EMILIO IASIELLO
A Chinese press has recently published Excerpts of Xi Jinping’s Discourse on Cyberspace Superpower, a book on Xi Jinping’s views on making China into an Internet powerhouse, and how such an endeavor is a necessary component to bolstering the country’s industries, economy, and ideological security. The book is a comprehensive deep dive into Xi’s thinking about cyberspace and the Internet’s relation to state power, providing a summary of China’s Communist Party (CCP) experience implementing cyber-related regulation as an important facilitator for China’s technological development and overall cybersecurity posture. This book serves as a complement to other volumes that have captured Xi’s speeches and writings on key issues as perceived through the prism of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Ostensibly, the latest book achieves a similar objective, promoting his leadership as instrumental to China’s legal and regulatory cyber accomplishments.
It is clear that Xi has been pivotal in shaping China’s cyber evolution since coming to power in 2012, both as a means to make China into a legitimate global competitor and influencer, as well as ensuring that all facets of cyberspace are leveraged to secure his and the CCP’s positions in the country. During his tenure, China has not only become the most pervasive actor conducting various acts of cyber malfeasance across the globe but has become a fierce technological competitor as well as a technological partner to the global community. Regardless of the technological security concerns associated with China, the country continues to be one with whom others seek to cooperate as it leads the global community in 37 out of 44 critical technologies with the West drifting behind, according to an Australian think tank.
Under Xi’s stewardship, cyber has been a means to not only expand China’s interests but protect them as well. Beijing has been able to execute several different cyber-related initiatives ranging from technology advancement, enactment of protective legislation, delivering messages, and projecting influence. At a recent July national meeting on work concerning cybersecurity and informatization, Xi emphasized the Party’s role in shaping cyberspace, developing it for the people, taking a path of Internet governance with Chinese characteristics, and underscoring the importance of cybersecurity in the “new era,” a term used to categorize the guiding principles China under Xi’s presidency. Such multi-tasking has been impressive and can only be done effectively under a solitary unified vision of what the intended outcome is to be, an easier feat to achieve for an authoritarian regime than other forms of government.
Still, compared to other governments, China is on the forefront of addressing the complexity of cybersecurity measures (no doubt bolstered by its authoritarian style of government), which has enabled Xi to implement his goals without having to debate nuances or consider other political interests. Therefore, it is unsurprising that there is a considerable body of cyber-related work attributable to Xi’s influence on how China should evolve with cyberspace. There is no better example than China’s most recent major pieces of legislation that has factored in cybersecurity (and more precisely, information security), a testament to Xi’s acknowledgment that technology and information processing touches every aspect of modern life. Xi has stressed that “there’ll be no national security without cybersecurity,” and in doing so has made his intentions clear that China’s best way to be a true cyber power is not solely through offensive cyber dominance as much as bringing other countries into accepting its views of what cybersecurity looks like in this “new age.”
While several other countries have been slow to marry complex nuances of cyberspace into their laws, China has been aggressive, “promulgating more than 140” of them since 1994, the most notable of which have been enacted under Xi’s administrative reign. Indeed, whether it be National Security, Cybersecurity, Data Security, and Non-Government Organization activities (to name a few), Beijing has made sure that both digital and information security are constantly being addressed and accounted for with each subsequent law reinforcing the previous one. A recently published Chinese government white paper entitled “China’s Law-Based Cyberspace Governance” further illustrates China’s intention on relying on laws to justify how it intends to not only operate in cyberspace, but encourage others to do so as well.
But China isn’t relying on laws to demonstrate how it’s being a responsible state actor, Xi has also initiated programs in an attempt to substantiate China’s commitment to combating some of the more contentious information threats like disinformation that have catapulted into the global spotlight the past several years. In 2021, China launched “Operation Qinglang,” a national-led effort to ban “self media” accounts that have engaged in such harmful activity as publishing erroneous business information, misinterpreting economic policy, and willfully spreading misinformation. Building on Operation Qinglang, between July 16-21, 2023, Chinese authorities punished 373 accounts for spreading false information targeting China’s stock market, and other policies in order to mitigate the negative fallout from online rumors and better influence online behavior. While critics see these activities as more measures of government control and “digital authoritarianism,” such moves are being increasingly adopted by Western democracies as they try to execute their own degrees of censorship when they perceive certain information to be a threat. The comparison plays to China’s favor, particularly since Xi advocates nation states’ rights for cyber sovereignty and complete autonomy over their portions of the global Internet and criticizing governments when they rebuke China for doing the same.
Some have pointed out that cyber is “personal” to Xi, and that a means for China to outcompete its rivals is being leveraged to preserve the reign of Xi himself. This certainly has some merit to it as the main goal of any authoritarian regime is to remain in power, and the reach of an interconnected global community facilitates the abuse of cyberspace to support draconian activities. But China has repeatedly proven that immediate gains are not more important than strategic objectives. As Western democracies are increasingly caught in embarrassing disclosures of unwarranted surveillance, information suppression, and targeting of political opponents, China has carefully used these lapses to tarnish the West’s long polished armor of moral decency. For example, while the United States’ official cybersecurity strategy advocates offensive cyber missions to improve cyber defenses, China backs Internet sovereignty and encourages the implementation of legal frameworks as necessary preconditions to effectively shape state behavior. The difference is notable, and one China is subtly exploiting.
And here is where Xi’s connection to cyber is being misinterpreted by some. A true coup for Beijing would not be preserving Xi’s reign as much as finally supplanting the United States as a viable global cyber leader, or at least gaining enough of a support base as to put the two countries on equal footing from a cyber perspective. And as cyber is clearly one of the dominant issues for the global community for the foreseeable future, the government able to influence state behavior, the standards associated the technologies being developed, and the governance of the space itself will rightfully claim the title of cyber power. It will be able to set the tune to which everyone else will be compelled to dance. In a time when cyber attacks have not met expectation when it comes to conflict, this may be the true nature of what cyberwar is all about: not the ability of a state to deliver debilitating strikes that achieve cyber domination, but to attain the level of dominance that shapes the very space wherein such battles are fought.
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