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China's cyber power makes the world a safer place

News stories on the cyber threat that China poses appear on a regular basis. Most underscore a view that China is using cyber power to rise and ultimately win global dominance, and that the Chinese government is behind the scenes in many malicious cyber activities. Though many of the allegations focus on the tension between China and the United States on cyber espionage, these actions are unlikely to cause armed conflict since almost all capable actors conduct cyber espionage.
Suspicions of intentions and capabilities of cyber warfare, however, could drag the US and China into arms races, and even hot wars, due to the role cyber tools can play in military operations. Given the risks, it is necessary to examine China's views on cyber warfare from a narrative that is different from what most we are familiar with.
China's academic discussion of cyber warfare started in the 1990s when it was called "information warfare." Impressed by how the US military benefited from the application of high technologies in the Gulf War - and subsequent operations in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq - China began to realise that there is no way to adequately defend itself without following the changes in the forms of war in which high technologies, mainly information technologies, play more critical roles.
The first time that the Chinese military publicly addressed cyber warfare from a holistic point of view was in the 2013 version of "The Science of Military Strategy"- a study by the Academy of Military Science. It emphasised that cyberspace has become a new and essential domain of military struggle in today's world.
Based on the approach that China is taking to cyberspace and its own national security, a few conclusions can be drawn. The first is that China has not developed its cyber capabilities in a vacuum. Rather, they have developed them as a response to the changing cyber warfare approaches and practices of other countries, especially those of the US and Russia. The second is that the Chinese government's views on cyber warfare are consistent with its military strategy, which is modified according to the national security environment, domestic situation, and activities of foreign militaries.
Of the objectives, an essential one is national security and social stability. The Chinese government's monitoring of the internet and social media is based on its potential use as a platform to disseminate information that could cause similar social unrest to spread, which could lead to large-scale social and political instability.
China uses the term "eight King Kongs" to describe the top internet companies in its domestic supply chain: Apple, Cisco, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, and Qualcomm. Heavy dependence on these companies' products makes it necessary to work towards developing the domestic technology industry and its capabilities, and to make the country's internal internet infrastructure more secure. It also makes China believe that its primary mission in cyberspace is to ensure information security of critical areas, which is inherently defensive and non-destructive.
Many, including the US government, have accused the Chinese government and military of cyberattacks in which intellectual property has been stolen. In this regard, there are several distinctions to make clear. The first is between those cyberattacks that aim to destroy, and cyber espionage for intelligence collection.
The second is to make clear those forms of cyber espionage that are related to national security concerns and those for economic interests. And the last is between malicious cyber activities that one government or military should take responsibility for, and those that are attributed to a government or military based on less-than-reliable key indicators of where activities originate.
Until today, there is no irrefutable evidence to show China has been involved in cyberattacks that aim to destroy or have destroyed. While cyber espionage for national security concerns is a common action conducted by most countries, cyber espionage for economic benefit is an accusation continually made against the Chinese government and military. China's internet is also one of the most regularly attacked. Among all the attacks originating overseas, those that targeted government and financial websites largely outnumbered those on other targets.
Similar statistics can be found elsewhere. However, it is not the intention here to describe how vulnerable China is, but to emphasise that a more comprehensive and objective assessment of China's cyber power is in urgent need. As Joseph Nye argued, exaggerated fears about growing Chinese power can become a cause of conflict.
-Yale Global
Lyu Jinghua is a Visiting Scholar in the Cyber Policy Initiative at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace