Yu Qiangsheng

Yu Qiangsheng (born 1940, disappeared 1986) is a former high-ranking Chinese intelligence officer who defected to the United States in 1985. During a career which saw him rise to head of the North America Bureau of China's Ministry of State Security (MSS), Yu passed information to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) which most famously exposed CIA officer Larry Wu-Tai Chin as having been a mole for Chinese intelligence for more than 40 years.

Yu is reported to continue to live in the United States under federal protection, at one point under the pseudonym "Mr. Zhang." In 2015, he was described by his former FBI handler as "the ultimate risk taker."

Early life and family
Yu was born to mother Fan Jin and father Huang Jing. Yu's mother was a journalist who later became vice mayor of Beijing and president of Beijing Daily. His father, born Yu Qiwei, was born in 1912 to a prominent family in Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province. Yu Qiwei first married fellow schoolmate Li Yunhe from National Qingdao University (now Shandong University), and introduced Li to the communist movement. They later divorced, and after 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. Huang remained friends with Kang Sheng, and went on to marry Fan Jin, Yu Qiangsheng's mother.

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.

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. Soon after, Yu found a seat in the University of International Relations, the foreign affairs school in Beijing run by Chinese intelligence. 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. 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.

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.

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. 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. 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."

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.

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. 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.

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.'"

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

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, and French diplomat Bernard Bouriscot, who had been recruited by Chinese intelligence using a honeypot.

In China, Yu's defection prompted a reorganization of the MSS and the sacking of the inaugural director of the MSS, Ling Yun. When his successor, Jia Chunwang was asked to comment on the defection of Yu, Jia only responded, "It’s very regrettable." 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.

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.

Later life
Details of Yu's life following his debriefing remain unclear.

In the 1990s, the Chinese government spread likely apocryphal rumors of Yu's assassination. 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. In December 2015, I.C. Smith dispelled assassination rumors, adding that he spent a number of evenings moving pub-to-pub with Yu in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington D.C.

In truth, according to journalist 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."

In popular culture

 * 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.