Yu Qiangsheng

Yu Qiangsheng (; 1940 – 2013) was a former high-ranking Chinese intelligence officer who defected to the United States in 1985. Born into an elite princeling family, Yu ascended the ranks of China's Ministry of State Security (MSS), rising to lead the agency's North American operations. By that time, Yu had become a double agent, passing information to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) under the codename PLANESMAN. Described by his former FBI handler as "the ultimate risk taker", Yu was exfiltrated from China by way of Hong Kong in 1986 in operation JADE POWDER. The disclosures he made in his debriefing exposed CIA officer Larry Wu-Tai Chin as having been a mole for China for more than 40 years. Following his debriefing, Yu lived out the remainder of his life in the United States as a consultant for the intelligence services of the Five Eyes. He died in 2013.

Early life and family Yu was born to father Huang Jing and his second wife, Fan Jin. Yu's mother was a journalist who later became vice mayor of Beijing and president of Beijing Daily. His father, born Yu Qiwei , was born in 1912 to a prominent family in Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province. Yu Qiwei first married fellow schoolmate Li Yunhe from National Qingdao University (now Shandong University), and introduced Li to the communist movement. They later divorced, and after the Marco Polo Bridge incident, Li fled to the Yun'an district of Guangdong Province where she first dated mutual friend and CCP spymaster Kang Sheng, and later, Mao Zedong, whom she married to become Jiang Qing, the inaugural first lady of the People's Republic of China and leader of the radical political alliance known as the Gang of Four. Huang remained friends with Kang Sheng, and went on to marry Fan Jin, Yu Qiangsheng's mother.

Police career Yu's career in Chinese intelligence is believed to owe much to his father's dying request to his friend, CCP spymaster Kang Sheng, that he make then-18-year-old Yu his adoptive son.

After graduating in the mid-1960s amidst the Cultural Revolution, Yu found a position within Ministry of Public Security as a civilian policeman at the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau. Soon after, like many cadres of the era, he was sent down to the countryside. Upon his return, he became the leader of a task force enforcing the One Strike and Three Anti's Campaign, which targeted people said to exhibit the 'counter-revolutionary' behaviors of 'graft and embezzlement', 'profiteering' and 'extravagance and waste.' The task force was notable for arresting artist and writer (張郎郎), who was sentenced to death for criticizing the government, and accused of being a French spy.

Intelligence career In 1974, Yu joined the Waishiju, the counterintelligence branch within the Foreign Affairs Bureau of the MPS.

Within the MSS, Yu reportedly served briefly as head of the counterintelligence-focused Beijing Municipal State Security Bureau, before becoming head of the agency's North America Bureau, which leads operations against the United States and Canada.

Defection As a member of the MPS sent down to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, Yu was unable to protect his mother from degradation at the hands of Red Guards. Having failed to prevent her humiliation, Yu reportedly became increasingly resentful of her treatment until he finally decided to contact the CIA.

In early 1982, Yu provided specific information regarding a Chinese mole: On February 6, 1982, the spy would arrive in Beijing on a Pan Am flight, stay in Room 553 of the Qianmen Hotel in Beijing, and call Zhu Entao, deputy director of the Foreign Affairs Bureau of the MPS, after which the spy will be appointed as a deputy bureau-level official. On February 27, the spy would return to the United States. The CIA decided then that the counterintelligence threat needed to be turned over to the FBI.

In September 1982, I.C. Smith, head of the China Counterintelligence Team of the FBI, received a message from the CIA that said the U.S. Intelligence Community had been penetrated by a longstanding Chinese mole. That's basically all it said. Didn't reveal the person's ethnicity, gender, nothing." Smith gave the source the codename PLANESMAN, a term for the person who operates the diving plane, a control surface which determines the elevation and depth of a submarine. and French diplomat Bernard Bouriscot, who had been recruited by Chinese intelligence using a honeypot.

In China, Yu's defection prompted a reorganization of the MSS and the sacking of the inaugural director of the MSS, Ling Yun.

Later life and death Details of Yu's life after leaving China remain sparse, though scattered reports over the years eventually produced a rudimentary story of his later life: He was exfiltrated to the United States in an operation code-named JADE POWDER and placed in a resettlement program. In a 2025 book, Nigel West, former coauthor of Yu's case officer I.C. Smith, revealed that Yu had died in 2013.

Selected books