Cyber security in the post-Snowden age
- By Xu Peixi
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E-mail China.org.cn, July 12, 2013
After the Obama Administration lost leverage over a cyber security issue because of Snowden's revelations, the IPR topic was immediately deleted from the cyber security debate and adopted as an independent discussion thread in this year's China-U.S. Strategic and Economic Dialogue. What would have been the consequences of the two topics merging into one? Would that imply that China's economic success was based on stealing from others? America's deliberate merging and separating the topics before and after Snowden, indicate that the China-U.S. dialogue risks repeating the cyber security trajectory: shouting and condemning – yet no soul-searching.
The transfer of knowledge comes neither from stealing IPR nor from hacking, but from education. For example, an increasing number of Chinese students opt for an academic stint in the U.S. This is how knowledge transfer happens, but it comes at a cost. President Obama got it right when he created the 100,000 Strong Initiative to promote a mutual understanding at the education level by increasing the number of American students in China. Unfortunately, this initiative soon got caught in a strategic web of quick gains and accusations.
By skipping the normal means and resorting to threats of (cyber) war, the U.S. has presented the global public with an evil scenario of itself that has the potential to develop into a cyber military industrial complex in which money, war and hegemony feed off each other. It once occurred to me that the real intention behind the U.S. blockage of Chinese telecommunication companies Huawei /ZTE may have been due to trade protectionism, and national security was simply used as a convenient excuse. Yet in current post-Snowden era, one is led to believe that the U.S. really meant both. China now must consider the dominant role of American Cisco/Apple in its market, as well as the safety of its core infrastructures.
In a war of rhetoric, China is nevertheless a sitting duck, deserving to some degree several of the accusations; not because of the exact content of American claims, but because of its own Internet mismanagement in what I call "using the logic of an agricultural society." It replicates dozens of centuries-old nomadic fears as symbolized by a defensive Great Wall in the present information society, which is reborn as a fear of Western ideology translated into the so-called Great Fire Wall.
There is also a positive side to this logic. As an agricultural civilization having survived frequent flooding, earthquakes and famines throughout history, China has long learnt the importance of co-existence. Chinese view things differently from the U.S. and the Chinese mentality strives for a harmonious society. This Confucian attitude explains how China managed to keep its cool in the American hard ball game, even after Snowden had brought things to light and China learnt that the U.S. had been hacking into Chinese systems for quite some time. Even when it discovered educational institutions in both the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong were among the victims, China still refrained from criticizing the U.S., leaving time and room for President Obama to apologize and cease intelligence activities. China's new leadership hopes that Obama will adhere to a zero-sum game mentality and consider something that is called "co-existence" in Chinese or "win-win" in Western terms.
The timidity and restraint the Chinese government has shown thus far, has nonetheless triggered public anger inside China. Imagine the resentment among ordinary Chinese when Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Hua Chunying was repeating the same old official lines when the public had already come to know how China had fallen victim to the U.S. spying game. China's apparent passivity in facing the American hegemony was also reflected in its failure to offer asylum to Snowden, forcing the young man onto a running course around the world. Yet, this was not the worst episode in this media event. At least, Hong Kong did not turn Snowden in. The heaviest blow to the freedom believers and truth seekers in the world came from Europe when the jet carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales was blocked from French, Portuguese, Italian and Spanish skies amid rumors it also had Snowden on board. How then can we possibly trust our politicians in China and Europe to negotiate with a desperate American empire for truth, peace and justice?
The author is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit: http://china.org.cn/opinion/xupeixi.htm
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