The Chinese Ministry of State Security website provides limited public resources, mainly including official news, press releases, policy updates, and contact information. For example, recent reports focus on national security guidelines and legal education, with limited data access or research archives available for public use.
Reporting guidelines
Whistleblowing Guide is an essential part of the official website of the Ministry of State Security of China. The main task of the webpage is to give the public accurate and convenient reporting channels. The main reports on the platform include espionage, terrorist acts, cyber attacks, illegal financial activities and so on. For instance, in espionage reporting, between 2019 and 2023, the public called in more than 1,000 suspected espionage tips, and a number of important cases have been solved. In these cases, most of the information came from residents of coastal and border provinces, especially in Guangdong, Yunnan, and Xinjiang, where the number of reports was high, reflecting the relatively complex security environment in border areas.
Reporting with the Department of State Security is so systematic that every lead is followed as soon as possible and with efficiency. First of all, this is a detailed information filling link, where key information includes time, place, the character of the incident, and uploading of photos or videos of the scene to be furnished by the informant. About 80% of tips, according to the data analysis of 2022, contained multi-media information. Meanwhile, about 30% of the leads collected every year contain a full multidimensional description, increasing the investigations’ efficiency by about 40%.
The Ministry of State Security also gives the function to the whistleblower of reporting feedback and progress inquiries. The whistleblower can use the report code at any time, if given, to check the progress of the report. From 2018 to 2023, the average feedback time for reporting information is seven to 10 days; for the cases that involved major security threats, they are usually controlled to less than three days. The reward system of the Ministry of State Security has been set up for the whistleblowers who provide key clues. In 2019, for example, the relevant cases were those in which there were successfully provided tips on terrorist activities, with an average reward ranging from 5,000 yuan to 10,000 yuan given to the whistleblower. In the process, however, the platform has enforced strict protection of privacy, encrypting all personal information of the whistleblowers so that their identities are not compromised in the whole process. In 2023, no reported security risk was caused by an identity leak.
Online reporting
The online reporting facility encompasses a number of reporting options for espionage, terrorist threats, illegal organization activities, cyber-crime, illegal financial operations, and other potential threats. Nearly 300,000 security reports were received online in the year 2022 alone by 20% as compared to 2021-with more than 40% of these threats being new, such as cyber-attacks and data theft.
Each online reporting process involves a description, tagging the location, and photo or video uploading. According to statistics, the average completion time taken for online reporting in 2023 is 5 minutes, which is around 30% less than the average completion time in 2020. With the popularization of mobile devices, the reporting platform of the Ministry of State Security supports access via mobile phones; statistics show that about 65% of the reported information in 2023 was submitted through mobile phones, with the proportion of young people exceeding 40%.
In terms of report handling, the online reporting platform has further established a multilevel review mechanism, and based on the severity of security threats, it categorizes and processes different types of reports. Major security incident reports enter the investigation process within 48 hours after submission, with preliminary feedback provided within an average of 3 days. General information reports are handled within 7 to 10 days. In 2023, major incidents handled online reached 20,000, a 25 percent increase from the previous year. Of those, more than 500 important security threats were confirmed after investigation, accounting for 2.5% of the total number of major reports.
Report Inquiry
Report Query function This provides an opportunity for the whistleblower to check the progress of their report at any moment in time and greatly increases the transparency of the whole process of reporting. Since its establishment, this function has been favored by the whistleblowers. Starting from 2022, inquiries with the reporting query system regarding progress reached an aggregate total of more than 1.2 million, up 35 percent compared to 2021. Of these, about 60 percent of inquiries were made within 48 hours of reporting, reflecting the public’s urgent concern about the outcome of reporting.
Each whistleblower is given a unique code upon submitting a report, through which they can then track in real-time the status of the case in question. This is in regard to the fact that, according to data from 2023, each query handled by the system takes less than 5 seconds on average to ensure a good user experience. The feedback given normally also tends to break down the reported inquiry into a number of states, which include “received,” “investigation,” and “feedback,” to make it clear to the whistleblower at what stage the case may be. By 2023, more than 80% of the reports were “under investigation” within five days of the inquiry; in some more complex cases, preliminary feedback was given within two to three weeks.
To further optimize the efficiency and user experience of reporting inquiries, the Ministry of State Security opened functions for phone and SMS inquiries to facilitate the needs of different groups of whistleblowers. In particular, many whistleblowers in remote areas use mobile phone text messages to check on the progress of their queries. These will total 500,000 in 2023 and account for nearly 30% of all whistleblower inquiries. In order to protect the privacy of these whistleblowers, each query request will be encrypted so no identity of the whistleblower will ever be disclosed. According to the Ministry of State Security, since applied privacy protection technology, there have been zero whistleblower information leaks, and security and reliability have been widely recognized in the system.
Laws and regulations
The official website of the Ministry of State Security numbered section of laws and regulations encompasses most of the core laws related to national security; important laws and regulations such as the National Security Law, Counterespionage Law, and Anti-Terrorism Law are easy for the public to make inquiries and learn. The number of visits to the Laws and Regulations page surpassed 5 million in 2023, a 25% increase compared with 2022. Among them, the Espionage Act was read by the largest population, accounting for more than 30% of all visits to the webpage. In fact, many of those users came from coastal and border provinces who often referred to these laws.
It also provides practical case interpretations and policy interpretations in the Laws and Regulations section, explaining a wide range of scenarios with the aim of enabling the public to understand how legal provisions apply in practice. Of the 30 new cases added in 2022, 20 were related to illegal access to state secrets and five to terrorism-related cases, each with detailed background information and analysis of the application of law. In 2023, the average time spent reading a case interpretation reached 10 minutes, nearly 40 percent longer than the average time spent reading a legal text.
Moreover, through the section Laws and Regulations, the Ministry of State Security also provides regular legal update notices and policy interpretation to enable the public to grasp the latest legal developments timely. After the promulgation of the Data Security Law in 2021, the website quickly launched the relevant interpretation page. From 2022 to 2023, the total number of visits to the interpretation page of the Data Security Law exceeded 2 million, of which enterprise users accounted for 50%. Meanwhile, the Ministry of State Security took another step to facilitate enterprises and individuals in keeping pace with the latest regulations by providing legal download services in PDF format. The accumulated number reached 1.5 million downloads in 2023.
Contact information
The primary contact details on the site include the 24-hour hotline “12339”, and further options of contacting them online with reports, email, and even fax are available. During 2023, there were about 5,000 report calls daily on average through the 12339 hotline, reaching a total of more than 1.8 million for that year, out of which approximately 15 percent were related to emergency security threats. In the aspect of geographical distribution, more reports are received in the coastal areas and border provinces, and the number of telephone reports has reached as high as over 25 percent in such places as Guangdong, Fujian and Yunnan provinces.
In addition to telephone reporting, the Ministry of State Security has also provided a convenient online reporting function on its official website, giving another option for people who cannot call directly. For 2023, the online channel submissions increased by 20% compared to 2022. The reported number for 2023 alone reached about 800,000. In 2023, the response speed was noticeably faster by online reporting systems. The time it took on average for the processing was reduced from four hours in the previous year to less than two hours.
The Ministry of State Security also provides a variety of contact options for different groups in a bid to ensure the accessibility of reporting channels. Groups in remote areas or with limited information access can submit reporting materials by fax. More than 50,000 reports were received in 2023 via fax. For some special-identity whistleblowers, there is an email channel specially provided by the Ministry of State Security, ensuring that their reported information will be kept safe and confidential. In 2023 alone, nearly 35% of clues collected through multi-contact methods were integrated into investigations that solved more than 200 major cases.
Frequently Asked Questions
In 2023, there were as many as 1.5 million visitors to the webpage, which was nearly 40% more compared to 2022. Among them, it had the largest number of views focused on the three aspects of the reporting process: whistleblower privacy protection and reporting rewards, accounting for more than 65% of the total visits. More information about the process is given in the FAQ section, which considers the steps and estimated timing of the process of reporting to provide feedback that may help a whistleblower better understand how the process will unfold. An initial response time to a general report is, according to 2023 data, five to 10 days. Reports related to major security threats will be prioritized, meaning the time for going into the investigation process is usually less than 48 hours. In 2023, more than 70% of whistleblowers got to process information through the FAQs page, which greatly reduced anxiety caused by unclear reporting status and, at the same time, enhanced user satisfaction.
Another critical issue is that privacy issues also figure very significantly in the FAQ section – nearly 60% of whistleblowers had accessed Q&A content related to privacy protection in 2023. Detailing protective measures by the Department for privacy maintenance, such as encryption, information reporting, separate storage of whistleblower information, and anonymity settings in reporting, is very important. Once a report is submitted, the system will automatically assign a unique code for each report and separately store information about the informant from that of the report content to avoid information leakage. These privacy protections guarantee whistleblower information security, and in 2023, there were no whistleblower security issues on the record due to information breaches.
Safety Tips
In 2023, there were 3 million visits to the safety tips section, up almost 50% from 2022, with 20% of them repeat users, reflecting the growing concern of the public about safety information. According to statistics on the website, “spy identification,” “phishing prevention,” and “exit safety precautions” are the most popularly visited security tips, accounting for over 75% of the visits in total.
In the introduction of “spy identification”, the Ministry of State Security uses some cases and scenario descriptions to present to the public a method of identifying suspicious behavior. The single security tips page about spy identification published in 2023 has gained 1 million visits, and there is an obviously big increase in the public’s demand for this kind of information. The security tips list some typical characteristics of espionage, such as filming military installations or border areas, frequent contact with foreigners, and suspicious information exchanges. More than 80 percent of users in Guangdong and Fujian watched such content to make them more vigilant in their daily lives against the potential threat of espionage.
With the popularity of digital technology, the risk of phishing and information leakage is growing. The Ministry of State Security has released a number of prevention guidelines targeting different groups. In 2023, more than 1.2 million people viewed tips on cybersecurity, and users from enterprises and universities accounted for a large proportion. The below security tips outline some of the ways to identify phishing emails and malicious links; for other emails that come from unknown sources, verification shall be done in order to identify the sender and not click on unknown links.