
China’s Strategic Thinking on Building Power in Cyberspace - kawera
https://www.newamerica.org/cybersecurity-initiative/blog/chinas-strategic-thinking-building-power-cyberspace/
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Joking_Phantom
I won't pretend to intimately understand the Chinese sociopolitical
atmosphere, but it's clear to me that China wants to establish some form of
international hegemony. This isn't an initiative focused on improving the
country itself either through parity or bleeding edge advancement, which is
the tone in many European countries and societies that have no aspirations to
significantly influence world politics. For example, Czechoslovakia doesn't
want to dominate the world culturally, economically, or politically. They
mostly stick to making their country and people happy and prosperous.

China sees its 1.4 billion person population, and wants to extend itself
across the world with a similar magnitude to the British Empire of old, or the
American world order of the past 70 years. The translation of this Chinese
publication is full of buzzwords and phrases that read like a McKinsey white
paper, but with a distinctly Marxist bent (the Chinese are REALLY fond of
their pithy phrases, they have many more phrase "memes" with significant time
spans).

This is the difference between China and the late Soviet Union. China
understands that the way to global power isn't a particular ideology - it's
all about being big, big, big. Some choice quotes stand out to me: "Online
positive publicity must become bigger and stronger, so that the Party's ideas
always become the strongest voice in cyberspace."

"The online and offline worlds must form concentric circles, and, under the
leadership of the Party, mobilize the people of all nationalities, mobilize
all aspects of enthusiasm, to jointly realize the great rejuvenation of the
Chinese nation and the struggle for the China Dream."

The Chinese Dream in particular is something everyone who is interested in
Chinese society should understand. It sounds like the American Dream, but it's
markedly different. Global hegemony is an explicit goal. The Century of
Humiliation is thought of as something that should be left in the past, yet is
still repeatedly brought up whenever Western powers are perceived to have done
something violating Chinese rights. China deserves to be great, from both hard
work and its numbers.

Whether or not this works, time will tell. The internet as a practical
invention is American. The production of silicon based computers, the
microcodes they interpret, the languages that compile down to microcode, its
all English. Global trade language is English. International politics is in
English. To become a superpower in cyberspace implies that on some level, the
default conversation and framework should be set by China in Chinese. They've
got a long way to go.

