By Gu Jinjun
Recently, the US has started a new round of hype of "Chinese hacker threat", not only accusing Chinese enterprises of stealing America's commercial secrets through the internet, but also pointing the blame directly at the Chinese government and its military.
As we all know it, the US has a powerful internet industry and absolutely advantageous hardware equipment and technology. It can't be denied that the development of the internet has brought great convenience to the world. In recent years, however, the US has been making use of its advantages to strengthen its cyber prowess. What is absurd and ridiculous is that the US is using all kinds of excuses to draw China into the focus of criticism.
The US built the world's first cyber hacker army in 2002. In May 2007, the US Air Force set up its first Cyber Command, which has established fighting capacity by now. In June 2009, then US Defense Secretary Robert Gates gave order to establish the Cyber Command, making US the first country in the world to introduce military agency into the internet. In November 2011, US military held a large drill codenamed "Cyber Flag" for the first time, participated by more than 300 personnel from the cyber command of all services. From October 29 to November 9, 2012, the US military held the "Cyber Flag" drill once again, in which the number of participants rose to 700 now and the focus of the drill shifted from defense to bilateral offense and defense.
In January 2013, American officials announced that the Pentagon had approved to expand the Cyber Command to five times its current size over the next few years. In March 2012, an article on American weekly magazine Defense News' website reported that the US Cyber Command was sending offensive cyber weapons to regional commanders. In 2010, the US launched the Stuxnet viral on Iran's nuclear power stations, rendering about 1000 centrifugal machines useless and putting Iran's uranium enrichment capacity years backward. This has been the best-known cyber war ever, explicitly showing the cyber war capacity of the US army.
Affected by the US' vigorous cyber army expansion, Japan, the UK, and South Korea have all established their cyber armies. We couldn't help asking the question: who is turning the online space into a new battlefield? More interestingly, in the process of the US' continuous cyber prowess expansion, there have been waves after waves of reports of so-called "China cyber threat" and "Chinese hacker threat". Anyone with good senses understands that China has become an excuse the US is using to expand its cyber army. Even media in the western world point out that that best way to demonize an inoffensive enemy nation is to hypocritically accuse it of launching cyber attacks.
As a matter of fact, in spite of China's large online population, its internet equipment and technology have been rather weak. Cyber attacks and cyber offenses targeted at China have been rising rapidly year by year, and China has become one of the major victims of cyber attacks. According to reports published by the National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team Coordination Center of China (CNCERT or CNCERT/CC), in 2012, 73,000 thousands overseas IP addresses had been used as Trojan or botnet control servers in controlling more than 14 million servers in China, and 32,000 IP addresses have carried out remote control over about 38,000 websites in China through backdoor operation. The largest number of the attacks mentioned above comes from the US.
In view of this, the Chinese government has always been firmly opposed to cyber attacks and making efforts to crack down such activities according to law. To help solve cyber security issues worldwide, China worked with Russia, et al, in submitting the protocol of the "International Code of Conduct of Information Security" to the UN in September 2011. China called on the international community to formulate responsible national code of conduct on the cyber space based on the protocol, jointly construct a peaceful, safe, open, and cooperative cyber space, and safeguard the common interest of the international community.
Though not innovative at all, the US' ungrounded accusation has caused harm to the bilateral relation between China and the US. The China-US relation has a bearing on the global political pattern, and cooperation between China and the US is vital to promoting global economic recovery. At present, in order to ensure a good start of the China-US relation in the new ear, China is making vigorous efforts to create a favorable environment for the stable development of the bilateral relation. The US is not looking at the big picture of the bilateral relation. Its ballyhoo of the so-called "Chinese hackers threat" would no doubt interrupt the normal strategic mutual trust between China and the US, affect communication and cooperation in trade and other fields, and aggravate hostility against one another.
Cyber attack is a global issue. It should be solved thorough constructive international cooperation based on mutual trust and respect. China is a guardian and co-worker of cyber security. China is not and should not be an excuse for the US's cyber army expansion. Ungrounded guess and accusation against China in cyber attacks is neither professional, nor responsible, and it doesn't help solve the problem at all. History is making progress, and the world is developing. The practice of achieving one's goal by making excuse of threat is outdated. Our advice to the US: give up the cold war mentality on cyber war, enhance common security concepts, work with China, and make some actual contribution to the construction of a safe cyber space that would benefit the whole human kind.
