Chapter 130 Wei Daming

Wei Daming, formerly known as Zhang Yangmian, was born in Jinshan, Shanghai in 1907.Graduated from the Shanghai Telegraph Institute of the Ministry of Communications.Later, he entered the first-class general officer class of the Army University.He used to work at the Wusong Coast No Netizen Station, and later worked as a radio operator and director of the International Radio Station. In August 1938, the Secret Service was reorganized into the Military Control Bureau, and Wei Daming became the director of the fourth department (telecommunication department), with the rank of major general.He also served as the director of the Telecommunications Department of the Ministry of Communications.After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, he served as the deputy director of the first department of the second department of the Ministry of defense. In 1947, he served as the director of the Technical Research Office. In 1948, he concurrently served as the deputy director of the second department of the "Ministry of National Defense". In 1956, he served as Lieutenant General Director of Taiwan's "Ministry of National Defense" Technology Research Office, and later as Director of "National Defense Science Research Office".

Wei Daming graduated from the Communication Technology Training Institute of the Ministry of Communications.As early as when Li Yifan mastered the national commercial radio station, Wei Daming, who worked under him, became the "leader of radio operators" of all the radio operators of the international and commercial radio stations.He was empowered to lead Dai Li's Secret Service Communications Division, including personnel training and cryptanalysis. Wei Daming drafted the training plan for the radio school and became the head of the Communications Section of the Secret Service.He saw his associates consist mainly of professionals whose attention was concentrated on the technical aspects of ciphers, radio, and cryptanalysis.The function of front-line personnel is that they infiltrate inside to find intelligence personnel, engage in intelligence through relationships, and be alert to various phenomena and signals, while the password training team emphasizes the importance of independently performing tasks, and those tasks are basically technical in nature.

Wei is also responsible for collection and development work.This is a very urgent task, because the 5-watt ground transmitter and the 15-watt radio are too heavy for the secret intelligence personnel to carry. In the late spring of 1933, Wei Daming's training group produced a small transceiver, which was no bigger than a popsicle except for the battery and earphones.The small radio worked so well that Dai Li decided to introduce Wei Daming to Chiang Kai-shek at Lushan, demonstrate the equipment to Chiang, and demanded a military award for his communications assistant's invention.The demonstration to Jiang was very successful: this small radio could receive outside information across the Lushan Mountains, while a conventional 15-watt radio could not.Chiang Kai-shek agreed to manufacture this kind of equipment, and authorized Dai Li to ask Wei Daming to establish the main communication station of the Secret Service at No. 29 Xishiba Street, Bailuzhou, Nanjing.

As head of Dai Li's secret service communications, Wei Daming (whose wife had been one of Dai Li's mistresses) became known as "Dai Li's soul."He has immeasurable significance to the military.Wei's cryptanalysts deciphered the 19th Route Army's ciphers during the Fujian incident, thereby providing Chiang Kai-shek with the key strategic plan to suppress the rebellion in the province; it was their needs that ultimately made Dai Li so dependent on the Anglo-American "allies" Technical assistance to intelligence agencies. On a broader level, of course, communications intelligence seemed equally important to Chiang Kai-shek.He quickly saw how critical this was to his rule.In fact, Chiang viewed secret radio surveillance as a kind of family monopoly.In the second half of 1939, only three people could see those special intelligence reports: Song Ziwen, Kong Xiangxi, and Chiang himself.Song Ziwen later recalled: Jiang had the upper hand in dealing with Li Zongren, Yan Xishan, Feng Yuxiang, Li Jishen and Chen Mingshu because of the introduction of radio surveillance business.He boasted to President Roosevelt: "I won two civil wars for Chiang Kai-shek by establishing an effective spying operation that kept Chiang Kai-shek informed of the enemy's movements."

Chiang's monopoly on communications intelligence fueled his competitive instincts at the top of the army and secret services.He Yingqin, Chiang's chief of staff, asked Wen Yuqing for a daily deciphering report, but Jiang refused to release them, so this indirectly prompted General He to form an intelligence sending and receiving office headed by Wang Jinglu to collect and decipher the Japanese Foreign Ministry's communication. This put the chief of the Chinese army's general staff in direct competition with Jiang's department headed by Wen Yuqing.Wen was appointed as the head of the Communications Department under the Ministry of Communications, and was ordered to set up an office dedicated to monitoring and detecting secret transmissions on March 1, 1936, that is, the "Secret Electricity Supervision and Translation Office", which reported to Jiang alone.In four to five months, the office cracked the codes of the Japanese Foreign Ministry; when Japan went to war with China in 1937, the Chinese already had a dozen secret radio stations that intercepted Japanese diplomatic communications.All in all, Wen Yuqing's censored translation agency always had the upper hand.Although there were monthly intelligence conferences between 1937 and 1938 with the participation of Xu Enzeng (Central Command), Dai Li (Military Command), Admiral Yang Xuancheng (Military Intelligence), Wang Yusheng (International Research Institute), and Wen Yuqing, due to Wen's advantages in technology and training equipment are always in his hands.Therefore, for self-defense, Dai Li felt that he should seek science and technology abroad to strengthen his deciphering ability.