China Broadens Cyber Options

China is prepared to use its burgeoning cyber capabilities for industrial espionage, trans-national harassment, national defence and as a support to military operations.

- JR Ng

In its annual assessment released on 1 May 2019, the US Department of Defense’s (DoD) report to Congress on China’s military capabilities painted a rapidly modernising People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and its growing ability to exploit cyberspace to offset the traditional advantages of its peer rivals.

According to the DoD, the PLA has consistently advocated cyber warfare to achieve a range of operational objectives, such as targeting an adversary’s command, control, and communications (C3) and logistics networks to hamper its ability to generate combat power during the early stages of an armed conflict. At the same time, its cyber warfare capabilities can also be used to collect intelligence or to serve as a force-multiplier when coupled with conventional kinetic attacks.

“PLA researchers believe that building strong cyber capabilities are necessary to protect Chinese networks and advocate seizing ‘cyberspace superiority’ by using offensive cyber operations to deter or degrade an adversary’s ability to conduct military operations against China,” the DoD noted in its report.

Chinese writings suggest cyber operations allow [the PLA] to manage the escalation of a conflict because cyber-attacks are a low-cost deterrent,” it added, noting that this enables China to scale these attacks to achieve desired conditions with minimal strategic cost.

“The writings also suggest that cyberattacks demonstrate capabilities and resolve to an adversary.”