The Central Department of Social Affairs (CDSA) (Chinese: 中央社会部) was the intelligence & counter-intelligence organ of the Chinese Communist Party leadership prior to the founding of the PRC in 1949.

History

The creation of the Central Department of Social Affairs (CDSA) followed a decision taken by the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Secretariat on 18 February 1939. The decision assigned to the department some five major tasks, including those of overseeing CCP counter-intelligence

Counter-intelligence

Counterintelligence or counter-intelligence refers to efforts made by intelligence organizations to prevent hostile or enemy intelligence organizations from successfully gathering and collecting intelligence against them. National intelligence programs, and, by extension, the overall defenses of...

 work and intelligence

Intelligence (information gathering)

Intelligence assessment is the development of forecasts of behaviour or recommended courses of action to the leadership of an organization, based on a wide range of available information sources both overt and covert. Assessments are developed in response to requirements declared by the leadership...

. An alternative designation of the department at this early stage was the ”Central Commission for Enemy Area Operations.”

The first director of the CDSA was Kang Sheng

Kang Sheng

Kang Sheng , Communist Party of China official, oversaw the work of the People's Republic of China's security and intelligence apparatus at the height of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s. He was a close associate of Mao Zedong and remained at or near the pinnacle of power for decades...

. By the time the Chinese Civil War

Chinese Civil War

The Chinese Civil War was a civil war fought between the Kuomintang , the governing party of the Republic of China, and the Communist Party of China , for the control of China which eventually led to China's division into two Chinas, Republic of China and People's Republic of...

 flared up again after WW2, Kang had been replaced by his senior deputy Li Kenong

Li Kenong

Li Kenong was a major figure in the early history of Chinese Communist intelligence, and was rewarded the rank of Colonel General in 1955. Recognized on the Chinese mainland as such, he is almost unknown in the West.-Early years:...

 as acting director. Li was officially department director in August 1949, when the CDSA was dissolved and its tasks parceled out to other agencies. After the founding of the PRC, domestic counter-intelligence work was at the central level managed by the Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China

Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China

The Ministry of Public Security , is the principal police and security authority of the mainland of the People's Republic of China and the government agency that exercises oversight over and is ultimately responsible for day-to-day law enforcement...

, while the task of collecting political and military intelligence overseas was assigned to the Intelligence Department of the Central Military Commission. In 1955, the task of political intelligence work was transferred to a newly created communist party body, the CCP Central Investigation Department (CID) with Li Kenong as its first director. Today, China’s Ministry of Public Security and Ministry of State Security of the People's Republic of China (which succeeded the CID in 1983) both trace their institutional origins to the CDSA.

Worth noting in an institutional history context is the fact that some of the CDSA’s sub-national counterparts (e.g. the Department of Social Affairs of the CCP Committee of province X) continued to exist as party bodies for quite some time after the founding of the PRC. In the Tibet Autonomous Region

Tibet Autonomous Region

The Tibet Autonomous Region , Tibet or Xizang for short, also called the Xizang Autonomous Region is a province-level autonomous region of the People's Republic of China , created in 1965....

, the Department of Social Affairs of the regional CCP Committee (orig. Work Committee) was not abolished until 2 May 1961.

Leadership

Directors: Kang Sheng

Kang Sheng

Kang Sheng , Communist Party of China official, oversaw the work of the People's Republic of China's security and intelligence apparatus at the height of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s. He was a close associate of Mao Zedong and remained at or near the pinnacle of power for decades...

 (October 1939-1948?), Li Kenong

Li Kenong

Li Kenong was a major figure in the early history of Chinese Communist intelligence, and was rewarded the rank of Colonel General in 1955. Recognized on the Chinese mainland as such, he is almost unknown in the West.-Early years:...

 (acting dir. May 1948-?; ?-August 1949)

Deputy directors: Kong Yuan (October 1939-), Pan Hannian

Pan Hannian

Pan Hannian was a major figure in the Chinese Communist intelligence by the early 1930s and until 1955. He began his work with the Chinese Communist Party in 1926 as a propagandist with the editorial department of the magazine "Oazo" and later with "Crossroads"...

 (October 1939-), Li Kenong

Li Kenong

Li Kenong was a major figure in the early history of Chinese Communist intelligence, and was rewarded the rank of Colonel General in 1955. Recognized on the Chinese mainland as such, he is almost unknown in the West.-Early years:...

 (March 1941-), Chen Gang

Chen Gang

Chen Gang , important Moscow-trained member of the Chinese Communist Party’s security services prior to the founding of the PRC in 1949....

 (November 1945-August 1949), Tan Zhengwen (June 1948-November 1949), Liu Shaowen (May 1948-)