Bureau of Investigation and Statistics

The National Bureau of Investigation and Statistics (NBIS or BIS; Chinese: 國民政府軍事委員會調查統計局; pinyin: guómín zhèngfǔ jūnshì wěiyuánhuì diàochá tǒngjìjú), commonly known as Juntong (traditional Chinese: 軍統; simplified Chinese: 军统; pinyin: Jūntǒng), was the military intelligence agency of the Republic of China before 1946. It was devoted to intelligence gathering and covert spying operation for purposes of national security and defense. It was originally headed by Dai Li, and after 1946 he was succeeded by Mao Renfeng. This bureau was largely superseded by the Military Intelligence Bureau under the Ministry of National Defense in Taiwan.

The NBIS had a great influence amongst the Nationalist Government's military, police, administration, and transportation agencies, as well as embassies and consulates abroad during the Political Tutelage period (1928–1946) of the Republic of China. It was often criticized by the political dissidents as a "secret police" involved in covert and espionage operation, including surveillance, kidnapping, assassinations, elimination and house-arrest against Chinese communists, Japanese spies as well as political dissidents.

During the Sino-Japanese War, the NBIS was involved in a number of counter-intelligence and covert espionage warfare against the Japanese invaders. There were NBIS agents who defected to the Japanese, and many of the secret police in Wang Jingwei's Japanese-occupied areas were former NBIS agents.

From a historical perspective, NBIS played an important role in Second Sino-Japanese War. Under the leadership of Dai Li, the Nationalist Government had a body of 100,000 active spies involving in espionage warfare against Japanese, as well as against the Wang Jingwei-led puppet Nationalist Government of the Japanese-occupied areas.

The NBIS was founded in 1932 as the "Military Commission of Clandestine Investigation Section of the National Revolutionary Army" (Chinese: 國民革命軍總司令部密查組) with the "Special Works Department"(Chinese: 國民政府軍事委員會特務處) set up in 1932. When the "Investigation and Statistics Bureau" was established under the Military Commission, the "Special Works Department" was incorporated into the Bureau and renamed the "Second Division", and is responsible for intelligence collection and personnel training. All of the bureau's affairs were under the direct command of Chiang Kai-shek. Dai sought to make the Juntong into an extended family with himself as the stern paternal figure, stressing traditional Chinese Confucian values of filial piety, loyalty, benevolence, and righteousness. The Juntong operated as a traditional sworn brotherhood with all of the senior officers taking an oath making themselves into "brothers". The inspiration for the Juntong were the secret sworn brotherhoods portrayed in the classics of Chinese literature like Water Margin and The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Dai presented himself as a stern Confucian father figure to the men and women of the Juntong and liked to quote from book The Dynastic History of the Han: "Is personal happiness possible before the extermination of the Xiongnu?" Reflecting this mentality, the men and women serving in the Juntong were forbidden to marry and expected to be celibate as their only love was to be China. The rules about celibacy were not always followed as Liu Gequing, the Juntong ace assassin fell in love with and had a relationship with a fellow agent, Lu Ti, during his time in Shanghai. Likewise, Juntong agents were expected to forsake smoking, gambling and playing mahjong as Dai wanted them to work hard and dedicate their lives totally to China. Reflecting this ethos of absolute dedication to the cause, many of the assassination missions that Juntong agents were sent on against the Chinese Communists and later on during the war with Japan were known to be suicide missions as the expectation was that Juntong agents were to value China more than their own lives. Dai often said that the Juntong were to serve Chiang "like dogs and horses serving their masters without a mind of their own" as Dai presented Chiang as "the Leader" to whom all Chinese had to obey unconditionally. As the world of espionage was a secretive one, Juntong agents were advised that they were to be "anonymous heroes" whose deeds would not be remembered by historians.

Juntong agents tended to come from the provincial schools as Dai disliked recruiting those who attended universities, whom the xenophobic, ultra-conservative Dai felt were too exposed to Western influence to fit into the Juntong. Juntong agents, especially those working as assassins were generally expected to know martial arts before joining, both to improve their skills at killing and because Dai felt the sort of self-discipline needed to master the martial arts was the same sort of dedication that he expected in his agents. Reflecting Dai's traditionalism, the model for the Juntong were the assassins of the Warring States period and those portrayed in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. One of the most best loved books among the Juntong was the novel Jianghu qixia zhuan (Legendary Roving Knights of the Rivers and Lakes), a wuxia (martial arts) book that was very popular in Republican China. Dai liked the book so much that he recruited the kung fu master who was said to be the inspiration for the hero of Jianghu qixia zhuan into the Juntong. The men and women of the Juntong liked to see themselves as "knights" who would use their skills to defend the weak from the strong and save China from its enemies. A disproportionate number of the men and women of the Juntong came from the provinces of Hunan, Guangdong, and Zhejiang, all places where Western influence was limited and traditional values flourished.

In 1938, the Special Works Department was expanded and took over the "Investigation and Statistics Bureau" to cope with the increasingly demanding tasks of intelligence operations. Dai Li was assigned as the de facto responsibility for running the unit. Dai's preference for recruiting on the basis of familial loyalties, where one sibling would recruit other siblings to the Juntong proved to be a weakness, when in 1938 a number of Juntong agents defected over to work for the "reformed" government of Wang Jingwei, pitting brother literally against brother.

During the Sino-Japanese War, NBIS had orchestrated the assassinations of several key Japanese enemy military and government personnel. Between 1937 and 1941, the Juntong, working together with the Green Gang triad, carried out 150 assassinations of Chinese collaborators and 40 Japanese officers in Shanghai alone. The Juntong favored assassinating Chinese collaborators over the Japanese partly because they were easier to kill as the Japanese tended to stick to certain enclaves, but mostly to prevent the Japanese from imposing any sort of ordered government in parts of China they had occupied. Japan had occupied vast sections of China inhabited by millions of people requiring hundreds of thousands of civil servants to administer while the number of Japanese who were fluent in Mandarin or Cantonese was limited, and to a very large extent the Japanese depended upon Chinese collaborators to administer China for them. Zhang Xiaolin, a leading member of the Green Gang who went over to the Japanese in 1937, was gunned down by a Juntong assassin. In October 1938, Tang Shaoyi, a former prime minister of the Republic of China who had agreed to serve the Japanese was killed at his home when a Juntong assassin posing as an antique dealer used the antique axe he was showing to Tang to smash in his head. As the Japanese had no idea of who the Juntong assassins were, they resorted to executing at random innocent people who had nothing to do with the assassinations.