Chapter 124 Espionage

No matter what the later professional training is, all students have to take a class called "General Knowledge of Secret Service" taught by the deputy director, Yu Lexing, to learn basic espionage techniques.Courses include gathering intelligence and assessing analysis, deploying and leading agents of a covert intelligence organization, stalking and escaping stalking, sending intelligence, special operations, reconnaissance, camouflage, postal material investigation, and the use of poisons and explosives. Once students take this basic technical class, they should be able to choose a future major.In fact, each individual was assigned to the existing squadron according to his intelligence: the best to the elite espionage unit, the lesser to the partisans.If it is a particularly smart and vigilant person, he may be selected for the "Intelligence Team".A person with poor mental ability but obviously strong and brave will be assigned to the "action team", and students who have received military training will be sent to the "spy team" of military intelligence.The rest, who were more ordinary, entered the "military corps," where they learned guerrilla tactics copied from Ye Jianying's class for Communist guerrilla cadres in Nanyue, Hunan.

The girls were initially assigned either to study intelligence work or to become special operations agents. In July 1938, the Linli special training class also set up special groups called the communication group and the accounting group.Since then, most girls have participated in the training group of these two items.Some would be chosen as "working wives" to accompany big agents like Fu Shenglan (who was in charge of the military's underground operations in Shanghai before defecting to the enemy and becoming the puppet mayor of Hangzhou) to work in Japanese-occupied cities. Advanced courses in the Intelligence Corps are taught by officers who have studied abroad in Germany and Italy.There are also some auxiliary courses and demonstrations on arms and explosives, taught by Liu Shaofu and Huang Linyu; intelligence collection is taught by Princess Xie Li; Shen Zui is in charge of espionage; the telegrapher at the headquarters is in charge of radio communication and codes; photography is taught by the military photographer.

The Squad teaches its students the use of weapons (concealed daggers, pistols, axes, poisoned broken swords, etc.), arrests, assassinations, surveillance and stalking.Shen Zui, a Shanghai veteran who has led many kidnappings and arrests, lectures on the practical details of catching suspects: how to act if three people arrest two of them; how to catch a person from the third or fourth floor; victims with different physique How would one react differently to an arrest and so on.Agents learn how to beat the opponent first so they can't fight back, not maiming them so they can't get out of the building, but making them unable to shout or resist arrest.Demonstrations of such techniques in class sometimes injure students who resist the instructor's martial arts.In this case, instructors often feel that they are facing a test. They must maintain "authority" and "credibility" in front of students without losing face.This is how a student was eventually beaten to death by his North Korean martial arts instructor, Mr. Kim.

The focus is on practical and specific cases.At first, the students of the action team received training in explosives, but the military commander soon discovered that it would take at least six months of additional training to turn a covert agent into an explosives expert.Moreover, explosions often occurred during training, sometimes causing casualties.A more practical approach is to separate the blasting experts from the trained agents, and let the former make bombs and other equipment for field-trained agents. The agents only receive basic technical training, and they can detonate as long as they can.It is important to teach them the power of various types of dynamite, and this can be done easily in the countryside outside Linli, although this may harass the farmers who live nearby.

During these special operations classes, students were not allowed to take notes.If they don't understand a point, they can ask the instructor to repeat it.Instructors were instructed to encourage students to come to them for help outside of class.In this way, the "bones" of the class can spot students with a penchant for violence and intrigue, who are truly suitable "specialists" that the instructors can "bring up" for advanced work. The entire course should last for one year, but Dai Li sometimes couldn't stand the war and called Linli, ordering the best students to go to work in the field immediately.He was particularly concerned with ensuring that his juntong cadres were assigned to "field service groups" or other important anti-Japanese organizations that would otherwise be controlled by the Communist Party or other "progressive" leaders.Therefore, when the battlefield extended to Jiangxi in the summer of 1938, and a woman asked for help in terms of personnel on behalf of the anti-Japanese organization there, Dai Li ordered the training class to immediately send a detachment of girls to join the group there.Another 100 students of the guerrilla warfare course were selected from the fifth and sixth squadrons and sent to South China to join the "Loyalty and National Salvation Army" that was intensifying anti-Japanese activities in the hinterland of Shanghai.