ASSESSMENTS

China Won't Back Down on Cyber Espionage Anytime Soon

Jul 6, 2018 | 09:00 GMT

Cyberspace is an expanding battleground between China and the United States.

(Shutterstock)

Highlights

China's efforts to control its cyberspace will only increase as the central government tries to defend against ideological and organizational threats from near and far.
The growing economic and technological competition between the United States and China will encourage Beijing to maintain policies that enable it to catch up with U.S. cyber capabilities.
Concerns that Western intelligence agencies and hackers could exploit backdoors in its networks will prompt China to keep promoting policies aimed at developing indigenous versions of foreign hardware and software.

The United States and China will keep using the internet and cyberspace against each other. A 2015 agreement stipulating that neither would engage in cyber espionage to steal trade secrets or intellectual property from the other has reduced but apparently not eliminated these practices. In November 2017, for example, the United States charged three Chinese hackers working at an internet security firm based in China with eight separate counts of conspiring to commit computer fraud and trade secret theft. As U.S. President Donald Trump's administration takes aim at China's economic and industrial strategies through tariffs and trade investigations, Beijing will use cyberspace to insulate itself from the United States....

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