Ministry of Psionic Affairs (Ministry)
(a.k.a. telepaths, Ministry agents or tels - textfile conversion, Terrence Chu, Ministry Liaison to Æon Trinity)

Forget what you've heard about telepaths. The amoral, obsessively secretive Ministry telepath is a Western media creation. Furthermore, despite what you've seen on vidcasts, the Ministry isn't a society of cold blooded "inquisitors" or "agents in black."

In fact, our history is a matter of public record. After becoming the telepath proxy, Rebecca Bue Li set out to gather her order from the upper levels of the Philippine intelligentsia. However, when she realized that the Chinese secret service was attempting to infiltrate the new group, the telepaths studied the nonpsionic espionage agents in their midst. The infiltrators eventually realized that telepaths had been observing them all along. Concluding that it was impossible to work against telepaths in a covert manner, the Chinese State Council offered Bue and her group full access to the resources of China if they would join forces with Beijing. As a gesture of good faith, the Philippines were adopted as a full partner in the Chinese space program.

For her part, Bue realized that the resources and diplomatic leverage of China would offer her almost unlimited opportunity to seek out latent telepaths on Earth, and Aberrants through out the solar system.

The Ministry of Psionic Affairs is a cabinet level division of the Chinese government with a variety of branches unto itself. As Psi Minister, Rebecca Bue sits on the Beijing State Council and has access to tremendous financial resources, equipment, information, political leverage and personnel. Individual Ministry agents work within the Chinese federal budget, through, and are required to justify unusual expenses to their superiors.

The Ministry's administrative headquarters is in Beijing, with adjunct academic facilities concentrated at the Shanghai Psi Institute. However, many of the telepaths training facilities and research staging areas (including the psi institute at Quezon) are located in the Philippines, out of the main political arena. Peripheral administrative centers exist on Mars (dedicated to studying the effects of colon like) and Luna (the center of the Ministry's high level diplomatic functions, including researching the Qin).

Ministry offices are located nearly everywhere in the Chinese sphere of influence. Order agents are scattered throughout the rest of human space, acting as diplomats, mediators and impartial observers. Every orbital ship that leaves a Chinese launch site carries at least one psi officer who monitors for Aberrant activity during the journey, and who maintains mental contact with flight control.

Many of the Ministry's psi operatives have highly specialized roles in the Chinese realm, acting as messengers, translators, coordinators and information gatherers. generally, the Ministry's official function in the Chinese government is to ensure the smooth flow of information and authority within and among the various state bureaus and departments.

It has been said that a good telepath is hard to find. That doesn't just apply to the active ones. Telepathy isn't as common as you might expect, not that I'm at liberty to give you a tally of Ministry operatives. I can say that we may be about as common as your average clairsentient.

The Ministry is divided into separate divisions and offices, each of which performs specialized functions with and for the Chinese government and People.

OFFICE OF SEMIOTICS
(THE MANDARINS)

Devoted to the exploration of telepathy's social benefits, the Office of Semiotics spearheads important advances in international relations, foreign diplomacy and domestic affairs. Although OS operatives attend high level conferences and business negotiations as advisors and moderations, this office;s most important function is to serve as an impartial forum for the mediation i international disputes. The recent peace in the Middle East is due in large to the OS' diplomatic successes and surveillance of global stress points.

The office translates documents and programs from all cultures into the universal language of thought. Nearly all foreign materials arriving in China pass through the OS for translation and correction before being distributed to the Chinese people.

The OS also studies alien races. As the unpleasant encounter wit the Coalition shows, first contact situations can be inconclusive without telepathic assistance. The Ministry uses telepathy to achieve a comprehensive understanding of aliens.

THE PSI INSTITUTES

We humbly acknowledge that we are famous for having the nest training and recruiting branches of all the orders. I offer our psi institutes as the reason why. Operating from high tech campuses outside Shanghai and Quezon City, the Ministry makes a concerted effort to locate latent and non - affiliated psi active telepaths from across human space. They are then offered full access to the Ministry's training facilities and financial resources, including instruction in all recognized aptitudes by psions from every order.

The Institutes have the best noetic research facilities in the world. Experimental programs at the Shanghai Institute study the alien races and attempt to isolate and eliminate the root causes of Aberrant Syndrome. Research at Quezon tends to focus on "pure psi" experimentation, with various laboratory teams attempting to unlock the genetic factors that determine aptitude, or to even create new, artificial aptitudes.

OFFICE OF PSIONIC SECURITY
(THE AVIARY)

The most clandestine of the Ministry divisions and the one that contributes most to our undeservedly bad reputation is the Office of Psionic Security. OPS is China's early warning system and psionic police force. We call this division "the Aviary." where Madame Bue's "birds of the mind" go to roost. OPS psi operatives have a thankless job: moving secretly among the populace and monitoring surface thoughts for criminal and seditious urges and signs of Aberrant activity. Once wrongdoers are identified, the Aviary is empowered to bring them to court or to see that they receive psychiatric are. OPS also serves as the ethics committee for telepaths, monitoring our own people for abuses of power and other violations.

As representatives of the Chinese government, Ministry agents are legally empowered to demand full cooperation from all Chinese citizens and institutions. IN practice, however, the extent of cooperation we can expect varies depending on the political ramifications of the situation and the personal agendas involved.

Outside China, our agents often find their national affiliation a mixed blessing. Ministry agents who want to operate effectively in a foreign country must exploit that country's relationship with China. Needless to say, those nations that are not Friendly with China (notably India, Brazil, and the FSA) aren't very cooperative, often refusing to allow Chinese telepaths to operate freely within their borders.

It is entertaining to see that when such bans are imposed in holodrama, Ministry agents perform covert operations, literally becoming invisible to everyone but other telepaths. IN real world, most goals can be accomplished just as well 0 if not better - through diplomatic means.