Decoding China’s Perspectives on Cyber Warfare

Abstract

Abstract This article examines China’s concerns over the adequacy of existing jus ad bellum and jus in bello to address cyber warfare, particularly the rules on cyberattacks governed by the jus in bello, dual-use infrastructure and war-sustaining facilities, the proportionality of cyberattacks against key infrastructures and the targetability of certain categories of civilians. This article argues that China’s resistance to applying some rules of the jus in bello to cyberspace is in line with the “wait and see” approach of most States. But there are two distinctive objectives behind this generalized stance: one is to protect its domestic regulatory power over cyberspace from being bound by disfavoured emerging and existing law, and the other is to build up consensus for a treaty regulating uses of cyber force under the United Nations framework.