of trained cadres compelled the administration to employ former GMD officers (about 50% to 60%), the rest were former PLA soldiers. A division of 10. 000 military police were dispatched to each province.
During the early 1950s, the CCP addressed the inadequacies of the police system by establishing auxiliary security systems of three distinct types. These included civilian neighborhood groups modeled after Japanese practices in cities where the Japanese occupation had left suitable infrastructure, paramilitary militias following the Jiangxi Soviet style under the control of the PLA in rural areas, and permanent vigilante groups designed to replace various ad hoc campaign organizations in other regions. The militias, together with the military police, were the main enforcers of public security during the several campaigns between 1949-1952.
Although the Communist police apparatus was officially a separate entity, it was effectively controlled by the PLA. Additionally, most armed police forces were composed of former regular PLA soldiers. This resulted in a highly violent, garrison-style police regime lacking a detailed legal foundation. The intensity of this regime only diminished after the Korean Armistice in 1953. The CCP bureaucracy maintained significant political influence over the Ministry of Public Security, ensuring that China did not evolve into a police state. Unlike in a typical police state scenario where the political police form a distinct, dominant entity surpassing the regular police, military, and party organization, China lacked a comparable structure. The Party consistently retained political authority over the Ministry of Public Security, with its minister never attaining top-ranking status within the regime's hierarchy.
In 1949, during the establishment of the Ministry of Public Security, it was initially tasked with a broad and general mandate to suppress both internal and external threats. However, within a year, a more specific classification system was developed. In urban areas, the primary targets included members of reactionary parties and groups such as the GMD and its youth league, religious adherents, particularly those affiliated with certain Christian apostolic organizations like the Legion of Mary, and individuals associated with enemy and Japanese puppet party, government, police, and gendarmerie. In rural regions, the focus was predominantly on combating bandits, tyrants, and leaders of reactionary secret societies such as the White Lotus, Green Gang, and Yiguandao. Additionally, catch-all categories like counterrevolutionaries and spies were employed to identify perceived enemies of the regime in both urban and rural settings. It's worth noting that there was no centralized database in China; instead, lists were maintained locally, primarily in cities with population card catalogs. The identification of individuals falling into these categories required data collection efforts by the police, the party, and the media.
In the 1950s, China lacked technical surveillance methods like covert photography or audio recording due to limited police staffing and capabilities. Instead, they relied heavily on a network of informants, recruited through patriotism, monetary incentives, or coercion, to gather intelligence on counterrevolutionary activities. Public security bureaus funded informant management and rewards to obtain leads on illegal actions. Secret collaborators, carefully selected and trained, were tasked with investigating suspicious individuals, securing sensitive locations, and gathering intelligence on enemy activities. They operated covertly to monitor social classes, reactionary groups, and production facilities. Second-grade informants, known as "eyes and ears," conducted covert surveillance and were recruited from the general population, including former prisoners and individuals susceptible to blackmail. The exact size of these informant networks remains unknown in existing literature.

See for further information on army Chapter 3 1954 Protecting the Home and Protecting the Country

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Chapter 1 of Common Program

• Road to Common Program
• Common Program
• Bibliography
• Documents