Reality of the virtual world
By Tang Lan (China Daily) Updated: 2011-07-16 07:57China and US should be open with each other, deepen mutual trust and cooperate in the peaceful use of cyberspace
International cooperation is the only way we can ensure a secure and reliable cyberspace. But the international community has not made a breakthrough in this regard because of lack of consensus at two levels, one is specific response, the other is strategy.
Specific response includes cyber technologies, laws and mechanisms, and strategy refers to different aspirations, ideas, views, and understanding of different countries' development levels and security needs, openness and governance, as well as peace and war of and in cyberspace.
The problems that need specific response are temporary, while the crux of torpid international cooperation in cyberspace lies in the differences over strategic levels.
The first obstacle is the difference in the definition of the threat to networks, which is a prerequisite for countries to enact cyberspace policies and for the international community to reach a consensus on how to counter cyberspace challenges.
Most countries, including the United States, acknowledge that rampant cybercrime is a major threat to business, public safety and national security. According to a British government report issued in February, cybercrime costs the UK billions of pounds a year. Cybercrime causes a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars for other countries, including the US, China, Germany and Japan, too.
To prevent such losses, the European Union adopted the Convention on Cybercrime in 2001, the United Nations has set up a panel of experts to fight cybercrime, and many countries have strengthened their legislation and law enforcement agencies, and agreed to bilateral and/or multilateral judicial cooperation.
But a "noise" of a different kind has also been raised. The US and some other countries now consider sovereign states as the biggest threats to their networks' security and believe that some of them are capable of conducting cyber espionage and warfare and even employing "proxies" to launch cyber-attacks. The Western media, on their part, have hyped the threat of potential cyber adversaries and the concept of "cyber warfare".
Based on this absurd premise, the US has been upgrading its cyber capabilities and setting up a "cyber army". It seems eager to find a legal basis to launch "cyber warfare" internationally and apply the existing international laws of war and armed conflicts to cyberspace and categorize cyber-attacks as acts of war. Such practices will only intensify the existing differences among countries and fuel the "arms race" in cyberspace.
The second obstruction is the dispute over ideology. Cyberspace is a virtual world, in which the political and social environment, growth modes and even people's lives change dramatically. Freedom and openness are the Internet's greatest value. But freedom to access the Internet and express views cannot be used as an excuse to pin a value label on cyberspace.
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