The people's Republic of China - The emerging cyberpower

Abstract

The People's Republic of China (PRC) has a long tradition on military strategy. In the end of the 20 th century this was one of the first nations to prepare itself for the new emerging concept of war that includes the combat in cyberspace, both with the intention to obtain privileged information (espionage), to reduce the enemy attack and/or military capability or even to create casualties. This paper presents an overview on the known facts on this issue, concluding on an urgent need to improve the security technologies and policies of the digital systems used by the governments, namely in what concerns to authentication processes and the need for occidental countries to prepare personnel with knowledge on the culture, on the language and on the thought of the PRC, so that they can be ready for the next steps of this (re)emerging nation. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.