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The Dragon Roars: A KMT Quest

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So, for the general gist of it…

Civilian Intelligence Agency - Will be loyal to the government rather than other potentially more nefarious parties, but likely to be understaffed in qualified personnel.

Military Intelligence Agency - Will be more competent but the military naturally has more of a nationalist bent that will need to be curtailed to keep it apolitical and if the military isn't happy then the whole thing will flounder.

Merged Agencies - Loyal and effective, but has enough heft on its own that we need to be really careful about who's running the show.

Chen Duxiu - Moderate but supported still by more left leaning people and has many contacts in the big cities of China.

Chen Qimei - Powerful man at the head of a vast network of criminals that would vault us to top tier intelligence agencies… but, the criminal thing.

Guo Guanjie - Favored by the army and familiar with their intelligence style, but self proclaimedly distant from their politics with some criticism of how they've been operating.

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As far as these goes, I think that these are the best pairings for each option:

Civilian Intelligence Agency & Chen Qimei: The CIA's natural understaffing and lack of experience is shored up by the vast criminal network it taps, but the rigorous vetting for loyalty takes off the worst edges of questionable loyalty (for the state's perspective anyway).

Military Intelligence Agency & Guo Guanjie: He has the approval of the military necessary for the organization to be effective while still apparently having his own independence from them which is nice.

Merged Agencies and Chen Duxiu: Duxiu needs more horsepower to get in touch with these labor union networks split across divided states since he's probably bringing the least to the table in his own person. His advantage stems from his humanistic rapport with people across the country rather than a stint in the military bureaucracy or ties with criminal gangs… thus he seems to have more incentive not to go to mad with power while up to police state shenanigans.

Personally I'm in favor of the merged agencies and Chen Duxiu since I think the left is going to be quite stronger in elections after the recent debacle while the military has egg on its face and I want the government to work nicely with each other; at the same time, we will have a very strong intelligence agency with contacts across many many of China's giant cities but without being beholden to crooks or the military bureaucracy.
 
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Kipeci said:
Personally I'm in favor of the merged agencies and Chen Duxiu since I think the left is going to be quite stronger in elections after the recent debacle while the military has egg on its face and I want the government to work nicely with each other; at the same time, we will have a very strong intelligence agency with contacts across many many of China's giant cities but without being beholden to crooks or the military bureaucracy.
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That's right, we will only be beholden to the people that have started the most revolts in human history (peasants)! Oh, maybe that won't be such a good idea. Honestly, all of these choices are terrible, we are just picking poisons at this point, and Guo Guanjie is in my opinion, the least harmful long term to the stability of the state. We will have to get over the initial hurdle of increasing military power, but we've been pretty good at suppressing it with our choices so far, so I don't think that giving them this boon is actually that much more dangerous.
 
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Empress_Boog said:
That's right, we will only be beholden to the people that have started the most revolts in human history (peasants)! Oh, maybe that won't be such a good idea. Honestly, all of these choices are terrible, we are just picking poisons at this point, and Guo Guanjie is in my opinion, the least harmful long term to the stability of the state. We will have to get over the initial hurdle of increasing military power, but we've been pretty good at suppressing it with our choices so far, so I don't think that giving them this boon is actually that much more dangerous.
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Duxiu's power base is not with peasants? Peasants are farming out away from cities in more rural areas, he's in with the labor unions it says.

What I'm getting at is that if he launches a terror then he's the most likely to hurt himself. The army and criminals are both set separate from the broader society in distinct ways whereas Duxiu is drawing support from mostly urban populations from across the left broadly. If he launches some terror or crackdown in the general population that broad group in favor of working with him is liable to shrink away and his capabilities will diminish. So the more tyrannical he is the more incompetent and easier to remove he is likely to become. This is not necessarily the case for the other two if they're being a terror on society so long as they respectively carve out some sweet spots for criminals or the military… two groups which I am thinking are more worrisome in my book than labor unions (the former for their nature, the latter for their potential to throw around their weight since they have the most force).

Also, we have just come to power off of a revolution that is acting against the various empires of native or foreign flavors and a bonus crazy theocracy in the area. We are basically the best option of a state in the area for the left to settle with so long as they aren't alienated by some action, so I don't think it's warranted to get all paranoid about them out of hand.
 
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Deadly Snark said:
Also Chen Duxiu is really not that good of a spook if I'm being honest, man got outplayed in Beijing University in OTL and under his leadership of the CPC his two eldest sons died like dogs.
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That is certainly one way to describe his sons dying in the fight against Chiang Kai-shek.
Acc. No. 1409 said:
I am discounting the Leftist because he may not be competent in intelligence work which is bad because this is a powerful organization we are making and if it's misused the consequences wouldn't be pretty.
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I'm not really sure where him being incompetent is coming from? If we're going to count him being forced to resign from the Peking University by conservatives in OTL against him, then we should also take into account his influential role in the Xinhai Revolution that overthrew the Qing and the May Fourth Movement.
 
Fireiy said:
That is certainly one way to describe his sons dying in the fight against Chiang Kai-shek.

I'm not really sure where him being incompetent is coming from? If we're going to count him being forced to resign from the Peking University by conservatives in OTL against him, then we should also take into account his influential role in the Xinhai Revolution that overthrew the Qing and the May Fourth Movement.
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Those are impressive credentials. Chen Duxiu in charge of a merged agency could work out really well. He's a politically reliable man with links outside of the army but will have access to their materials because of his position as director if we pick him.
 
Fireiy said:
That is certainly one way to describe his sons dying in the fight against Chiang Kai-shek.
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That's how I describe losing the opening shots so hard his sons were executed and he himself was disowned by the very Party he founded yes.

Dude's a great fighter and has a lot of contacts and influence in the urban and scholarly circles, but in terms of long term strategy, I'm not sure his particular talents lend themselves well to Intel, which is the issue here.
 
At the moment my preference is to Merge the Agencies, headed by either Chen Duxiu or Guo Guanjie.

I do not want the Military Intelligence Agency because it will lack political loyalty to the government, instead being beholden to the army's whims. Do not believe for a moment that it would actually be apolitical, intelligence agencies across the world throughout history have never been apolitical and the army has been taking every opportunity it gets to interfere with politics.

The Civilian Intelligence Agency is more acceptable with its inbuilt loyalty to the government, but would have issues with a lack of skilled staff. Merge the Agencies gets us the most loyal and competent intelligence agency that we can have, with the caveat that this gives a lot of power to the person placed in charge.

I've already stated why I don't want Chen Qimei in charge due to his predisposition to support Chiang Kai-shek and the fact that his connections to organized crime have quite a few interests that they would not take kindly to us infringing upon. It would be incredibly hard to combat opium if our intelligence agency was run by triads that make a lot of money off of it. There may also be some engaging in what we'd classify as slavery which we've already banned.

Guo Guanjie is described as one of the army's premier intelligence officers and has allegedly sworn off of army politics. Despite that he is the army's preferred candidate and it would make them very happy to have him in charge. He is however a fairly unknown element, being new to the national scene giving us no indication of his true views. It is also unknown if he already has experience with actually leading a organization.

Chen Duxiu is my most preferred candidate for a few reasons. His appointment gets us better connections with urban populations, labor movements and local activists who together represent a majority of our existing networks. He is literally a labor activist which tends to involve a lot of work organizing and he has experience with running revolutionary networks. And his previous opposition to Sun Yat-Sens Five Races Theory makes him a good counterweight against Jiang Jieshi's suggestions to the good doctor.
 
Hmm.

Cheng Qimei's various revolutionary and criminal contacts makes for an electic mix, that said since we didnt stomp out the opium trade I suppose that's no longer a gamble to my liking. Of course, if we were to throw those moral considerations out of the window and focus on the fact that this is still a potential prelude to a Warlord Period, maybe its still worth it who knows.

Guo Guanjie is again perfectly fine. Even with him swearing off politics, most of his contacts will still be military. So he'd have to lead either civilian or merged organization just to get rid of potential issues. Still a solid and competent individual, he's probably safe so long as we dont lose the coming war catastrophically. If we do lose catastrophically tho, yeah.

My biggest issues with Chen Duxius are still part of his package as a labor revolutionary. Precisely because he's a moderate and not a hardened war communist, there are some lines he's likely not willing to cross which might be crippling to an intel guy. Labour movements only works in themselves, so long as the other side doesn't bring in guns. However, if in the merged agency he gets an Inner Council member of a military background/a soldier whose opinions and ideas he respects and listens to, that might do the trick. Actually, a radical revolutionary might work as well. @nachtingale is Li Dazhao still alive and open to being recruited?
 
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Hmm yeah that's hmm. Could we ask the candidates who they'd pick to be their Inner Circle/Cabinent/Admin members for this new Intelligence branch?
 
Deadly Snark said:
Precisely because he's a moderate and not a hardened war communist, there are some lines he's likely not willing to cross which might be crippling to an intel guy. Labour movements only works in themselves, so long as the other side doesn't bring in guns.
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What do you mean by this? If the concern is that he is unwilling to use violence then that is something you do not need to fear. He does have some military education plus experience teaching it and he would lead successful armed uprisings by union workers OTL. He would in fact end up expelled from the CPC because of his public opposition to the Cominterns order to disarm in the face of Chiang Kai-shek murdering them and as a scapegoat for the Cominterns instructions from Stalin.
 
[x] [ORG] Merge the Agencies
[x] [LDR] Appoint Guo Guanjie
[x] [NAME] Write-in Name:
- [x] Control Yuan

Because after all, this is what the Control Yuan of the Republic of China actually does. Goverment budget auditing and accountability, labor and population statistics, and, oh, domestic and foreign intelligence. :V

I'd've chosen "Supervisory" or "Inspectorate" Yuan as the translation for its name, but I guess they just went with the simplest one for non-native English speakers.

[x] Progressive Right.
 
[X] [ORG] Merge the Agencies
[X] [LDR] Appoint Guo Guanjie
[X] [NAME] Write-in Name:
- [X] Control Yuan
[X] Progressive Right.

Will definitely be changing the name if another name vote becomes popular.

Edit:
[x] [NAME] Write-in Name: National Bureau of Statistics
[X] [NAME] Write-in Name: National Bureau of Investigation and Statistics
[X] [LDR] Appoint Chen Duxiu
 
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[x] Conservative Right.
[x] [ORG] Merge the Agencies
[x] [LDR] Appoint Guo Guanjie
[x] [NAME] Write-in Name: National Bureau of Investigation and Statistics
 
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[X] [ORG] Merge the Agencies
[X] [LDR] Appoint Chen Duxiu
[X] [NAME] Write-in Name: National Bureau of Investigation and Statistics
[X] Internationalist Left.

I'm not entirely comfortable giving control of a merged agency to Guo Guanjie when we know so little concrete about him. Chen Duxiu is a far more known individual and is my preferred option here. Meanwhile if we're going to be using that name, might as well use the full and proper one.
 
[x] [ORG] Merge the Agencies
[x] [LDR] Appoint Chen Duxiu
[x] [NAME] Write-in Name: National Bureau of Investigation and Statistics
[x] Syndicalist Left
 
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Thinking on it over (again lmao), I think a single spook nest is best but I only trust Duxiu with it. Sooo

[X] [ORG] Merge the Agencies
[X] [LDR] Appoint Chen Duxiu
[X] [NAME] Write-in Name: National Bureau of Investigation and Statistics
[X] Progressive Left
 
X] [ORG] Merge the Agencies
[X] [LDR] Appoint Chen Duxiu
[X] [NAME] Write-in Name: National Bureau of Investigation and Statistics
[X] Internationalist Left.
 
[x] [ORG] Merge the Agencies
[x] [LDR] Appoint Chen Duxiu
[x] [NAME] Write-in Name: National Bureau of Investigation and Statistics
[x] Syndicalist Left
 
[x] [ORG] Merge the Agencies
[x] [LDR] Appoint Chen Duxiu
[x] [NAME] Write-in Name: Central Organization (of) Combined Kompromat Subjects
[x] Syndicalist Left
 
[X] [ORG] Merge the Agencies
[X] [LDR] Appoint Chen Duxiu
[X] [NAME] General Intelligence Commission
[X] Progressive Right.

For the aforementioned reasons I'd rather not have a military guy with minimal public record in role even if he says he is not involved with army politics.
 
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