Chinese information operations and information warfare


has employed information warfare, initially based on concepts similar to those used by the United States and adapted to the doctrine and policies of the Communist Party of China. While China has adopted the idea of information dominance, its method for going about information dominance differs, using ancient methods such as the Thirty-Six Stratagems.
China's interest in information warfare began after the United States victory in the first Gulf War. U.S. success was the result of information technologies and the total dominance it was able to provide in the battle space. From that point forward, the People's Liberation Army began to seriously invest in and develop its own concepts of information warfare and what they mean to China.
The idea of a revolution in military affairs including information warfare has arisen as a school of thought in Chinese warfare. China's leadership has continuously stressed using asymmetric techniques to counter more powerful nations, such as the United States, and information warfare is a tool that the PLA uses to achieve their goals.

Definitions

The United States is a notable exception by having its information warfare doctrine unclassified and available on the internet; the information warfare doctrine of most countries is classified. Hence, current information about Chinese policy and doctrine is not freely available. This section summarizes the information available. The reader will note that most of this information is of US origin, and most of it is five or more years old. Notable exceptions are the publicly released versions of annual reports to the US Congress.
A July 1998 conference held in San Diego, sponsored jointly by the RAND Center for Asia-Pacific Policy and the Taiwan-based Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies, "brought together Chinese military experts to discuss the non-hardware side of the People's Liberation Army's modernization." In his presentation, James C. Mulvenon stated: "Chinese writings clearly suggest that IW is a solely military subject, and as such, they draw inspiration primarily from U.S. military writings. The net result of this "borrowing" is that many PLA authors' definitions of IW and IW concepts sound eerily familiar."
The father of Chinese IW, Major General Wang Pufeng, wrote "Information war is a crucial stage of high-tech war.... At its heart are information technologies, fusing intelligence war, strategic war, electronic war, guided missile war, a war of "motorization" , a war of firepower —a total war. It is a new type of warfare."
In a strategic analysis paper for the Indian Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses written in 2006, Vinod Anand examines the definitions of Chinese Information Warfare. He notes that although Chinese understanding of IW was initially based on western concepts, it has increasingly moved towards evolving its own orientation.
In December 1999, Xie Guang, the then Vice Minister of Science & Technology and Industry for National Defence, defined IW as:
In two articles in the Liberation Army Daily, dated 13 June and 20 June 1995, Senior Colonel Wang Baocun and Li Fei of the Academy of Military Science, Beijing, noted several definitions. They concluded:
They went on to state:
Also quoted are some of the more general definitions. For example:
Not included in these definitions is the emphasis that the PLA places on asymmetric warfare, particularly using information warfare to compensate for technological inferiority. This list also omits an element that plays a large role in Chinese IW and IO: computer network operations. Also not addressed is the role of "informationization" in the development of Chinese capabilities. These are discussed in the following sections.

Asymmetric warfare

In a 2001 paper in the U.S. Military Review, T L Thomas examines the writings of Major General Dai Qingmin, Senior Colonel Wang Baocun and others on the ways that China is employing "Electronic Strategies" to realise the benefits of asymmetric warfare.
Thomas also summarises the April 2000 issue of the Chinese journal China Military Science which contains three articles on information warfare subjects. The only article written in English presents a quite different approach to an article Wang Baocun wrote only three years previously where he presented a description of IW which contained the elements of Soviet/Russian military science.
In the article "On Information Warfare Strategies", by Major General Niu Li, Colonel Li Jiangzhou and Major Xu Dehui, the authors define IW stratagems as "schemes and methods devised and used by commanders and commanding bodies to seize and maintain information supremacy on the basis of using clever methods to prevail at a relatively small cost in information warfare."

Informationization

Information warfare is a subset of informationization. As a result of technological advancement, China has now entered an era where Informationization is the military concept of the present and future. Informationization "entails embracing all the opportunities and technologies the Information Age can offer and integrating them into military systems".
China's 2004 White Paper on National Defense outlines the importance of informationization.
The U.S. Department of Defense's 2009 Annual Report to Congress on "Military Power of the
People's Republic of China" defines local wars under conditions of informationization as "high intensity and short duration fighting against high technology adversaries"... "capable of fighting and winning short-duration, high-intensity conflicts along its periphery against high-tech adversaries". Additionally, local war under informationization is an effort which seeks to fully develop and link land, air, sea, space and the electromagnetic spectrum into one system. China's military strategy is focused on fighting and winning "informationized local wars."

Examples of Chinese use of information warfare

Chinese information operations against the United States

Computer network operations, including cyber operations, are being undertaken by both Chinese citizens and the Chinese government. Because the United States has a weak critical infrastructure, it is vulnerable to Chinese cyber operations. As was described to the United States Congress:
In response to cyber operations undertaken by China against United States companies and infrastructure, Amitai Etzioni of the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies has suggested that China and the United States should agree to a policy of mutually assured restraint with respect to cyberspace. This would involve allowing both states to take the measures they deem necessary for their self-defense while simultaneously agreeing to refrain from taking offensive steps; it would also entail vetting these commitments.

Chinese information operations and unification with Taiwan

The PRC is actively seeking to unify Taiwan with mainland China. Rather than risk failure of a militarily forced unification, which could lead to de facto independence of Taiwan, PRC leadership has taken a different approach. By using computer network operations, the PRC believes it can undermine the will of Taiwan by attacking the Taiwanese infrastructure. In the meantime, the PRC will use computer network operations to delay any U.S. response, thereby causing Taiwanese surrender before the U.S. can help.

Twitter

In June 2020, Twitter shut down 23,750 primary accounts and approximately 150,000 booster accounts which were being used by China to conduct an information operation aimed at boosting China's global position during the COVID-19 outbreak as well as attacking tradition targets such as Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, Guo Wengui, and Taiwan. Twitter said that the accounts had pushed deceptive narratives and spread propaganda.