By Konstantin Preobrazhensky
Before I left the KGB in 1991, I worked as the advisor on China for the Head of the Scientific and Technical intelligence division (Directorate “T”
of the KGB, and such a partnership doesn’t seem a matter of question to me. Currently, every series of talks and negotiations between Russia and China includes on its roster a representative of those countries’ respective intelligence agencies.
Furthermore, Russian espionage against China is carried out half-heartedly. China, after all, is the last bastion of Communism, and many of Russia’s spies and paymasters, being Communists themselves, don’t want to give China too hard a time.Interestingly, it
wasn’t like this at all during Soviet times. The KGB worked hard against China. KGB operatives all over the world participated in this spy mission, recruiting informants not only in China, but in many other countries as well.
...that Peking had very strong counterintelligence operations in place.
Every Soviet spy in the city was tailed by literally hundreds of Chinese spies. It was impossible to get away from them. Because of this, Yury Andropov, a former spymaster himself, ordered the KGB to develop its position against China from abroad. At times, such an approach looked absolutely ridiculous. For instance, as soon as a Russian agent would walk up to a Chinese student on the streets of Stockholm and speak to him in Chinese, the student would understand immediately he was being recruited to spy and would run away.
In the end, spying on the Chinese was one of the most difficult operations for the KGB.