Chinese Military Opens New Cyber Espionage and Intelligence Analysis Center

July 4, 2014

Inside China: Mixed feelings over multinational naval exercise

Miles Yu

Washington Times

On June 26, China’s state media including the Communist Party’s mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, announced that the People’s Liberation Army’s General Armament Department has opened a new cyber espionage and intelligence analysis center called Research Center for the Cyberspace Strategic Intelligence.

Billed as a PLA’s “high level intelligence platform” to collect and analyze intelligence from cyberspace, the center will focus on centralizing cyber intelligence, coordinate cyber intelligence gathering, developing and studying cyber espionage sources and methods.

Last month, the Justice Department indicted five PLA hackers for penetrating American cyber networks to steal trade secrets for the benefit Chinese companies.

On June 25, the new U.S. ambassador to China, former Sen. Max Baucus, blastedChina for its continuing and intensifying cyber espionage and theft against the United States.

“We wouldn’t sit idly by while a crime is committed in the real world, so why should we do it when it happens in cyberspace?” Mr. Baucus said.