Chinese Cybersecurity and Defense

Daniel Ventre

• Publisher: Wiley-ISTE
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781848216143
• eBook ISBN: 9781119009139
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Electrical Engineering & Telecommunications
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Cyberdefense has become, over the past five years, a major issue on the international scene. China, by the place it occupies, is the subject of attention: it is observed, criticized, and designated by many states as a major player in the global cyber-insecurity. The United States is building their cyberdefense strategy against what they call the "Chinese threat." It is therefore important to better understand today's challenges related to cyber dimension in regard of the rise of China. Contributions from international researchers provide cross perspectives on China, its strategies and policies for cybersecurity and cyberdefense. These issues have now gained major strategic dimension:
Is Cyberspace changing the scene of international relations?
How China does apprehend cybersecurity and cyberdefense?
What are the issues, challenges?
What is the role of China in the global cyberspace?

1

China’s Internet Development and Cybersecurity – Policies and Practices

1.1. Introduction

After land, sea, air and outer space, many people have dubbed cyberspace as the fifth domain for human activities, with multiple implications for a state. Put simply, the political, economic and security interests of a state are now increasingly connected with cybersecurity. However, the Internet is a double-edged sword, i.e. it brings about not only enormous benefits but also numerous risks, challenges and threats. Therefore, given the borderless, transnational and unique nature of cyberspace, it has become a new frontier for global governance.

China attaches great importance to Internet development and has made enormous progress in this regard. However, as a late comer to this field, China faces various challenges and has been one of the major victims of cyber-attacks. Looking into the future, China is willing to strive for a peaceful, secure, open and cooperative cyberspace together with the international community.

Internationally, there are many doubts about China’s policies and practices in its Internet development because of misunderstanding, prejudice, lack of knowledge, and even ignorance one the one hand. On the other hand, there is an increasing demand for understanding China’s policies and practices in this domain. This chapter tries to introduce some of China’s cyber policies and practices with a view to mitigating the doubts towards China.

This chapter is divided into six sections: the first section presents an overview of the development of Internet in China; the second section introduces China’s policies towards Internet development; the third section elaborates on the cyber legislation and Internet administration in China; the fourth section examines China’s idea on cyber diplomacy and its relevant activities and international cooperation concerning the Internet; the fifth section explores whether there is a cyberstrategy in China and its possible shape in the future. Finally, this chapter draws some temporary conclusions in line with the above analysis.

1.2. Internet development in China: an overview

Although China came relatively late to the Internet, the Chinese government and people warmly greeted the advent of the Internet era. During the mid- and late-1980s, China’s researchers and scholars began to explore in an active manner the use of the Internet with the assistance of their foreign colleagues. On such occasions as the 1992 and 1993 INET annual conferences, Chinese computer specialists asked for Internet access for the Chinese public as a whole, which gained the understanding of and support from their international peers. During the China-U.S. Joint Committee of Science and Technology Cooperation meeting held in Washington in April 1994, the Chinese representatives ultimately reached a consensus with the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) on China’s access to the Internet. On 20 April 1994, the CAINONET for Education and Scientific Research in Zhongguancun district, Beijing was linked to the Internet via a 64k special line. This full-function connection marked China’s formal access to the Internet.¹

Since its inception in China, the Internet has witnessed a rapid and sound development. As of the end of December 2013, the number of Internet users in China has reached 618 million, a growth of 53.58 million over the end of 2012, according to the 33^rd Statistical Report on Internet Development in China² released by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) in January 2014. The Internet penetration rate is 45.8%, a growth of 3.7% compared with that at the end of 2012. This figure indicates that the growth rate of the overall scale of Internet users in China has gradually slowed down since 2011.

In the meantime, the number of mobile Internet users has also experienced rapid growth. By the end of 2013, China had 500 million mobile Internet users, a growth of 80.09 million compared with that of 2012 and an annual growth rate of 19.1%. Among all the Internet users, the proportion of those using mobile phones to access the Internet rose from 74.5% to 81.0%, up by 6.5% over 2012. Mobile phones constituted the largest Inter-accessing terminal for the Chinese Internet users. The ratio of Internet users using desktops and laptops dropped slightly to 69.7% and 44.1% by 0.8% and 1.8% respectively, compared with the figure of 2012.

The rural Internet users had accounted for 28.6% of the total in China, reaching 177 million, a growth of 21.01 million over 2012.

China had a total of 18.44 million domain names, which included 10.83 million “.CN” domain names, up by 44.2% compared with that of 2012, accounting for 58.7% of the total domain names in China.

The total number of websites in China rose to 3.20 million, a growth of 520,000, up by 19.4% compared with that of 2012.

As of the end of 2013, 93.1% of Chinese enterprises use computers in their work, 83.2% use the Internet, 79.6% use broadband. In the meanwhile, the proportion of online marketing and online purchase conducted by the Chinese companies was 23.5% and 26.8% respectively, while that of using the Internet to conduct marketing and advertisement activities was 20.9%.

Along with the gradual slowing-down of the growth rate of the overall scale of the Chinese Internet users, the Internet in China is changing from a quantity-focused development model to a quality-focused one. In other words, the main thematic mission of the Internet in China has shifted from “increasing its penetration rate to deepening its utilization levels”, which results from several factors, including changes in the policy environment. For instance, there has been increasing national policy support. In 2013, the State Council issued a policy paper “Opinions on Promoting Information Consumption to Expand Domestic Demand”, which demonstrates the importance of the Internet in the Chinese economy and society. Moreover, the Internet is increasingly connected with traditional economy, for instance, it has witnessed very good applications in shopping, logistics, payment, and even finance. Furthermore, the use of the Internet is gradually changing people’s lifestyle, exerting influence upon almost every aspect of their daily life, including clothing, food, housing and transportation, and so on.

Of course, the development, spread and application of Internet in China also face various problems, such as regional imbalance as well as that between urban and rural areas. Constrained by such elements as economic development, education and overall level of social Informationization, China’s Internet also takes on a unique feature, i.e. the Eastern part of China enjoys rapid Internet development while that of the Western part is slow, and the urban Internet penetration is high while that in the rural area is low. As of the end of 2009, Internet penetration in the Eastern part of China was 40.0%, while that of the Western part was 21.5%. In addition, there is also a big gap between urban and rural netizens, though the proportion of the latter has witnessed some increase from 27.8% in 2009 to 28.6% in 2013. Therefore, China still needs to make assiduous efforts to narrow the gap between different regions as well as that between urban and rural areas. The Chinese government will have to continue to promote Internet development and spread, thus making more people benefit from it.

1.3. China’s policies towards Internet development

China sees Internet as a major opportunity for its reform, opening-up, and modernization cause. The Chinese government has formulated a series of policies, which map out the blueprints for its Internet development, clarify the priorities for different stages of Internet development, and promote the process of social informationization.

1.3.1. From the very beginning of its development, China’s Internet has been closely linked to the Chinese economy, and was programmed and integrated into its macro economic development blueprints

For instance, as early as in 1993, China established the Joint Conference on National Economic Informationization, which shouldered the responsibility of taking a leading role in building the communication network on national public economic information.

In 1997, China drew up the National Informationization Program during the 9^th Five-year Plan and Goals in 2010, which brought the Internet into the construction program of national information infrastructure and proposed to boost the process of national economic informationization by striving to develop the Internet industry.

Five years later in 2002, China promulgated its Specialized Informationization Planning Program during the 10^th Five-year Plan on National Economic and Social Development, which set out the priorities for China’s informationization development as practicing e-government, re-energizing software industry, strengthening the development and utilization of information resources, and accelerating the development of e-commerce, etc.

In December 2002, the 16^th National Congress of the CPC proposed to drive industrialization through informationization and promote informationization through industrialization, thus opening a new way of industrialization.

In November 2005, China laid down its National Informationization Development Strategy 2006-2020, which was a long-term or strategic document on informationization development, further clarified the priorities for China’s Internet development, and proposed to advance national economic informationization centered on readjusting economic structure and transforming the economic growth model. The document also proposed to practicing e-government with improving governance capacity at its core, and to carry forward social informization centering on building a harmonious society, etc.

In March 2006, the National People’s Congress (NPC) examined (deliberated) and approved the 11^th Five-year Plan Outline on National Economic and Social Development, proposing to boost the merger of telecommunication network, broadcast network and Internet, and to build nextgeneration Internet and accelerate its commercial application.

In April 2007, a meeting of the CPC Political Bureau proposed to vigorously develop cyber culture industry and cyber culture information equipment manufacturing industry. In October 2007, the 17^th National Congress of the CPC established the development strategy of “developing modern industry systems, strive to integrate Informationizationand industrialization, and promote the industries to transform from being big to being strong”.

In January 2010, the State Council decided to speed up the merger of the telecommunication network, broadcast network and Internet and to advance the development of information and cultural industries.

Under the Chinese government’s active promotion and explicit policy guidance, China’s Internet has been gradually on a road of comprehensive, sustainable and rapid development.

1.3.2. In addition to lending full policy support to Internet development, China also invests heavily in building Internet infrastructures

From 1997 to 2009, China invested 4,300 billion RMB in Internet infrastructure construction nationwide, and completed communication optical fiber cable covering the whole country with a total length of 8.267 million kilometers, among which 840,000 kilometers are long-distance optical cable line. By the end of 2009, China’s basic telecommunication companies possessed 136 million Internet broadband access (BBA) ports, with Internet international outlet bandwidth reaching 866,367 Mbps (million bits per second), having 7 log-in submarine cables and 20 land cables with a total volume of 1,600 Gb (Gigabyte).

99.3% of China’s villages and towns, and 91.5% of its administrative villages enjoy access to Internet, while 96.0% of villages and towns have access to bandwidth network.

In January 2009, the Chinese government began to provide the 3G mobile communication licenses. Now, the 3G networks have fundamentally covered the whole country. The mobile Internet is experiencing rapid development, while the Internet will benefit more people.

1.3.3. The Chinese government actively promotes the R&D of next-generation Internet (NGI)

During the late 1990s, China began its work on the NGI R&D and implemented a series of major science and technology programs such as “new-generation highly reliable network”. In 2001, the first Chinese NGI regional experimental network, near-field communication network (NFCNET), was established in Beijing. In 2003, China Next Generation Internet (CNGI) was officially launched and marked China’s entrance into a new stage of large-scale NGI R&D and construction. Now, China has established the world’s largest IPv6 excellence network, while the medium-and small-capacity IPv6 router technology, authentication technology on authentic IPv6 source address and NGI transitory technology used in the experimental network are taking a lead internationally. The technological programs proposed by China on the internationalization of domain names, IPv6 source address authentication, IPv4-IPv6 transitory technology have gained the approval of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and become part of the international Inter...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Author Biographies
• Introduction
• 1 China’s Internet Development and Cybersecurity – Policies and Practices
• 2 PLA Views on Informationized Warfare, Information Warfare and Information Operations
• 3 China’s Adaptive Internet Management Strategy after the Emergence of Social Networks
• 4 India’s Cybersecurity – The Landscape
• 5 China and Southeast Asia: Offline Information Penetration and Suspicions of Online Hacking – Strategic Implications from a Singaporean Perspective
• 6 Impact of Mongolia’s Choices in International Politics on Cybersecurity
• 7 China-Iran-Russia – A Cybercommunity of Information?
• 8 Discourse Regarding China: Cyberspace and Cybersecurity
• General Conclusion
• List of Authors
• Index