Author: David Ian Chambers.

This article explores the origins and early development of China’s Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) service, using data released officially since the mid-1980s. Born from revolutionary crisis in the late 1920s, the Red Army’s SIGINT service was founded in 1931, an offshoot of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s development of wireless communications. Though the USSR provided some training assistance, the formative early development of the service relied more on indigenous resources: the training of teenage novices in underground facilities in Shanghai and the Central Soviet and the use of equipment that was self-made, illicitly procured or seized on the battlefield. In the years that followed, Red Army SIGINT – much respected by CCP/Red Army leaders – survived defections and cryptographic obstacles to play a major role in the defence of the Central Soviet against Guomindang encirclement. As military defeat became inevitable, SIGINT also helped to facilitate the successful Red Army retreat that became the historic Long March.