Editing Zhou Enlai (section)

===Underground work: establishment===

After arriving back in Shanghai in 1929, Zhou began to work underground, establishing and overseeing a network of independent Communist cells. Zhou's greatest danger in his underground work was the threat of being discovered by the KMT secret police, which had been established in 1928 with the specific mission of identifying and eliminating Communists. In order to avoid detection, Zhou and his wife changed residences at least once a month and used a variety of aliases. Zhou often disguised himself as a businessman, sometimes wearing a beard. Zhou was careful that only two or three people ever knew his whereabouts. Zhou disguised all urban Party offices, made sure that CCP offices never shared the same buildings when in the same city, and required all Party members to use passwords to identify one another. Zhou restricted all of his meetings to either before 7&nbsp;am or after 7&nbsp;pm. Zhou never used public transportation and avoided being seen in public places.<ref>Barnouin and Yu 44–45</ref>

In November 1928, the CCP also established its own intelligence agency (the "Special Service section of the Central Committee", or ''"Zhongyang Teke"'' ({{lang-zh|c=中央特科}}), often abbreviated as ''"Teke"''), which Zhou subsequently came to control. Zhou's chief lieutenants were [[Gu Shunzhang]], who had strong ties to Chinese secret societies and became an alternate member of the Politburo, and [[Xiang Zhongfa]]. ''Teke'' had four operational sections: one for the protection and safety of Party members; one for intelligence gathering; one for facilitating internal communications; and one to conduct assassinations, a team that became known as the "Red Squad" ({{lang|zh-hans|红队}}).<ref>Barnouin and Yu 45</ref>

Zhou's main concern in running ''Teke'' was to establish an effective anti-espionage network within the KMT secret police. Within a short amount of time the head of ''Teke'''s intelligence section, [[Chen Geng]], succeeded in planting a large network of moles inside the Investigation Section of the Central Operations Department in Nanjing, which was the center of KMT intelligence. The three most successful agents used by Zhou to infiltrate the KMT secret police were [[Qian Zhuangfei]], [[Li Kenong]], and [[Hu Di]], whom Zhou referred to as "the three most distinguished intelligence workers of the Party" in the 1930s. Agents planted within various KMT offices were later critical in the survival of the CCP, helping the Party escape Chiang's [[Encirclement Campaigns]].<ref>Barnouin and Yu 45–46</ref>