Public Security Work Bulletin

Public Security Work Bulletin (公安工作简报) was a highly classified serial produced by the Ministry of Public Security of the People’s Republic of China during the disastrous Great Leap Forward, 1958-1961.

Appearing on average every five days, it was one important source through which information about the true state of affairs in the country reached a small circle of senior decision makers. Issues varied in thickness from 2 to 12 pages, and a typical print run is estimated to have been no more than a 300 copies altogether. It began to appear in late 1958 and ceased publication at the end of August 1962. Its contents sometimes amounted to executive summaries (produced by the Ministry of Public Security General Office) of longer reports from provincial and municipal Public Security Bureaus. Especially in the first half 1962, it served as the channel through which condensed versions of central task-force investigations into lower-level irregularities and corruption etc. were distributed to those with a ”need to know” such matters. The Public Security Work Bulletin was also for a time the regular channel through which national monthly, quarterly and annual incarceration, crime, and accident statistics were circulated by the ministry. Such sensitive statistical data was regularly redacted from articles and reports appearing in less highly classified ministerial sister-publications such as Public Security Construction and People's Public Security.

There is no mention of Public Security Work Bulletin in known secondary sources. The above is based on a study of surviving copies of the Bulletin itself.

See also

• Public Security Construction
• People's Public Security