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Chinese cryptography: The Chinese Nationalist Party and intelligence

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Chinese cryptography: The Chinese Nationalist

Party and intelligence management, 1927–1949

Ulug Kuzuoglu

To cite this article: Ulug Kuzuoglu (2018): Chinese cryptography: The Chinese Nationalist Party
and intelligence management, 1927–1949, Cryptologia

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CRYPTOLOGIA
https://doi.org/10.1080/01611194.2018.1449146

none defined

Chinese cryptography: The Chinese Nationalist Party and

intelligence management, 1927–1949
Ulug Kuzuoglu

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
This paper is the first scholarly attempt to examine the history Chinese cipher machines;
of Chinese cryptography and the role it played in building the Chinese codebooks; Chinese
intelligence network of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) from cryptography; Chinese
Nationalist Party;
1927 to 1949. Rather than investigating the institutional
intelligence networks; KMT;
structure of intelligence, I focus on Chinese characters, the Zhang Yanxiang
primary medium that made cryptology and intelligence
possible. Given that the Chinese writing system is by nature
nonalphabetic and thus noncipherable, how did cryptography
work in Chinese? How did the state and its scientists reengineer
Chinese characters for the purposes of secret communication?
This paper argues that due to the Chinese writing system itself,
Chinese cryptography was bound to the use of codebooks
rather than ciphers; thus, “codebook management” was central
to building intelligence networks in China.

In a publication on the history of German cryptanalytical work in Shanghai

during the Second World War, Colin Burke notes that the Germans were
unable to break the Chinese codes, and he puts the blame on German
ignorance. In one case, for instance, a certain German officer received a code,
but he “did not even know—after four years of experience—that this code was
an ordinary Chinese code used by all Chnese [sic] since they are unable to
send their Character in any other way.” Burke does not fail to insert a simple
comment: “One can get the [Chinese] code book [sic] in any post office”
(Burke 2007, 85).
This comment on Chinese cryptography is more puzzling than German
cryptanalytical incompetence. During the war, and even before and after it,
the Chinese Nationalist Party (Guomindang or Kuomintang; KMT) was
waging an information war on more than one front, and a crisis of
information security was ubiquitous. The KMT started to build its own
intelligence network during the Nanjing decade (1928–1937), when it was
trying to consolidate its power against both the Chinese Communist Party
(CCP) and the Japanese who invaded Manchuria in 1931. During the war
(1937–1945), the crisis was even more pronounced as Japanese territorial
aggression increased significantly. Right after the Japanese defeat, the KMT

CONTACT Ulug Kuzuoglu ulugkuzuoglu@gmail.com History Department, Columbia University.

Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/ucry.
© 2018 Taylor & Francis
2 U. KUZUOGLU

continued the information war against the CCP during the Civil War
(1946–1949). During these two decades of incessant security crises, was it true
that one could get the Chinese codebook in any post office?
Chinese cryptography has not received any scholarly attention in the
literature, despite well-documented histories of intelligence networks in China
(Yu 1996; Wakeman 2003; Kahn 2004; Yu 2008). Frederick Wakeman,
Yu Maochun, and David Kahn have all immensely contributed to our knowl-
edge of the KMT’s intelligence history, but none of them tackled the technical
issue concerning the nature of cryptography with Chinese characteristics.
Cryptography in world history—be it the Caesar Cipher, the Vigenère Cipher,
or Al-Kindi’s cryptanalysis—by definition relies on the technology of the
alphabet (Kahn 1967; Singh 1999). It may be argued that Western cryptogra-
phy, including Arabic cryptography, would not exist in the form of ciphers
(i.e., alphanumerical substitutions of letters) if its linguistic system was not
alphabetical. How, then, did Chinese cryptography work given that the
Chinese writing system is quintessentially nonalphabetic? Was Chinese
cryptography so backward that the codebooks could be bought in any post
office? Or did the Chinese develop different methods of encryption, especially
during the information warfare of the 1930s and 1940s?
This article investigates the role of codes and cryptography in Chinese
information warfare during the 1930s and 1940s, and it discusses the
methods invented by Chinese cryptographers to come to terms with modern
cryptography. Works on the history of cryptography by and large exclude the
history of Chinese cryptography, partly because of the paucity of sources and
partly because of a mistaken belief that there is nothing to discuss. If it enters
the domain of world history at all, it does so only with reference to Western
cryptanalysts such as Herbert Yardley, who worked with the KMT’s head of
intelligence, Dai Li, from 1938 to 1940 as part of an effort to decipher
Japanese wartime communication (Kahn 2004, 187–198). The literature is
not any richer with regards to other East Asian countries, with the exception
of a recent scholarly contribution on Vietnamese cryptography by Hieu and
Koblitz (2017) and various publications on the Japanese Purple Cipher
Machine, which occupied an important place in the Pacific War (Prados
1995; Smith 2000). We also do not find any relevant works in the fields of
modern Middle Eastern, South Asian, or other non-Euro-American
cryptographies.
Chinese cryptography is a part of a history of modern Chinese information
sciences that has reflected the incongruence between a global alphabetical
infrastructure, imposed on China through the technology of the telegraph,
and a nonalphabetic Chinese writing system. As recent literature has demon-
strated, the historical development of Chinese information technologies has
followed a path that was intrinsically different from Euro-American models
of information sciences that were predetermined by the alphabet. Historical
 CRYPTOLOGIA 3

works on Chinese typewriters have especially drawn attention to this

incongruence between alphabet and nonalphabet (Tsu 2015; Mullaney 2017).
This article contends that the physical medium of the Chinese character
played a central role in the development of Chinese cryptography and, by
extension, the intelligence networks. Intelligence gathering and transmission,
I would like to suggest, were most of all a communication enterprise sustained
through human operatives, wired and wireless machines, and codes. Codes
were the medium that integrated humans and machines; without codes the
network could not be sustained. My primary objective in this article is to
explain how the KMT reconciled or failed to reconcile alphabet-based global
cryptography with the nonalphabet-based Chinese writing system to build its
intelligence network. In doing so, I would also like to draw attention to the
larger world of non-Western cryptography that awaits further inquiry. Taking
seriously the intricacies of different writing systems and seeing the limitations
that these writing systems imposed and the possibilities that they permitted in
the development of cryptological technologies, I believe that future
scholarship may develop a world history of cryptography that is more
cognizant of non-Western histories.
The first section of this article charts the birth and early development of
Chinese cryptography starting with the 1871 arrival of telegraphy in China.
The Chinese writing system posed the greatest challenge to modern
cryptography in China, and this challenge was never truly overcome until
the onset of the computer age, which fundamentally transformed the
techniques of encryption. Until then, and since the use of ciphers was
categorically impossible for Chinese characters, physical codebooks, which
arranged Chinese characters in various ways, were of necessity the primary
agents of cryptography. Chinese encryption did not use a “key,” typically
found in ciphers, because a Chinese key could not exist independently of a
codebook; the codebook, with different forms of indexical arrangement, was
the key—although not all of them could be bought in the post office. One
way to overcome the limits of the codebook was to apply a second layer of
encryption to the output of the codebook, and some cryptographers
introduced such double encryption methods during the 1930s. Yet codebooks
still remained central to cryptology, at least for the KMT.1
The second section of this article describes the role of codes and codebooks
in the KMT’s efforts to build a human-machine network of intelligence before
and during the war. The KMT and the CCP started building their respective
intelligence networks in 1927, when the USSR-backed United Front
(1924–1927) between the two came to a bloody end on the streets of Shanghai.

1
There is indirect evidence in Vietnamese sources that the Chinese Communist Party as opposed to the KMT was
using strong double encryption methods. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewer of this article for pointing
this out. For more information on the exchange between the Viet Minh and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in
the 1950s, see Hieu and Koblitz (2017).
4 U. KUZUOGLU

Zhou Enlai, the future premier of the People’s Republic of China (PRC),
formed the CCP’s first intelligence agency, the Special Department (teke),
in 1927, while Chen Lifu formed the Central Statistics Bureau (zhongtong;
CSB), the first intelligence unit of the KMT. Both intelligence webs were
sustained through codebooks.
Codebook management was not unique to China. Before the age of
mechanized cryptography, of which the German Enigma Machine and the
Japanese Purple Machine offer famous examples, codebooks were central
across the world to maintaining information security. But codebooks in China
were even more central to cryptography than in the West. The management
of secret communication in China was most of all the management of
codebooks, the loss of which required the printing and distribution of new
codebooks to reconnect the broken lines of communication. In 1943, for
instance, this was precisely what happened when the CCP seized one of the
KMT’s codebooks in Yanan. The KMT agents were using this codebook to
communicate with the Organization Department of the Central Executive
Commission, the Bureau of Investigation and Statistics, and the Ministry of
Propaganda, and the codebook’s loss required an immediate reshuffling of
the code-numbers to restore the secret flow of information (PHI 1943).
Moreover, maintaining secrecy through codebooks was a costly enterprise.
Not only did it demand trust in human agents—who could steal, copy, lose,
or sell the codebooks—but it was also economically not the most feasible
method of encryption. The codebooks’ constant redesign and redistribution
required time and money. Thus, the KMT operatives sought alternatives.
The third section of this article traces the transformation of cryptological
services during the Chinese Civil War (1946–1949). Although physical
codebooks were central to the management of secret communication,
intelligence and cryptology went through a major transformation with the
start of the civil war in 1946, when the intelligence technologies of the
KMT proved to be inadequate in processing valuable information. By order
of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek the Ministry of National Defense started
to work on cipher machines that would enable greater speed and complexity
by applying a second layer of encryption. Even though these analog machines
could not overcome the limits imposed by Chinese characters and codebooks,
they represented an important stage in the mechanization of Chinese
cryptography that continued during the decades ahead and found new footing
with the introduction of binary code.

I. The birth of Chinese cryptography

Modern Chinese cryptography is inseparable from telegraphy. The first
commercial Chinese telegraph codebook modeled on Morse Code was
invented by H. C. F. C. Schjellerup, a Danish astronomy professor, in 1871.
 CRYPTOLOGIA 5

It was expanded and put in wider use by the French harbormaster in

Shanghai, Auguste Septime Viguier, and his coauthor De Mingcai. The
1871 telegraph codebook was the blueprint of almost all telegraph codebooks
that were used in China until the advent of the digital age, but it did not come
without technical and financial difficulties. Samuel F. B. Morse’s telegraph
code is based on the English alphabet, in which every letter is represented
by dots and dashes. The letter “a,” for instance, was a dot and a
dash (. -), “b,” a dot and three dashes (. - - -), “c,” a dash, a dot, a dash, a
dot (- . - .), and so on. But the nonalphabetic nature of Chinese script
demanded a middle stage between Morse Code and Chinese characters, which
came in the form of numbers. Viguier assigned a four-digit number to each
character so that each character’s code-number could be transmitted via
Morse Code. To transmit the character yi 一, its number “0001” was used;
the character ya 亞 was identified with the number “0077” (see Figure 1).
The numbers thus ran from 0001 to 9999, enough to contain the 6,000 to
7,000 Chinese characters commonly used (Baark 1997, 84).
The Chinese writing system posed a challenge even for ordinary telegraphic
communication (Mullaney 2015, 161). For cryptography the challenge was
greater. Viguier was the first to draw attention to the problem of Chinese
cryptography shortly after the invention of the telegraph codebook. He
attempted to offer a remedy in The New Telegraph Codebook (dianbao xinshu
電報新書), printed in 1872, in which he used his own telegraph codebook as
the basis of Chinese encryption. He suggested that, similar to a keyword in
monoalphabetic ciphers, a key number to encrypt the Chinese four-digit
numbers that corresponded to characters should be used. The message could
thus be decoded only if both sides possessed the key number. For example,
how could one encode the character for rice (mi 米)? According to Viguier’s
method of encryption, one would first find the four-digit number for mi in
the telegraph codebook, which was 4149, and then add a key number to
the four-digit number. If the key number was 5555, then the encoded mi
would be 4149 + 5555 = 9694 (with each digit calculated modulo 10). The only
way to decipher an encoded message was to have the key (Viguier 1872). With
the expanding telegraph network in the Qing Empire in the 1880s and 1890s,
this method of encryption was one that was used for secret communication,
although it was not a very secretive one.
The Sino-Japanese War in 1895 was the first turning point in the history of
Chinese cryptography. On 22 June 1894, on the eve of what might be
considered China’s first experience with modern information warfare, the
Japanese minister of foreign affairs Mutsu Munemitsu sent a diplomatic note
to the Qing ambassador Wang Fengzao, anticipating that Wang would send
the same note to the Qing government in encrypted form. His plan worked,
and when the Japanese intercepted Wang’s telegram they broke the Qing
code. Qing officials never knew that their code was broken, and this ignorance
6 U. KUZUOGLU

Figure 1. Viguier’s Dianbao xinshu 電報新書 (The New Telegraph Codebook), 1872.
 CRYPTOLOGIA 7

proved to be detrimental during the negotiations for the Treaty of

Shimonoseki in 1895 because Mutsu, who was the principal Japanese
negotiator, intercepted all the communication between Li Hongzhang, the
leading Qing negotiator for the treaty, and the mainland. In short, Mutsu
knew everything Li was ordered to do, which gave him an upper hand in
manipulating the negotiations (Ji 2014).
It is not clear whether Wang was using Viguier’s method of encryption to
communicate with the mainland. One of the major problems with Viguier’s
cryptogram was that if only one character was deciphered, the rest could be
figured out at the drop of a hat; the Qing officials were aware of this
deficiency. Especially in 1895, but possibly before that date, Qing officials
began to put more emphasis on secrecy, and they started publishing new
codebooks for cryptographic purposes (Ji 2014, 117–118). What made the
new cryptographic codebooks different from the general telegraph codebook
was that the characters were arranged differently according to the radicals
(bushou).
In Viguier and De Mingcai’s first Chinese telegraph codebook, The New
Method in Electrical Messages (dianxin xinfa 電信新法; 1871), and the later
revised editions, the Kangxi Dictionary with its 214 radicals was taken as
the model for indexing characters. The late Ming dynasty literati Mei Yingzuo
invented 214 radicals, but they became the sovereign method of indexing
Chinese characters under the Kangxi emperor (r. 1661–1722), whose
encyclopedic Kangxi Dictionary (kangxi zidian) was indexed by these radicals
in 1716. According to the 214-radical index, each character belonged to a rad-
ical. The radical for “message,” xin 信, for instance, was ren 人, placed on the
left side of the character. To locate xin in the dictionary, the codebreaker first
had to find the category for ren 人, under which were listed all the characters
that had ren as the radical, such as “location” (wei 位), “stay” (zhu 住 ), or
“Buddha” (fo 佛), as can be seen in Figure 1 (Viguier 1872).2
The arrangement of characters in a telegraph codebook was thus fixed
because it followed the Kangxi Dictionary’s arrangement. For instance, the
first six characters, which were all listed under the first root radical yi 一, read,
0001 一; 0002 丁; 0003 七; 0004 丈; 0005 三; 0006 上.

The new cryptographic codebooks that the Qing technicians invented

shuffled the arrangement of these characters. In Zhou Code (zhouzi miben
宙字密本), for instance, which was put in use in 1900, the first six characters
were arranged as
0001 一; 0002 七; 0003 丁; 0004 下; 0005 上; 0006 丈 (Xia 2009, 116).

2
The first telegraph codebook in 1871 was slightly different, and the character xin 信 corresponded to 0230.
8 U. KUZUOGLU

From 1895 to 1908 cryptographic codebooks were revised eight times in

this manner, but there were two problems with these specially arranged code-
books. First, they could not meet the speed that modern cryptography
required. After all, in 13 years only eight codebooks were published. Second,
creating a new codebook took time, effort, and money. To change the code, an
entirely new codebook had to be devised and printed. A new method was
necessary to keep up with the much-needed cryptographic speed and
economy.
This method came about during the Qing era and was popularized by the
Commercial Press, the biggest publishing house in the country, in 1908. Just
three years before the fall of the empire, the Commercial Press published the
first publicly available codebook for cryptographic purposes called The Plaintext-
Ciphertext Telegraph Codebook (mingmima dianbao shu 明密碼電報書;
Shangwu yinshuguan 1908; from now on referred to as Plain-Cipher).
Plain-Cipher, the inventor of which is unknown, was important not only
for cryptographic purposes but also for popularizing cryptography and
making codes a part of daily life.3 Plain-Cipher was innovative because it
eliminated the need to rearrange the order of characters under each radical.
Instead it kept the standard telegraph codebook as it was. Every page had
100 characters arranged as 10 × 10 square tables. Plain-Cipher complemented
the arrangement with an empty horizontal column at the top, and an empty
vertical column on the side, each composed of ten squares (Fig. 2). This
allowed the ordinary codebook-user to number the characters as he/she
wished by numbering the empty horizontal and vertical squares and giving
a two-digit number to the page. For example the four-digit number for
“smoke” (yan 煙) in a standard telegraph codebook was 3533, which indicated
that “smoke” was on the 35th page and arranged as the 33rd character. With
Plain-Cipher, the codebook-user could arbitrarily assign the number “82” to
the page, “9” to the horizontal axis, and “2” to the vertical axis on which “smoke”
was located. The code for “smoke” would therefore be 8292 instead of 3533.
The publication of this codebook by the Commercial Press signaled an
important shift in the use of cryptography because codes no longer solely
belonged to the state. Especially after the fall of the empire, cryptography
permeated into daily communications. The Commercial Press published more
than a hundred editions of Plain-Cipher in the following decades, and it became
the dominant mode of transmitting coded messages in Chinese.4 Since every
codebook was arranged in a different way, each Plain-Cipher telegraph
codebook was given a special name: Cheng Code (cheng mi 誠密), Ren Code
3
It is unlikely that the Commercial Press was the inventor of this method. Circumstantial evidence suggests that this
method of coding numbers was already extant in the late Qing dynasty, although exact dates for its invention
remain unclear. See Hu 2007, 14–15.
4
By 1940 the Commercial Press had printed 106 editions of the codebook, and more were printed in the following
years. Dozens of used codebooks can be found in the KMT Party History Institute (PHI), including one that was
used by Hu Hanmin and Kong Geng for their private communication. See PHI, “The secret codebook.”
 CRYPTOLOGIA 9

Figure 2. Example of a Plain-Cipher codebook.

(ren mi 仁密), Dong Code (dong mi 東密), and Yong Code (yong mi 雍密)
among others.5
Although Plain-Cipher was the dominant cryptographic method, it was not
the only one. For international communication an alphabetical interface was
used for coding messages, both for economic and cryptographic purposes. In
1903 the London Telegraph Conference defined the regulations for the use of
plain, code, and cipher languages in telegraphic communications and allowed
the transmission of any pronounceable ten-letter word as one word. As long
as each artificial word could be pronounced in one of the authorized
languages (i.e., German, English, Spanish, French, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese,
and Latin), a ten-letter word could be transmitted for the price of one word
(Twisaday and Neilson 1904, 14–15). A fragment of the KMT’s secret
communication with Japan in 1918 shows that a condensing table was devised
to recode the four-digit numbers as pronounceable words (see next page).
According to this condensing table, the alphabetical code for 2514 was
“caze,” 2894 was “dite,” 1129 was “zude,” 0668 was “yuni,” and 3634 was
“gufe.” Five Chinese characters could thus be coded as two words—cazeditezu
deyunigufe—which saved money and added an extra layer of security to the
transmission of messages. In sending a coded text, the telegram would start

5
PHI, Yiban dang’an [General Archives], yiban050/5.32, “Yong mi dianmaben, 1923/9”; yiban050/5.33, “Dong mi
dianmaben, 1922/6”; yiban050/5.35, “Cheng mi dianmaben, 1922/6”; yiban050/5.3, “Ren mi dianmaben, 1913/4.”
10 U. KUZUOGLU

64 Sixtyfourth
u o i e a
x 01 02 03 04 05
y 06 07 08 09 10
z 11 12 13 14 15
b 16 17 18 19 20
c 21 22 23 24 25
d 26 27 28 29 30
f 31 32 33 34 35
g 36 37 38 39 40
h 41 42 43 44 45
j 46 47 48 49 50
k 51 52 53 54 55
l 56 57 58 59 60
m 61 62 63 64 65
n 66 67 68 69 70
p 71 72 73 74 75
q 76 77 78 79 80
r 81 82 83 84 85
s 86 87 88 89 90
t 91 92 93 94 95
v 96 97 98 99 00

with the number of the table (in this case 64) and then continue with
cazeditezu deyunigufe.6
Even though lettered encryption proved to be useful for international com-
munication, Plain-Cipher was the most widely used method domestically,
because even for alphabetical interfaces a codebook was still necessary to
decipher what cazeditezu deyunigufe, or “2514 2894 1129 0668 3634,”
indicated. Furthermore, the translation of numbers into characters or
characters into numbers produced fewer mistakes than the threefold
translation among characters, numbers, and letters. Alphabetical interfaces
were again introduced with the mechanization of cryptography, but even then
codebooks were still the building blocks of encrypted communication.

II. The party and the code: KMT’s intelligence network

Chiang Kai-shek, head of the KMT, severed the party’s ties with the Chinese
Communist Party in 1927, and the First United Front between the two parties,
which had been supported by the USSR since 1924, came to an abrupt end.
Although an uneasy Second United Front was established between the
KMT and the CCP against Japan during the war, their stars never aligned
and the two parties were in a constant battle against each other before, during,
and after the Second World War. During these two decades—from 1927 until
1949, when the KMT retreated to the southeastern island of Taiwan and the
People’s Republic of China was established on the mainland—party
6
For the original condensing table, see PHI “Codebook no. 64.” For its explanation, see PHI “Japanese secret code.”
China Inland Mission had also been using this method, mostly for economic purposes, since 1907; see China Inland
Mission 1913. Commercial Press was also publishing similar methods for coding in the 1930s; see Xiaoyu 1932.
 CRYPTOLOGIA 11

surveillance, propaganda, and censorship defined the main contours of

governance in China.
Espionage was one of the central institutions of this society of control. The
decades until, and even after, the founding of the PRC set the scene for an
unending war of intelligence between the CCP and the KMT, as the gathering,
transmission, and management of information became central to the
existence of each party. Control over information was key to survival, and
both parties formed their own intelligence networks. Spies—who were the
embodied hunters, gatherers, and transmitters of information—gradually
swarmed every corner of the country, constructing information networks
through an integrated use of human bodies and technologies of encryption
and transmission, such as wireless radio stations and cryptograms.
The KMT established its first espionage unit in 1927. Known as the Cen-
tral Executive Commission Investigation and Statistics Bureau (zhongtong;
CSB), it was administered by Chen Lifu, a close associate of Chiang Kai-
shek. Chen started forming a complex network for intelligence gathering,
and for a while even “Spymaster” Dai Li, who later became the principal
leader of espionage in China, depended on Chen’s network. In 1931, how-
ever, a scandal broke out: Chen Lifu’s CSB was infiltrated by communist
moles. It turned out that even the personal decoder of Chiang Kai-shek,
Li Kenong, was a communist spy who handed over Chiang’s codebook
to Zhou Enlai, the head of the Chinese espionage network (Wakeman
2003, 273). The catastrophe caused a reorganization of the intelligence
agency, and Dai Li, the “Himmler of China” and the biggest rival of Chen
Lifu, took the reins in his own hands to form an entirely new intelligence
network.
The first years of KMT’s intelligence network, which soon turned into a
leviathan, overlapped with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and
the rise of fascism. Chiang Kai-shek and the leaders of the KMT were inspired
by the fascist regimes in Germany, Italy, and even Japan, and they believed
that the only way to national salvation was to follow the rising tide. As a part
of this turn in political organization the KMT established the Society of the
Practice of the Three Principles of the People (lixing she) in February 1932,
also known as the Revival Society or the Blue Shirts Society, the equivalent
of Hitler’s Brown Shirts and Mussolini’s Black Shirts. In April Dai Li formed
the Special Services Unit (tewu chu) under the Blue Shirts Society and began
constructing his web of intelligence, which was renamed the Military Bureau
of Investigation and Statistics (BIS) in 1938 (Xiao 2012, 5–6). The Li Kenong
scandal, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, and the rise of fascism as a
dominant ideology in the KMT’s circles allowed Dai Li to prove his value
to the party with the Special Services Unit. In 1933 he recruited the talented
radio operator Wei Daming so Dai Li could form his own group of radio
experts and stop relying on the communication system that Chen Lifu had
12 U. KUZUOGLU

built (Wakeman 2003, 272–273; Yu 2008, 203). From 1933 until his sudden
death in 1946, Dai Li was the central figure in KMT’s management of
intelligence.
For Dai Li the Special Services Unit was not simply for gathering
information. In a report he penned in 1934 on the activities of the Special
Services Unit, Dai Li defined espionage as the direct means to “construct a
psychology (jianshe xinli) through recuperating China’s inherent virtue
(guoyou zhi dexing), and turning the people’s minds toward the correct
revolutionary path (geming zhi zhenggui)” (AH 1934, 10:015a). Dai Li’s choice
of words was significant as the year 1934 was the start of the “New Life
Movement” (xin shenghuo yundong), Chiang Kai-shek’s initiative to reinvent
Chinese tradition, and discipline citizen behavior accordingly, through the
lens of a militarist and increasingly fascist ideology (Dirlik 1975; Culp 2006;
Ferlanti 2010; Tsui 2013). A return to “inherent” (guyou) customs, the
recuperation of an imagined “virtuous essence” (dexing), and the rectification
of the correct revolutionary path were the pillars of Chiang’s new regime,
which Frederick Wakeman has provocatively named “Confucian Fascism”
(Wakeman 1997). The Revival Society (fuxing she), under which the Secret
Services Unit worked, embodied in its name this essence of recuperating
and reviving ancient traditions. For Dai Li espionage was the most effective
way to achieve this end. Collecting information about the society was the first
step toward surveillance, control, and eventually the construction of a new
social psychology.
Dai Li did not mention in his letter the necessary mechanics of espionage
(i.e., operatives, radios, and codes), but he was already attending to them. Dai
Li quickly expanded his intelligence network of spies and secret communi-
cation technologies. There were two “great dangers” (da nan) threatening
the unity of China: Japanese imperialist occupation and the “flood of red
catastrophe” (chihuo zhi hengliu; i.e., the Communists; AH 1934, 10:28a).
By the end of 1934 an intelligence network (qingbao wang) was installed
throughout the nation. By 1938 the Secret Services Unit was in 67 different
locations in China. The major centers (qu 區), which were then divided into
smaller units (zhan 站 and zu 組), were in Nanjing, Shanghai, Wuhan,
Lanzhou (the only center in the northwest), Chuan-Kang (which connected
Chengdu, Guangdong, Hong Kong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Yunnan, and an
offshoot branch in Minbei), and Beiping (including parts of inner Mongolia
and Manchuria) (AH 002000001035A, “Special Intelligence,” 002-080102-
00034-006). The purpose of the Secret Services Unit was to collect intelligence
on important figures and their backgrounds, interests, commercial and polit-
ical connections, and attitudes toward the army, then secretly send reports
back to the headquarters (AH 148000000001A, “Development,” 10:46a).
The management of intelligence technologies, such as wireless radio
stations or encrypted messages, was of crucial importance yet difficult to
 CRYPTOLOGIA 13

maintain. Dai Li and Wei Daming were building their own network of spies
and machines so as not to rely on Chen Lifu’s, but one of the immediate
problems they faced was the lack of wireless machines. The amount of
information exchanged between the undercover officers and the party cadre
was growing rapidly, yet the technical difficulties in wireless communication
caused miscommunication. Sometimes 20 to 30 characters out of 100 would
be incorrectly transmitted. When even one character could make a huge
difference, reported Dai, 30 percent entropy was simply unacceptable (ibid.,
10:19a). Starting in 1934 new wireless machines were built, new personnel
were trained, and small transponders were invented for field agents; in a
few years Dai Li’s intelligence network of humans, machines, and codes
occupied virtually every corner of the nation (AH 148000000001A,
“Development,” 10:20a; Wakeman 2003, 274). In 1938 there were 191 radio
stations (diantai 電台) established across China in the Secret Services Unit’s
quarters (AH 002000001035A, “Special Intelligence,” 002-080102-00034-006).
Codebooks remained as the fundamental means of maintaining infor-
mation security during the 1930s and 1940s. All communication between
government offices was conducted through the Plain-Cipher, and the KMT
was constantly changing the codes to ensure security. The Military Affairs
Commission’s Confidential Office (junshi weiyuanhui jiyao shi) determined
the design of the codebooks, and the Office of Bureaucracy (wenguan chu)
put them in use through informing each government office. In January
1937, for instance, the Office of Bureaucracy ordered each committee and
ministry to change the Tong Code 統密 and Yi Code 一密 to Sheng Code
勝密 and Li Code 利密, respectively (AH 001000004248A, “National
Government,” 001-043160-0001-076a). In July it ordered the change of
codebooks from Zhi Code 治密 to Min Code 民密. Then in August the
Military Affairs Commission ordered the government offices to abandon both
Zhi and Min Codes and employ Ting Code 霆密 instead (AH 001000004249A,
“National Government,” 001-043160-0002-043a). In September the Office of
Bureaucracy sent another order, this time asking the offices to use the Jian Code
建密 until October 15 and She Code 設密 after (AH 001000004250A, “National
Government,” 001-043160-0003-036x). A new order came in January 1938 to use
Mu Code 穆密 and Yong Code 雍密; another one in April to use Lin Code 麟密
and Jiao Code 角密; another in June for Xue Code 雪密 and Chi Code 恥密;
another in August for Wu Code 務密 and Zi Code 茲密; and so on (AH
001000004251A, “National Government,” 001-043160-0004-058a, 120a, 174a, 195a).7
The constant change of codebooks was necessary because even Plain-
Cipher telegraph codebooks were not that difficult to break. Plain-Cipher

7
Sometimes a new set of numbers would replaced the old numbers while changing page numbers. An order given
on 30 April 1939, for instance, demanded simply to replace “1234567890” with “3690142875,” which meant that
page number “21” would be replaced with “63,” “43” with “09,” and so on. See AH 001000004252A, “National
Government,” 001-043160-0005-152a.
14 U. KUZUOGLU

was based on the standard telegraph codebook, and even if numbers were
shuffled every page had a certain number and characters on that page were
still arranged according to a standard order. For example, the characters gang
港, xiang 湘, tang 湯, and yuan 源 were always on the same page, regardless of
the page number, because they all shared the same root radical, 氵(水). If the
number assigned for this page was 54, all these characters had to start with 54;
depending on the content, this could facilitate decoding a given message
(Zhang 1939, 2). In addition, any character on the same row or column would
share the same third or fourth digit. These were security concerns imposed by
the physical medium of the Plain-Cipher.
To overcome this problem, different kinds of codebooks were used for
different levels of secrecy. For ensuring secrecy at the highest level, for
example, indexing according to 214 radicals was abandoned and new indexing
schemes were employed to devise “special codebooks” (tezhong midian ben) in
which characters would be arranged according to a different indexing logic,
resulting in completely different numbers. During the 1920s and 1930s,
new methods of indexing Chinese characters was a fiercely debated topic,
and there were close to a hundred different indexing schemes invented to
replace the established practice of Kangxi’s 214 radicals (Ping 2014). The most
famous of these indices was the well-known “Four-Corner Numeral Index”
invented by Wang Yunwu, the owner of the Commercial Press, who relied
on numbers and corner-strokes to index Chinese characters (Wong 1928).
Highly popular, it was just one among many numerical indices, some of
which, the written evidence suggests, have been used for designing new code-
books.8 This, however, was again not immune to the general problem posed
by the physicality of codebooks. If a special codebook was seized by the
enemy, all of the secret communication (including past communication)
could be deciphered. Besides, when a codebook was taken out of operation
it was hard to receive back all the codebooks in circulation, leaving an open
door for the enemy to seize a codebook and decipher past communications.
Second, it was too difficult to manage all the codebooks at the same time.
If there were 100 different codebooks running simultaneously, it would be
difficult for the operators to manage all of them. Third, when a new codebook
was put in circulation it had to be physically delivered to a receiving party,
and it could never be known whether the codebook had been compromised
on the way. In short, although special codebooks were employed in practice,
the time, labor, and money put into devising them could prove to be
impractical (Yanxiang 1939).
An alternative was proposed by Zhang Yanxiang 張延祥, also known as
Jameson Y. Chang. Zhang was born in Zhejiang in 1900. He studied electrical
8
I was unable to locate an example of these specially engineered codebooks in the archives, but it is highly likely
that these codebooks used indexing methods that were similar to the numerical methods of indexing widely
discussed during the period under scrutiny (Yanxiang 1939, 2–3).
 CRYPTOLOGIA 15

engineering at Shanghai Jiaotong Universiy, and after graduation he worked

as an engineer, manager, and researcher in different companies and institu-
tions in Shanghai, Anhui, and Nanjing. In 1938 he became a specialist mem-
ber of the Energy Commission (ziyuan weiyuanhui zhuanmen weiyuan), and
in 1946, right after the war, he joined the Chinese Supply Commission (zhong-
guo wuzi gongying weiyuanhui) in Washington, DC (AH 003000008781A,
“File of Names,” 003-010102-0105-0013a and 0014a.). In the following years
he was in touch with the Royal Typewriter Company, Remington Rand
Inc., and the Underwood Corporation to purchase office supplies (AH
003000001140A, “Jameson Y. Chang,” 003-020600-0568).9
Zhang had been involved in industrial and bureaucratic technologies since
the start of the war. Before he started working for the Energy Commission, he
invented a new method of encryption, One Hundred Million Secret Codes
(wanwan midianma), which was easy and economical, then he received the
approval of the Ministry of Communication.10 Zhang was keenly aware of
the problem posed by the physical existence of codebooks, and his method
aimed to eliminate the problem of repetition in encryption (i.e., the use of
the same page number for different characters on the same page). His encryp-
tion method was based on regrouping four-digit numbers into five-, seven-, or
nine-digit groups, then shuffle them. Zhang’s system worked like this:
Let us imagine that a cryptographer wanted to encrypt the sentence dian
dian dian dian dian 電電電電電 (electricity, electricity, electricity, electricity,
electricity). The four-digit standard telegraph codebook equivalent of dian
was “7193,” so the sentence read “7193 7193 7193 7193 7193.” To encrypt this
message the cryptographer would join these numbers to make four groups of
five-digit numbers: 71937 19371 93719 37193. That was the first step. Then
the cryptographer would write the numbers in reverse order: 73917 17391
91739 39173. Last, the cryptographer would redivide them into five groups
of four-digit numbers: 7391 7173 9191 7393 9173.
The cryptographer could also shuffle the numbers in other ways, and for
this purpose Zhang even invented a shift-case (zhuanxia 轉匣) and a num-
ber-tray (mapan 碼盤) that went in the case. For instance, different numbers
could be given to different digits, and by conjoining, regrouping, shuffling,
and redividing the four-digit equivalents of characters, encryption could be
almost endless. If we take the example above and add one more layer to it.
If we take the example above and add one more layer to it, it would look like
the table below (see next page).
In this method of encryption Zhang combined five units composed of four
digits (7193) and divided them into four units composed of five digits, starting

9
In the closing years of the Civil War, he worked especially with Westinghouse Electric Corporation to invent a
teletypewriter for cryptographic purposes. For his mention of teletypewriters, see, “Zhang’s Letter,” May 27,
1948, ibid., 0013a-0014a.
10
The approval was reproduced in Yanxiang 1939, n.p.
16 U. KUZUOGLU

Plaintext: 0123456789
Ciphertext for first number 1308249567
Ciphertext for second number 1452807693
Ciphertext for third number 1846970325
Ciphertext for fourth number 2057968134
Ciphertext for fifth number 2541783906
dian dian dian dian dian 7193 7193 7193 7193 7193
Divided into four groups 71937 19371 93719 37193
Encryption 54579 33615 72306 86841
Redivision into five groups (encrypted text) 5457 9336 1572 3068 684111

with “71937.” He then used a different ciphertext for each number. The
number “7” was thus enciphered as “5” according to “ciphertext for first
number,” “1” was enciphered as “4” according to “ciphertext for second
number,” and so on. After enciphering each of the four units composed of five
digits accordingly, he recombined the units and redivided them into five units
composed of four digits. The encrypted text thus became significantly
different than the plaintext.
It is difficult to gauge how widely Zhang’s One Hundred Million Secret Codes
was put to use during wartime, but given its simplicity and a couple of scattered
references to it in the archives, it is possible to assume that it was (AH
017000001858A, “An Example,” 6-21-09-05; Nanjing Number Two Archives,
“Official Document Concerning,” 5-1795(1)).12 Still, it did not replace the wide-
spread use of codebooks; although the increasing number of codebooks made
their management more troublesome, it also made it more difficult for the
enemy to decode them because messages were sent through different channels
and protected by different codes. However impractical or uneconomical these
codebooks seemed to be, they were the most important means of sustaining
the channels of communication during the war. In a report written in 1946
for the Ministry of National Defense’s Second Department (guofangbu di er
ting), an unidentified witness noted that he saw more than 900 different code-
books in the Ministry of National Defense, including standard codebooks and
special codebooks indexed in different ways (Nanjing Number Two Archives,
“Preserving Secrets in Communication,” 787-31, 5-1802).13
Given the widespread use of codebooks the entire system required a
continuous and tedious management of them, but this management began
losing efficacy after the Second World War. The KMT’s espionage network
and cryptography entered a new phase with the start of the Civil War between

11
Yanxiang 1939, 8. I changed Zhang’s example to dian (7193) to keep it simple.
12
Zhang Yanxiang also devised a “codebook of Chinese phrases (ziju dianmashu)” that was put in use during the war.
See AH 003000008514A, 003-010101-0603-0015x.
13
The witness also noted that chengyu codebooks were employed during the early years of the war. Chengyu code-
books were indexed according to combinations of characters instead of individual characters. For instance, “the
mayor of Chengdu” (chengdu shi shizhang) corresponded to one “word.” See Jiaotong bu bian, Chengyu dianma
[Chengyu Codebook] (1948), 424. This was similar to the codebooks used in Western languages, where certain
phrases were condensed to save time and money. The witness also wrote that there were long- and short-
numbered codes (changduan ma), but it is not clear what these codes looked like.
 CRYPTOLOGIA 17

the Communists and the Nationalists, in which the KMT’s cryptanalysis and
cryptography were solely geared toward the CCP. Codebooks, the intelligence
officers came to realize, were not sufficient enough to ensure security; for the
first time the KMT started funding projects for cipher machines.

III. Cipher machines: Intelligence in the Civil War

In March 1946 Dai Li suddenly died in a plane crash, the causes of which still
await explanation. As Wakeman skillfully explicates in Spymaster, Dai Li held
such enormous power during the war that he was personally involved in many
different sides of intelligence gathering, and his deputies simply could not
replace his one-man authority (Wakeman 2003, 358–361). With his death,
however, the power struggles among intelligence agencies resurfaced, and
there ensued an institutional reorganization of the agencies. In June 1946
the Military Affairs Commission General Staff Second Department (junshi
weiyuanhui junlingbu di er ting) was reorganized as the Ministry of National
Defense Second Department (guofangbu di er ting) with Dai Li’s old friend
Zheng Jiemin as the new director. After the establishment of the Second
Department, which became the headquarters for intelligence gathering, the
biggest transformation took place in Dai Li’s Bureau of Investigation and Stat-
istics (BIS). In August BIS was renamed the Ministry of National Defense
Security Bureau (literally “Bureau of Preserving Secrets”; guofangbu baomiju),
and its duties were redistributed among other institutions. Collecting military
and international intelligence and supervising espionage, security, and tele-
communication were transferred over to the Ministry of National Defense
Second Department; operations (xingdong) and “foreign affairs special chemi-
cal research” (waishi tezhong huaxue yanjiu) were relocated under the Police
Department (jingcha zongshu); and traffic inspection was now under the
General Bureau of the Traffic Police (jiaojing zongju).
After the reorganization of the BIS, 6,002 people stayed as bureaucrats
(guanzuo), 3,473 were given compensation and discharged, and 6,708 found
new jobs in army regiments—BIS shrank by more than 60 percent. In
September the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) was also reorganized and
became a part of the Bureau of Statistics (tongji bu) and the Party Bureau
(dang bu). A similar fate awaited the International Research Center, which in
July transferred all its documents and archives to the Second Department. The
Second Department also inherited the Technological Research Office of the Military
Affairs Commission’s Confidential Unit (junweihui jiyaoshi zhi jishu yanjiushi),
which had succeeded in breaking Japanese and French codes during the war.12
Under the new organizational structure, there were six intelligence
agencies: the Security Bureau (baomiju), the Central Bureau of Statistics
(CBS; zhongtongju), the Ministry of National Defense Second Deparment
(guofang bu di er ting), the Police Department (jingcha zongshu), the Ministry
18 U. KUZUOGLU

of Foreign Affairs Intelligence Unit (waijiaobu qingbao si), and the Military
Police Command (xianbing silingbu). The entire intelligence work was now
directed “against traitors and spies” (fangjian fangdie), referring to anyone
affiliated with the CCP. All intelligence units were now ordered to examine
the correspondence between the CCP and the Soviet Union, both in
and out of China (AH 002000001040A, “Comprehensive Examination,”
002-080102-00039-025).
Zheng Jiemin’s Second Department was the most powerful intelligence unit
of the KMT during the Civil War, but Zheng’s management of cryptological
information was not going well. According to a report on intelligence gather-
ing activities in 1946, there was little intelligence worth mentioning. Most of
the intelligence reports were received through the Technological Research
Office, which sent 15,174 reports, followed by the Security Bureau’s 8,209,
CBS’s 6,892, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Intelligence Unit’s 1,181, and
the Military Police Command’s 781. When analyzed on a monthly basis, there
was a serious drop in the number of reports received from January to Decem-
ber 1946. In January the total number of reports was 3,444, and the amount
was highest in March with 3,729. But by December the amount had dropped
to 2,108 (AH 002000001040A, “Comprehensive Examination,” 002-080102-
00039-026). The Ministry of National Defense was not even receiving good
intelligence on the Soviet Union. Everything they received was either from
the Soviet consulates or Soviet “clubs,” so the information did not amount
to much (AH 002000001040A, “Comprehensive Examination,” 002-080102-
00039-025-005x). As for intelligence on the CCP, most of what they received
was official reports or publications of the CCP. When compared with the
intelligence gathering activities of the year before, there was no improvement
(AH 002000001040A, “Comprehensive Examination,” 002-080102-00039-
025-006x).
Cryptanalysis was not any better. Within the same year the cryptanalysis
group had intercepted a total of 117,475 messages in English, Japanese,
Russian, and Chinese, but deciphering them, even if possible, required more
human and machine power. Zheng Jiemin enumerated the problems as
follows: first, the machines they used to intercept and investigate the messages
were obsolete. For instance, if the other side was using a machine that sent
more than 800 words at a time, it was not possible to intercept those messages
with the KMT’s machines. Second, there was a general lack of sources on
cryptography, and this deficiency made it impossible to break into the
complicated Russian communication network. Finally, Zheng encountered
difficulties in recruiting personnel who could work with the Russian language
and technologies (AH 002000001930A, “General Sources,” 002-080200-
00541-061). To increase the quality of operations, use better wireless technol-
ogies, overcome logistical problems, and print new codebooks—in short, to
optimize intelligence gathering—Zheng Jiemin, on 7 February 1947,
 CRYPTOLOGIA 19

demanded a monthly budget of 370 million yuan (AH 002000001930A,

“General Sources,” 002-080200-00541-061).14
Information security became an even greater problem as the obsolete
cryptologic technologies signaled an inescapable defeat. On March 19 Chiang
Kai-shek sent a letter to Liu Fei, the vice chief of staff of the Ministry of
National Defense, where he named the crisis as “a technological war over cryp-
tological security” (mima baomi zhi jishu zhan). In the words of Chiang the war
against the Communists was fought through “cryptological military strategies”
(mima zhanshu), and the KMT was not managing the war efficiently—mainly
for financial reasons (AH 002000000416A, “Documents on the Revolution,”
002-020400-00012-013-001x). Cryptology needed a major overhaul.
On 5 April 1947 Yu Jishi from the Ministry of National Defense drafted a
proposal to change the cryptologic practices. New goniometers for intercepting
wireless communication were in order, and new codes were going to be more
machine-based. Yu suggested the use of one-time pads for field agents as well
as the invention of “cipher machines” for increasing security. One-time pads
were commonly used by American spies, and they were considered to be almost
unbreakable because the plaintext was encrypted through a random code used
only once, making it impossible to break in a short period of time. KMT had in
fact used one-time pads earlier for a brief period, but they had become a finan-
cial burden because of the need to produce them in large numbers. Now, the
Ministry of National Defense was willing to invest as much money as needed
to get cryptography back on its feet. Zheng Jiemin designed the following plan
for the reorganization of cryptologic services: the number of people in designing
and breaking codes was going to rise from 91 to 280; the number in the inves-
tigation of telecommunications was to be raised from 562 to 1,050; and the
number in code-printing was to be 44 instead of 26. A total of 1,465 people
instead of 607 were going to be employed in the cryptologic war against
the communists (AH 002000000416A, “Documents on the Revolution,”
002-020400-00012-016-001x).
It was with this boost to cryptology that the Ministry of National Defense
also began funding projects for Chinese cipher machines. The first cipher
machine that it funded was that of Huang Shaohong. In 1941 Huang was
awarded a medal for inventing a rifle grenade and a launch tube, both of
which he produced in a factory in Zhejiang (AH 001000003411A, “Awards
for Merit,” 00135100005089a). In 1947 the National Defense Commission
of Scientific Research funded three of his projects: a cipher machine, a
Chinese typewriter, and a three-letter chengyu codebook. The Sixth Department
of the Ministry of National Defense directed the research for the invention of
this machine, and the Cipher Machines Research Commission (mimaji yanjiu
weiyuanhui)—composed of experts from the Scientific Commission of National
14
According to a report written in 1947, the Communists were also using cryptographic methods similar to the
KMT’s. See, AH 002000001930A, “General Sources,” 002-080200-00541-057.
20 U. KUZUOGLU

Figure 3. A view of the “Comet” machine from the top.

Defense, the Second Department, the Office of Communication, and the Office
of War Industry—meticulously examined the methods for building such a
machine. The Ministry of National Defense funded his project to see further
results, and Huang, in official sources, is described as the inventor of the cipher
machine, although the archives remain silent about the details of the product

Figure 4. A view of the “Comet” machine from the side.

 CRYPTOLOGIA 21

(AH 002000001929A, “General Sources,” 002-080200-00540-032; AH

002000001931A, “General Sources,” 002-080200-00542-175).15
The second cipher machine was invented by Tan Boyu, also known as Beue
Tann (1900–1982), in 1948. A native of Hunan, Tan graduated from the
Tongji University Engineering Department in 1919 and went on to Dresden,
Germany, to pursue studies in electrical engineering. From the late 1920s to
the 1940s he served as a diplomat in Germany, a secretary at Tongji Univer-
sity, an advisor and secretary to the national government, a member of the
Industrial Standardization Commission under the Ministry of Economy,
and the vice minister of communication during the Civil War. Most impor-
tant for my purposes, he was the inventor of the cipher machine “Comet”
(huixing; AH 129000100273A, “Tan Boyu,” 6-05-06-02; Zhang and Shen
1987, 206–208).
Tan’s cryptography machine was a cipher machine; that is, it substituted a
fixed set of numbers, letters, signs, and symbols with a movable set of num-
bers, letters, signs, and symbols (see Figure 3). Tan’s machine worked through
a complex mechanical system composed of various discs, ratchets, and pawls
(see Figure 4). The particular design of the machine enabled a large number of
combinations in enciphering a plaintext. It was in principle a standard type of
encryption machine that had variable settings, where establishing a
mechanical setting was equivalent to agreeing on a key.
Tan had worked for seven years to invent this cipher machine, and he even
received an American patent for it in 1945 (Boyu 1945). It was solely for alpha-
numeric systems of inscription, not for Chinese characters. In fact, the patent
makes it clear that Tan’s primary purpose in designing his machine was to
carve out a space in the commercial world of cryptography in the West, not
the military world in China. Nevertheless, when he returned to China during
the Civil War it turned out to be the only place that welcomed the invention.
Chen Cheng, the future vice president of the Republic of China, reported to
Chiang Kai-shek that Tan Boyu had invented a cipher machine. A sample was
produced at an arsenal and examined by the Second Department, which
reported that it was “ingeniously secretive, [could produce] various combina-
tions, and was appropriate for military communications.” Tan received an
award for his invention, and the Ministry of National Defense ordered its
mass production by the Office of War Industry (binggong shu) in 1948 (AH
002000000431A, “Documents on the Revolution,” 002-020400-00027-098).
Even though Tan’s invention was not a match for the Enigma Machine or
the Purple Machine, it was still an elaborate cipher machine that reduced the
need for the constant redesign of codebooks while adding an extra layer of
security to encryption. Yet it did not overcome the problem of the Chinese
writing system. After all, it could only be used with Chinese characters
15
Huang Shaohong surrendered to the Communists after the KMT’s retreat to Taiwan. See AH 129000098544A,
“Huang Shaohong,” 6-05-05-01.
22 U. KUZUOGLU

through an alphabetical interface—and such codebooks had been available

since the late Qing dynasty. In spite of how “ingeniously secretive” it was,
the machine was not sufficient—and neither was the financial backing of
cryptologic services—to win the war. The KMT lost and retreated to Taiwan
in 1949. As for Tan Boyu, he moved to the United States and sought a new
career at the International Monetary Fund.

Conclusion
The 1930s and 1940s were critical decades in the history of the global infor-
mation wars. In China, with the widespread use of wireless radios for military
purposes, maintaining security over the channels of communication became a
primary concern for all sides involved in the war. The information war
between different sides was waged not only through human operatives and
wireless machines but also through codebooks. As such, the Chinese writing
system itself to a great extent shaped the trajectory of cryptology in China
because the design and redesign of the codebooks demanded effective and
creative methods to turn a nonalphabetic system into a medium of secrecy.
Cryptography was also a concern for the CCP. Even though this article has
largely examined intelligence management under the KMT, their eventual loss
of power raises a critical question: were the CCP’s cryptologic services superior
to the KMT’s? It is clear that the CCP used similar methods of encryption,
which is not surprising given the physical limitations imposed by Chinese char-
acters, but as this article points out, the KMT’s equipment was not sufficient to
decode the messages in a timely manner, especially during the Civil War (AH
002000000416A, “Documents on the Revolution,” 002-020400-00012-016-
001x). The CCP might have had better cryptanalytic equipment or stronger
double encryption during the Civil War, which might have contributed to its
victory. This, however, remains a subject that requires further scrutiny.
Chinese cryptography did not stop in 1949. On the contrary, Cold War
espionage increased the tension between the Republic of China (RoC) in
Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In Taiwan talented engi-
neers continued to work on cipher machines. Gao Zhongqin in particular
deserves brief attention. Gao was famous for his invention of IBM’s Chinese
Typewriter and Teletypewriter in 1946–1947, and in the ensuing decades he
became one of the fathers of Taiwanese computer technologies. In 1959 the
Ministry of National Defense proudly presented the cipher machine of Gao
Zhongqin. The details of the machine are not available in archival records,
but given Gao’s personal investment in the invention of a Chinese Teletype-
writer that used an electrical punch card to translate Chinese characters into
four-digit numbers and vice versa, one wonders whether Gao’s invention in
1959 might have been the first electric Chinese cryptography machine that
mechanized the numerical manipulation of codes. Whatever its composition
 CRYPTOLOGIA 23

might have been, the cipher machine was purchased and approved by the US
Army in Japan, and the Ministry of Communication in Taiwan installed it
between Taipei and Tainan in January 1959 (AH 002-080102-00065-008,
“Brief Report”).16
The mechanization of Chinese cryptography signaled something greater.
Although cipher machines did not immediately change the means of inte-
gration between humans and machines through codes, it was the beginning
of a new era in which the physicality of codebooks no longer occupied the
same central place in the transmission of information. Eventually, as code-
books were replaced by analog machines and later by digital machines, the
nature of cryptology changed significantly. Soon binary code knitted the
world anew by integrating humans, computers, and codes, and the PRC
and the RoC assumed a new place in the world history of cryptography.

Acronyms used in references

Academia Historica (Guoshi guan; AH)
KMT Party History Institute (Guomindang dangshi guan; PHI)

About the author

Ulug Kuzuoglu is a PhD candidate at Columbia University History
Department.

References
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(1), 1939/12/05–1946/03/11, In Guomin zhengfu [National government], 00135100005089a.
AH 001000004248A. “Guomin zhengfu dianbao mima benlingfa” [National government’s
issue of telegraphic codes] (1), 1936/12/23–1937/07/26. In Guomin zhengfu [National
government], 001–043160-0001–076a.
AH 001000004249A. “Guomin zhengfu dianbao mima benlingfa” [National government’s
issue of telegraphic codes] (2), 1937/07/15–1937/09/24. In Guomin zhengfu [National
government], 001–043160-0002–043a.
AH 001000004250A. “Guomin zhengfu dianbao mima benlingfa” [National government’s
issue of telegraphic codes] (3), 1937/09/16–1938/01/31. In Guomin zhengfu [National
government], 001–043160-0003–036x.
AH 001000004251A. “Guomin zhengfu dianbao mima benlingfa” [National government’s
issue of telegraphic codes] (4), 1938/01/19–1938/11/02. Guomin zhengfu [National govern-
ment], 001–043160-0004–058a, 120a, 174a, 195a.

16
The principles of Gao’s typewriter can be found in AH 003000005507A, “Technical Materials.” After his first
public performance in New York, Gao started developing the typewriter into a teletypewriter. When he staged
a performance in Nanjing in August 1947, and in the famous Park Hotel in Shanghai in October, he presented
his invention both as a typewriter and a teletypewriter. See, Shijie (1947), 275–276.
24 U. KUZUOGLU

AH 001000004252A. “Guomin zhengfu dianbao mima benlingfa” [National government’s

issue of telegraphic codes] (5), 1938/11/10–1939/06/29. In Guomin zhengfu [National
government], 001–043160–0005–152.
AH 002000000416A. “Geming wenxian—kanluan junshi: yiban cehua yu gefang jianyi”
[Documents on the revolution —Military affairs concerning the suppression of rebellions:
General strategies and the suggestions of all sides] (1), 1947/03/19. In Jiang Zhongzheng
zongtong wenwu [Historical relics of President Chiang Kai-shek], 002–020400-00012–
016-001x.
AH 002000000431A. “Geming wenxian—kanluan junshi: yiban cehua yu gefang jianyi”
[Documents on the revolution—Military affairs concerning the suppression of
rebellions: General strategies and the suggestions of all sides] (2), 1948/05/08. In Jiang
Zhongzheng zongtong wenwu [Historical relics of President Chiang Kai-shek], 002–
020400-00027–098.
AH 002000001035A. “Tezhong qingbao—juntong” [Special Intelligence, BIS] (1), May 1938-
September 1938. In Jiang Zhongzheng zongtong wenwu [Historical relics of President
Chiang Kai-shek], 002–080102-00034–006.
AH 002000001040A. “Ge qingbao jiguan gongzuo zong jiantao” [A comprehensive examin-
ation of the works of each intelligence unit], 1946. In Jiang Zhongzheng zongtong wenwu
[Historical relics of President Chiang Kai-shek]: Tezhong qingbao—juntong (6) [Special
Intelligence—BIS (6)], 002–080102–00039–025.
AH 002000001929A. “Yiban ziliao—chengbiao huiji” [General sources—A Collection of
reports and memorials] (113), 1947/10/01. In Jiang Zhongzheng zongtong wenwu [Histori-
cal relics of President Chiang Kai-shek], 002–080200-00540–032.
AH 002000001930A. “Yiban ziliao—chengbiao huiji” [General sources—A collection
of reports and memorials] (114), 1946/12/12–1946/12/26. In Jiang Zhongzheng
zongtong wenwu [Historical relics of President Chiang Kai-shek], 002–080200-00541–
057 and 061.
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reports and memorials] (115), 1947/01/06–1947/01/27. In Jiang Zhongzheng zongtong
wenwu [Historical relics of President Chiang Kai-shek], 002–080200-00542–175.
AH 002–080102–00065–008. “Guofangbu tongxinju tiaozhi guojun dianbao ji mima jiexie
xiankuang jianbao” [A brief report on the condition of the National Army’s telegraphy
and cipher machines, modulated by the Ministry of National Defense Communication
Office], 1959/01/20. In Jiang Zhongzheng zongtong wenwu [Historical relics of President
Chiang Kai-shek].
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1936–37. In Ziyuan weiyuanhui [Energy Commission], 003–020600–0568.
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First one: AH 129000098544A. “Huang Shaohong.” In Junshi weiyuanhui shicong shi [Military
Commission attendants and affairs], 6–05-05–01. Second one: AH 129000100273A. “Tan
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