By Greg Austin
The newest element in military strategy in China’s most recent defense white paper is the emphasis on cyber power.
The release on last Tuesday of China’s Military Strategy fleshes out for the first time the vision its leadership, newly installed only two and a half years ago, has for the development and use of the country’s military power.
Earlier glimpses were provided in the military sections of the 60-point reform manifesto of November 2013, the declaration in February last year that China would do everything necessary to become a cyber power, and the second-draft National Security Law released earlier this month.
The recent document is highly noteworthy on several levels.
In the very first sentence after the preface, the 2015 strategy puts the “information society” (cyber power) as the departure point of international security.
It paints a new and expansive view of China’s maritime power, while signalling a shake-up of some traditional combat structures for the armed forces. The document is unusually sharp in some of its formulations, especially on relations between the Communist Party and the armed forces. Above all, the strategy calls for a balancing between “rights protection” (in maritime disputes and elsewhere) and “stability maintenance.”
Read the full story at The Diplomat