Cyber Policy in China (China Today)

Cyber Policy in China (China Today)

Greg Austin

Language: English

Pages: 232

ISBN: 0745669808

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


Few doubt that China wants to be a major economic and military power on the world stage. To achieve this ambitious goal, however, the PRC leadership knows that China must first become an advanced information-based society. But does China have what it takes to get there? Are its leaders prepared to make the tough choices required to secure China’s cyber future? Or is there a fundamental mismatch between China’s cyber ambitions and the policies pursued by the CCP until now?

This book offers the first comprehensive analysis of China’s information society. It explores the key practical challenges facing Chinese politicians as they try to marry the development of modern information and communications technology with old ways of governing their people and conducting international relations. Fundamental realities of the information age, not least its globalizing character, are forcing the pace of technological change in China and are not fully compatible with the old PRC ethics of stability, national industrial strength and sovereignty. What happens to China in future decades will depend on the ethical choices its leaders are willing to make today. The stakes are high. But if China’s ruling party does not adapt more aggressively to the defining realities of power and social organization in the information age, the ‘China dream’ looks unlikely to become a reality.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

providing a way for the more conservative forces to hold back the claims of the informatization champions and maintain a measured pace of industrialization that most leaders saw as quite distinct from, rather than depending on, informatization. The 1997 conference was something of a late arrival. It was convened to approve a plan that had been developed in 1995 under the title ‘National Informatization Development Plan’, which reportedly set out very general objectives for 2010. The document

news outlets are not allowed to use news information from foreign media or foreign websites without permission.’ The instruction required news organizations with a Weibo account to report to the authorities for the record and to appoint a staff person to be responsible for ‘posting authoritative information and deleting harmful information in time’ (Reporters without Borders 17/04/2013). According to the Reporters without Borders press freedom index of 2013, China sits among the ten worst

feel obliged to cooperate in cyberspace rather than risk the fabric of China’s economic ties (Austin and Gady 2012). China’s economy is almost certainly not immune from serious damage that could be brought on by a US cyber attack. The same is true for the United States, even if the extent of US dependence is higher and its degree of immunity lower than those of China. We can be more certain about the shared interests when we look at the potential impact of cyber crime. This is an increasingly

century, China has moved only slowly, though in a reasonably deliberate manner, to adjust its legacy values in international security affairs to match the ideal policy values of the information age more closely. SECURITY IN THE GLOBAL INFOSPHERE 167 Strategic stability:  The leaders retained a strong commitment in principle to a stable world order but were becoming more confident that the country’s rising military and economic power gave them a much stronger hand to play. They wanted a

Luciano Floridi at Oxford University is one of the leading scholars, with his 2013 volume, The Ethics of Information, 12 CHINA’S CYBER AMBITION providing deep insights into the moral implications of the information age. Such works debate an issue of the highest relevance to Chinese leadership choices on this subject. Just how transformative is the information society? Is it indeed revolutionary and overarching, affecting everything in fundamental ways? Or is it just another new factor that

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