a negative atmosphere, slowing down many activities and causing social problems as well as many other problems... A thorough study of this political aspect should be undertaken and concrete measures taken." Death of the Diaochabu At the end of the Cultural Revolution, as China struggled to regain its footing after a tumultuous decade, Deng Xiaoping and his fellow reformers Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang endeavored down the road of governmental reform. General Secretary of the CCP Central Committee Hu Yaobang decried Kang Sheng's destructive and paranoid legacy in a speech in November 1978 enumerating many of the crimes Kang Sheng had been found guilty of, up to and through the Cultural Revolution. Kang's condemnation was bolstered by the investigation prepared by Luo Qingchang's Central Investigative Department which detailed how Kang had organized the Yan'an purges and named any of his opponents "counter-revolutionary". Deng Xiaoping, himself a victim of Mao's Cultural Revolution, the Gang of Four, and Kang Sheng's secret police and whose brother needed to use a wheelchair after Red Guards threw him from a high window, committed to reforming the Chinese intelligence services. Firstly, Deng initiated a small but meaningful campaign to degrade Kang Sheng's legacy which began with Hu Yaobang's speech. Secondly, Deng subordinated the Central Investigative Department into a minor political organ. Finally, Deng took all the "external intelligence expertise" from the Central Investigative Department and consolidated it and all the CCP's espionage and counterintelligence functions into a new, "revolutionized" Chinese intelligence service, fitting of the new era of the Chinese "opening-up" to the world. Ministry of State Security (1983–present) Proposed by Zhao Ziyang and approved at the first session of the sixth National People's Congress (NPC), the Ministry of State Security (MSS) was approved on 20 June 1983 to be a merger between the Central Investigation Department and the counterintelligence elements of the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) to "protect the security of the state and strengthen China's espionage work". The following day, the NPC appointed Ling Yun to be the first Minister of State Security which would announce its establishment on 1 July 1983. There were serious political reasons behind the merger, as Luo Qingchang, who had been Director of the CID since 1973 and was a powerful player in Chinese Communist intelligence since the 1940s, was a fierce opponent of Deng Xiaoping. Although Deng had risen to supreme power in the late 1970s, he