From Offense Dominance to Deterrence: China’s Evolving Strategic Thinking on Cyberwar

Abstract

This paper examines China’s strategic thinking on cyberwar. It has been widely argued that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has shown strong interest in launching large-scale cyberattacks against the US during warfare or peacetime. However, such views ignore the fact that the PLA must restrain itself due to the uncertainties of cyberattack, such as collateral damage, blowback, and escalation. In fact, Chinese experts follow US perceptions and cyberwar practices very closely, which has contributed to Beijing’s evolving strategic thinking over the past decades. From the 1990s to early 2000s, the “ideology of offense” was the PLA’s primary approach to the “informationization leaping forward”. Due to the shock of the Gulf War, most of the military strategists advocated cyber offense in order to catch up with the new round of revolution in military affairs. However, after 2008, both military and civilian experts started to increasingly question the effectiveness of cyberattack after studying their peers’ criticism against cyber deterrence in the US. There was no consensus on national cybersecurity strategy until 2015 when there was a call for China to develop a cyber deterrence strategy as a reaction to the further development of cyber deterrence by the US. The latest Chinese official documents on cybersecurity have reflected the shift of its strategic thinking.