The People's Republic of China engages in information warfare (IW) through the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and other organizations affiliated or controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Laid out in the Chinese Defence White Paper of 2008, [1] informatized warfare includes the utilization of information-based weapons and forces, including battlefield management systems, precision-strike capabilities, and technology-assisted command and control (C4ISR). [2] The term also refers to propaganda and influence operations efforts by the Chinese state. [3]
The People's Liberation Army (PLA) defines the term informatization to describe the implementation of information technology in the digital age, and as an evaluation criteria of its military modernization effort. The Central Military Commission aims to transform PLA from conducting people's war to engage in warfare conditions of informatization, which includes moving the military doctrine from weapon platform-centric to cyber-centric. The indicated characteristic of the cyber-centric force is the utilization of network linkages (data-link) among platforms. [4]
Eric C. Anderson and Jeffrey G. Engstrom define "informationization" and informatized warfare in Chinese military doctrine as follows: "[A]t the operational level appears focused on providing an integrated platform for joint war-zone command, control, communications, computer, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) connectivity, and for peacetime command and control (C2) within the PLA's Military Regions." [2]
The United States Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) defines China's "informatized warfare" as similar to U.S. military's concept of net-centric capability, which means the military's capability to use advanced information technology and communications systems to gain operational advantage over an adversary. [5]
In 1995, the father of Chinese information warfare, Major General Wang Pufeng, wrote [6] "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" [jidong zhan], a war of firepower [huoli]—a total war. It is a new type of warfare." [7]
In two articles in the People'sLiberation Army Daily, of 13 and 20 June 1995, Senior Colonel Wang Baocun and Li Fei of the Academy of Military Science noted several definitions. They concluded:
They went on to state:
The essential substance of information warfare in the narrow sense is made up of five major elements and two general areas.
The five major elements are:
- Substantive destruction, the use of hard weapons to destroy enemy headquarters, command posts, and command and control (C2) information centers
- Electronic warfare, the use of electronic means of jamming or the use of antiradiation [electromagnetic] weapons to attack enemy information and intelligence collection systems such as communications and radar
- Military deception, the use of operations such as tactical feints [simulated attacks] to shield or deceive enemy intelligence collection systems
- Operational secrecy, the use of all means to maintain secrecy and keep the enemy from collecting intelligence on our operations
- Psychological warfare, the use of TV, radio, and leaflets to undermine the enemy's military morale.
The two general areas are information protection (defense) and information attack (offense):
- Information defense means preventing the destruction of one's own information systems, ensuring that these systems can perform their normal functions. In future wars, key information and information systems will become "combat priorities," the key targets of enemy attack.
- Information offense means attacking enemy information systems. Its aims are: destroying or jamming enemy information sources, to undermine or weaken enemy C&C capability, and cutting off the enemy's whole operational system. The key targets of information offense are the enemy's combat command, control and coordination, intelligence, and global information systems. A successful information offensive requires three prerequisites:
- 1) the capability to understand the enemy's information systems, and the establishment of a corresponding database system;
- 2) diverse and effective means of attack; and
- 3) the capability to make battle damage assessments [BDA] of attacked targets.
— Senior Colonel Wang Baocun and Li Fei of the Academy of Military Science, Beijing, 1995. [8]
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." [7] 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." [7] : 175–186
In December 1999, Xie Guang, the then Vice Minister of Science & Technology and Industry for National Defence, defined IW as:
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. [9] He notes that although Chinese understanding of IW was initially based on western concepts, it has increasingly moved towards evolving its own orientation. [10]
China's interest in information warfare began after the United States victory in the first Gulf War (1990–1991). U.S. success was the result of information technologies and the total dominance it was able to provide in the battle space. [11] From that point forward, the PLA began to seriously invest in and develop its own concepts of information warfare and what they mean to China.
As a result of technological advancement, China has now entered an era where informationization can be applied to military domains. [9] [12]
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". [13] 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. [14] China's military strategy is focused on fighting and winning "informationized local wars." [15]
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. [16] [17] In a 2001 paper in the U.S. Military Review, T. L. Thomas examines the writings of Major General Dai Qingmin (Director of the PLA's Communications Department of the General Staff responsible for IW and IO), Senior Colonel Wang Baocun (of the PLA's Academy of Military Sciences) 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 ("The Current Revolution in Military Affairs and its Impact on Asia-Pacific Security," by Senior Colonel Wang Baocun) 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. [18]
In the article "On Information Warfare Strategies", by Major General Niu Li, Colonel Li Jiangzhou and Major Xu Dehui (of the Communications and Command Institute), 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." [19]
In 2003, the CCP approved the three warfares strategy for the PLA, which involves using public opinion (or media) warfare, psychological warfare and legal warfare (lawfare). [20]
While China has adopted the idea of information dominance, its method for going about information dominance differs, using ancient political warfare methods such as the Thirty-Six Stratagems. [21] [17] The PLA has also increasingly stressed an operational concept called "cognitive domain operations." [22]
On the defensive side, China employs a combination of legal policies and information technology for censorship and surveillance of dissenters in a program called Golden Shield. [23] This is often referred to as the Great Firewall of China. China promotes the idea of "national cyber sovereignty," which Xi Jinping has described as the avoidance of "cyber hegemony" and the idea that countries should respect each other's national security in cyberspace. [24]
The PLA began developing social media influence operations in the mid-2010s and began employing them since at least 2018, according to RAND Corporation. [25] Pro-China disinformation campaigns in 2021 showed greater sophistication compared to 2019. It has been difficult to attribute with certainty whether Chinese state actors are behind these actions. [26]
Disinformation campaigns sought to downplay the emergence of COVID-19 in China and manipulate information about its spread around the world. [27] [28] In January 2023, Google stated that it shut down more than 50,000 accounts promoting disinformation about COVID-19, Taiwan, and U.S. politics. The campaign is believed to be linked to Chinese public relations firm Shanghai Haixun Technology Co. [29] Haixun has planted pro-Beijing stories in dozens of American news outlets online. [30]
The PRC seeks unification with Taiwan and uses information operations, sometimes referred to as "information war", as an important part of that work. [31] [32] Despite the large resource outlay the Chinese have been relatively ineffective in influencing the Taiwanese public. [33] According to James C. Mulvenon rather than risk failure of a militarily forced unification, which could lead to international recognition of the independence of Taiwan, PRC leadership could potentially use computer network operations to undermine the will of Taiwan by attacking Taiwanese infrastructure. [34]
In 2022 Taiwan's Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau revealed that it had identified more than 400 social media accounts being used to push disinformation to Taiwanese citizens as part of Chinese content farms. [35] In 2023, the Investigation Bureau announced that it was monitoring for money laundering undertaken in an effort to finance election interference in Taiwan. [36]
During the 2022 Chinese military exercises around Taiwan, Taiwanese officials accused the PLA of engaging in information warfare with claims of military exercises close to Penghu. [37]
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been carrying out propaganda against the West since the 1960s, spreading its ideology and creating division among the population. Its foreign-directed propaganda has been known to back far-left political activists and radical feminism. [38] [39] [40]
Using a variety of methods, the PRC has recruited American agents of influence to advocate for Chinese interests in the United States. While many of these agents of influence serve China unwittingly, they can be very effective. A 1999 Congressional report found that "the Chinese Government continues to seek influence in Congress through various means, including inviting Congressional members to visit the PRC, lobbying ethnic Chinese voters and prominent U.S. citizens, and engaging U.S. business interests to weigh in on issues of mutual concern." [41]
China also uses its vast market as leverage in order to persuade American companies to lobby for Chinese interests. This is especially true of companies that deal in high technology or dual-use technology, as there are significant export controls placed on such technology. According to the 1999 Cox Report, "Executives wishing to do business in the PRC share a mutual commercial interest with the PRC in minimizing export controls on dual-use and military-related technologies. The PRC has displayed a willingness to exploit this mutuality of interest in several notoriously public cases by inducing VIPs from large U.S. companies to lobby on behalf of initiatives, such as export liberalization, on which they are aligned with the PRC." [42]
Chinese government information operations have also attempted to co-opt local NIMBY sentiment to drive opposition against perceived economic threats such as the development projects that compete with the rare earth industry in China. [43]
In 2024 Network Contagion reported that several member organizations of the pro-Palestinian movement Shut It Down for Palestine (SID4P) are linked to what it calls the "Singham Network" under Neville Roy Singham, who has close ties to the CCP according to Network Contagion. [44] The report accuses the Singham Network of stoking unrest at the grassroot level and amplifying the voice of SID4P and says that at least one member of SID4P has ties to extremist groups with anti-American, anti-Israel, and anti-Jewish agendas. [44]
Through its agents in America, the PRC has financed a number of political candidates. Katrina Leung, a Chinese spy, contributed $10,000 to the campaign of Richard Riordan, the former mayor of Los Angeles. When he lost his primary to Bill Simon Jr., Leung contributed $4,200 to Simon's campaign. At the direction of her Chinese handlers, Leung also contributed to the 1992 campaign of George H. W. Bush. It is estimated that Leung donated around $27,000 to politicians in the 1990s on behalf of the PRC. [45]
A 2012 report by the Government Accountability Institute [46] cites other examples: It was discovered that officers from the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C. "sought to direct contributions from foreign sources to the Democratic National Committee before the 1996 presidential campaign." [47] While these allegations have been denied by the PRC, "Secret communications between Beijing and the Chinese Embassy in Washington establish that the influence-buying plan was 'government sanctioned...'" [48]
In 1996, People's Liberation Army intelligence officer Gen. Ji Shengde provided Johnny Chung, a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee, with $300,000 to donate towards President Bill Clinton's reelection. Chung visited the White House over fifty times during the 1996 presidential campaign, and was responsible for over $400,000 of contributions to the DNC. [49]
In September 2022, Meta Platforms removed fake accounts linked to a China-based influence operation ahead of the 2022 United States elections. [50] [51] In the run-up to the 2024 United States elections, the Ministry of Public Security's Spamouflage influence operation was identified as having used fake social media accounts in an attempt to amplify divisions in US society. [52]
During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, state news agency Xinhua and other Chinese state media outlets paid for digital ads on Facebook amplifying pro-Kremlin disinformation and propaganda after Meta Platforms banned Russian state media advertisement buys. [53] [54] [55] [56] In March 2022, China Global Television Network repeated unsubstantiated Russian claims of biological weapons labs in Ukraine. [57] [58] [59] The CCP-owned tabloid Global Times also echoed Russian state media claims that the Bucha massacre was staged. [60]
The Times of India reported that during the 2017 Doklam standoff China used information operations against India. [61]
In 2020, Facebook took down a network of inauthentic accounts that, according to Graphika, were attributed to individuals in China. The information campaign focused on politics in Southeast Asia and was dubbed "Operation Naval Gazing" by security researchers. [62] [63]
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 traditional targets such as Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, Guo Wengui, and Taiwan. [64] [65] Twitter said that the accounts had pushed deceptive narratives and spread propaganda. [66]
In 2020 Google removed over 2,500 YouTube accounts linked to China. Most of them uploaded spam-like content unrelated to politics, but a subset posted content primarily in Chinese about COVID-19 and racial protests in the United States. [67] [68]
The Republic of China Armed Forces are the armed forces of the Republic of China (ROC), which once ruled Mainland China and is now currently restricted to its territorial jurisdictions of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu Islands. They consist of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Military Police Force. The military is under the civilian control of the Ministry of National Defense, a cabinet-level agency overseen by the Legislative Yuan.
The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang-led government of the Republic of China and the forces of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), with armed conflict continuing intermittently from 1 August 1927 until Communist victory resulted in their total control over mainland China on 7 December 1949.
The People's Liberation Army (PLA) is the military of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People's Republic of China (PRC). It consists of four services—Ground Force, Navy, Air Force, and Rocket Force—and four arms—Aerospace Force, Cyberspace Force, Information Support Force, and Joint Logistics Support Force. It is led by the Central Military Commission (CMC) with its chairman as commander-in-chief.
Disinformation is misleading content deliberately spread to deceive people, or to secure economic or political gain and which may cause public harm. Disinformation is an orchestrated adversarial activity in which actors employ strategic deceptions and media manipulation tactics to advance political, military, or commercial goals. Disinformation is implemented through attacks that "weaponize multiple rhetorical strategies and forms of knowing—including not only falsehoods but also truths, half-truths, and value judgements—to exploit and amplify culture wars and other identity-driven controversies."
Information warfare (IW) is the battlespace use and management of information and communication technology (ICT) in pursuit of a competitive advantage over an opponent. It is different from cyberwarfare that attacks computers, software, and command control systems. Information warfare is the manipulation of information trusted by a target without the target's awareness so that the target will make decisions against their interest but in the interest of the one conducting information warfare. As a result, it is not clear when information warfare begins, ends, and how strong or destructive it is.
Psychological warfare (PSYWAR), or the basic aspects of modern psychological operations (PsyOp), has been known by many other names or terms, including Military Information Support Operations (MISO), Psy Ops, political warfare, "Hearts and Minds", and propaganda. The term is used "to denote any action which is practiced mainly by psychological methods with the aim of evoking a planned psychological reaction in other people".
As a result of the surrender and occupation of Japan at the end of World War II, the islands of Taiwan and Penghu were placed under the governance of the Republic of China (ROC), ruled by the Kuomintang (KMT), on 25 October 1945. Following the February 28 massacre in 1947, martial law was declared in 1949 by the Governor of Taiwan, Chen Cheng, and the ROC Ministry of National Defense. Following the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the ROC government retreated from the mainland as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China. The KMT retreated to Taiwan and declared Taipei the temporary capital of the ROC. For many years, the ROC and PRC each continued to claim in the diplomatic arena to be the sole legitimate government of "China". In 1971, the United Nations expelled the ROC and replaced it with the PRC.
Unrestricted Warfare: Two Air Force Senior Colonels on Scenarios for War and the Operational Art in an Era of Globalization is a book on military strategy written in 1999 by two colonels in the People's Liberation Army (PLA), Qiao Liang (乔良) and Wang Xiangsui (王湘穗). Its primary concern is how a nation such as China can defeat a technologically superior opponent through a variety of means. Rather than focusing on direct military confrontation, this book instead examines a variety of other means such as political warfare. Such means include using legal tools and economic means as leverage over one's opponent and circumvent the need for direct military action.
Cross-strait relations are the political and economic relations between China and Taiwan across the Taiwan Strait. Due to the existing controversy over the status of Taiwan and the Chinese legitimacy question, they are also not defined as diplomatic relations by either side.
The history of the People's Liberation Army began in 1927 with the start of the Chinese Civil War and spans to the present, having developed from a peasant guerrilla force into the largest armed force in the world.
The Battle of the Yijiangshan Islands occurred during the First Taiwan Strait Crisis in January 1955 when the People's Republic China (PRC) attacked and captured the islands from the Republic of China (ROC). The loss of the Yijiangshans forced the ROC to abandon the Dachen Islands to the PRC. The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) considers the battle as its first joint operation.
Irregular warfare (IW) is defined in United States joint doctrine as "a violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant populations" and in U.S. law as "Department of Defense activities not involving armed conflict that support predetermined United States policy and military objectives conducted by, with, and through regular forces, irregular forces, groups, and individuals." In practice, control of institutions and infrastructure is also important. Concepts associated with irregular warfare are older than the term itself.
Cyberwarfare by China is the aggregate of cyberattacks attributed to the organs of the People's Republic of China and various related advanced persistent threat (APT) groups.
The Academy of Military Sciences is the highest-level research institute of the People's Liberation Army (PLA). It is headquartered in Beijing. The academy was founded in March 1958 and as of 2002, its staff included approximately 500 researchers, making it the largest research institution in the PLA. Its president is General Yang Xuejun while Lt. General Fang Xiang is the political commissar.
Political warfare is the use of hostile political means to compel an opponent to do one's will. The term political describes the calculated interaction between a government and a target audience, including another state's government, military, and/or general population. Governments use a variety of techniques to coerce certain actions, thereby gaining relative advantage over an opponent. The techniques include propaganda and psychological operations ("PsyOps"), which service national and military objectives respectively. Propaganda has many aspects and a hostile and coercive political purpose. Psychological operations are for strategic and tactical military objectives and may be intended for hostile military and civilian populations.
The Fourth Department (4PLA) of the Chinese People's Liberation Army General Staff Department (GSD) is also known as the Electronic Countermeasures and Radar Department. It was charged with the Chinese People's Liberation Army's offensive electronic warfare (EW) and information warfare (IW) missions, to include offensive cyber operations. In 2016, its functions were transferred to the Network Systems Department of the PLA Strategic Support Force.
The People's Liberation Army Strategic Support Force was a service branch of the People's Liberation Army that existed from December 2015 to April 2024.
The China Association for International Friendly Contact (CAIFC) is a united front organization subordinate to the Liaison Bureau of the Political Work Department of the Central Military Commission. CAIFC was founded in 1984 and is active in overseas influence operations to promote the interests of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
"Three warfares" is an official political and information non-kinetic warfare strategy of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) employing media or public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, and legal warfare. Promulgated as work regulations, the "three warfares" was set forth in the amended Political Work Regulations of the PLA in 2003.
The Military Intelligence Bureau is an intelligence agency directly under the General Staff Headquarters of the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of China. Its main task is to collect information about China's political and military activities, and it is also the only espionage operative unit of Taiwan.
Conclusively attributing inauthentic networks of social media accounts to Chinese party-state actors is exceedingly difficult, even when they are clearly promoting Beijing's preferred narratives or specific state-produced content.
As the messages have sown confusion, it has been difficult to trace their true origins or pin down all the ways in which they have been amplified.