By Zhong Sheng
Some U.S. politicians have really racked their brains to trump up charges against China. Recently, they once again framed China by saying the country hacked U.S. computers and stole U.S. trade secrets, staging a farce with new wording.
The large-scale and organized cyber espionage activities conducted by relevant U.S. departments on foreign governments, enterprises and individuals are not a secret at all, making Uncle Sam the largest empire of hackers – a globally recognized fact.
However, these politicians are disguising the U.S. as a victim of cyber-attacks, trying to cover up its own misdeeds by shifting the blame. How laughable it is!
The “achievements” made by the U.S. in cyber theft have no parallel in the whole world.
Edward Snowden revealed that the notorious PRISM surveillance program of the National Security Agency (NSA) of the U.S. was running 24 hours a day for unauthorized monitoring of emails and social media communication. Even some state leaders and heads of international organizations had long been secretly monitored by U.S. intelligence agencies.
In 2017, WikiLeaks disclosed nearly 9,000 confidential documents, revealing that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), with its unparalleled hacking capability, hacked into various smart devices including cellphones, computers, and smart TVs.
According to reports by Western media, 90 percent of the world’s communication was under U.S. surveillance.
What’s worth more attention is that the U.S. military and intelligence agencies are building the world’s largest cyber arsenal that is as deadly as nuclear weapons, triggering a global cyber arms race.
In 2009, the U.S. military established the U.S. Cyber Command, and elevated it to the 10th unified combatant command of the country in 2017.
Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, revealed that the U.S. has developed as many as 2,000 types of cyber-weapons, making it the No.1 cyber weapon producer in the world.
In addition, information disclosed by cyber security organizations indicated that the two advanced persistent threats (APTs) groups, Equation and Project Sauron, which are considered to be at Thanos level in the industry, are both supported by NSA behind the scene.
As indicated by a recent annual report on China’s cyber security published by China’s National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team (CNCERT), most of the cyber-attacks China received were from the U.S., and the number kept growing.
In 2018, 3,325 IP addresses in the U.S., up 43 percent from 2017, planted Trojans in 3,607 websites on the Chinese mainland.
Cyber theft and hacker attack are just all-too-common practices of the U.S., as substantial evidences suggest.
Who on earth is launching frequent cyber-attacks and stealing secrets around the globe? Who is the first opening the “Pandora’s box” of enhancing cyber warfare capabilities? Facts speak louder than words, and the truth is self-evident.
As it is written in ancient Chinese political and philosophical text Guanzi, “Nothing is more beneficial than stability, and nothing is more detrimental than chaos.” Cyber security concerns the common interests of various countries and needs to be jointly safeguarded by the international community.
China has a consistent and clear stance on cyber security. Chinese President Xi Jinping has stressed on many occasions that both commercial cyber theft and hacking against government networks are crimes that must be punished in accordance with law and relevant international treaties.
As a firm defender of cyber security, China has never engaged in any form of cyber theft or supported anyone in stealing trade secrets.
China is also an active advocate for international cooperation on cyber security. The country has proposed four principles that must be upheld in order to make progress in the transformation of the global Internet governance system, put forward five proposals with an aim of jointly building a community of shared future in cyberspace, and actively carried out international cooperation on cyber security via bilateral and multilateral channels.
In recent years, China has jointly established specialized dialogue mechanisms with the U.S., the UK, and the European Union (EU) to boost cyber security cooperation, and put forward constructive proposals for promoting international cooperation on cyberspace through multilateral mechanisms including the UN and Group of 20 (G20).
The absurd argument of the so-called “cyber theft” cooked up by U.S. politicians to smear China revealed their evil intentions. However, such arguments, no matter how they are reworded or disguised, cannot withstand even a single blow in the face of irrefutable facts and would only serve as a butt of a joke for the international community.
(Zhong Sheng is a pen name often used by People’s Daily to express its views on foreign policy.)
