Cyber Threats and Authoritarian Regimes: Challenges to Defending Cybersecurity

The disruptive and damaging cyber threats and attacks carried out by authoritarian regimes and their proxies toward both domestic and international entities is a long-standing issue, although one that has become increasingly prominent in recent years (e.g., Bradshaw & Howard, Reference Bradshaw and Howard2019; Morgan, Reference Morgan2018; Schünemann, Reference Schünemann, Cavelty and Wenger2022; Woolley & Howard, Reference Woolley and Howard2017). Scholars have examined diverse cyber threats and attacks ranging from, for instance, internet shutdowns (e.g., Majeed, Reference Majeed2022; Mare, Reference Mare2020) to opinion manipulation (e.g., Alyukov, Reference Alyukov2022; Bradshaw & Howard, Reference Woolley and Howard2017; King, Pan, & Roberts, Reference King, Pan and Roberts2017), from content blockage and filtering (e.g., Greitens, Reference Greitens2013; Roberts, Reference Roberts2018; Ververis, Marguel, & Fabian, Reference Ververis, Marguel and Fabian2020) to fake news and disinformation campaigns (e.g., Abrahams & Leber, Reference Abrahams and Leber2021; Jones, Reference Jones2022). As authoritarian regimes are actively shaping cyberspace at home and on the global stage to their own strategic advantage, understanding their cyber threats not only explains their resilience but, more importantly, monitors their capacity for resurgence (Deibert, Reference Deibert2015, p. 64, emphasis as in original) and subsequent challenges to cybersecurity.

Among authoritarian countries, China’s cyber or internet policies and threats have attracted significant attention, especially in recent years (e.g., Hung & Hung, Reference Hung and Hung2022; Lindsay, Cheung, & Reveron, Reference Lindsay, Cheung and Reveron2015; Myers & Mozur, Reference Myers and Mozur2019; Shackelford et al., Reference Shackelford, Raymond, Stemler and Loyle2020). Without denying their contributions, extant scholarship still has not captured the full gamut of cyber policies and politics that could generate threats to democracies. More specifically, existing studies have either presented the overall picture of internet governance and policies in China (e.g., Miao, Jiang, & Pang, Reference Miao, Jiang and Pang2021; F. Yang & Mueller, Reference Yang and Mueller2014) or elaborated on individual policies and regulations that cater to specific subject matter (e.g., Lindsay, Cheung, & Reveron, Reference Lindsay, Cheung and Reveron2015; Qi, Shao, & Zheng, Reference Qi, Shao and Zheng2018). Few studies, however, have analyzed the media narratives and discourses of those policies and regulations that cater to specific subject matter and that bring about a broader influence on society beyond the policy domain. To fill this gap, this chapter tracks the media narrative and discourse centered on the term “cybersecurity” to uncover how China, “a latecomer on the global cybersecurity scene” (Qi, Shao, & Zheng, Reference Qi, Shao and Zheng2018, p. 1343), has oriented the domestic discursive constructions of cybersecurity toward the perceived national context of the audience.

In the following sections, I first present a general review of studies on China’s internet policies. Second, I explain “domestication” (Clausen, Reference Clausen2004) as the theoretical framework to scrutinize the media narrative of cybersecurity in China’s internet policy. The third section presents the method for data collection and computer-assisted semantic network analysis as the analytical strategy. In the fourth section, the analysis and discussion explain how the discourse on cybersecurity in media coverage legitimizes the regime’s role in enacting internet policy, including its control over the free flow of information, while accusing democracies of cyberattacks. The chapter concludes with implications for the domestication of cybersecurity and challenges to cybersecurity.

Literature Review

Since China established its connection to the internet in 1994, internet policies have become one of the key topics in the debate on the transformation created by the internet to (the authoritarian) China (e.g., Taubman, Reference Taubman1998; Wu, Reference Wu1996). Despite the then popular utopian vision of the internet (or cyberspace) as a facilitator of a radically democratic form of participation from its inception (Barlow, Reference Barlow2019), several scholars remind us that from the beginning of its connection with the internet, the party-state in China was engaged in “a multipronged effort” (Taubman, Reference Taubman1998, p. 267) with resources and regulations to prevent the internet from being “a disruptive force in the domestic area” (Taubman, Reference Taubman1998, p. 268), with the mostly well-known tactic being to build a self-contained intranet national network with a firewall (Barme & Ye, Reference Barme and Ye1997; Griffiths, Reference Griffiths2021).

Generally speaking, extant scholarship has investigated China’s internet policies and politics from both a top-down and a bottom-up approach. The top-down approach encompasses macro-level policy, as well as the legal and technological aspects of internet control, surveillance, and censorship (e.g., Deibert, Reference Deibert2002; MacKinnon, Reference MacKinnon2009; Roberts, Reference Roberts2018; Xiaoming, Zhang, & Yu, Reference Xiaoming, Zhang and Yu1996). For instance, some studies have scrutinized regulatory control (e.g., Esarey & Kluver, Reference Esarey and Kluver2014; MacKinnon, Reference MacKinnon2008, Reference MacKinnon2009; Pan, Reference Pan2017), while others have looked at the technical infrastructure of the “Great Firewall of China” (Barme & Ye, Reference Barme and Ye1997), such as techniques of filtering, domain name system poisoning, and virtual private network blocking (e.g., Clayton, Murdoch, & Watson, Reference Clayton, Murdoch and Watson2007; Deibert et al., Reference Deibert, Palfrey, Rohozinski and Zittrain2008; Lowe, Winters, & Marcus, Reference Lowe, Winters and Marcus2007; for a review, see, e.g., Keremoğlu & Weidmann, Reference Keremoğlu and Weidmann2020). Some, like Pan (Reference Pan2017), have revealed how the dominance of domestic internet platforms that “comply with China’s censorship requirements” in the market allows “the Chinese regime to engage in content censorship that quickly removes online content pertaining to collective action while retaining a great deal of information, including criticisms of the government, online” (p. 182; see also, e.g., Weber & Jia, Reference Weber and Jia2007). Others, such as Liang and Lu (Reference Liang and Lu2010), with their term “multidimensional regulatory system,” have offered a holistic view to describe multiple agencies with various laws and regulations to establish comprehensive control over the infrastructure and commercial and social use of the internet in China.

The bottom-up approach, which can mostly be seen in studies on internet control and censorship, involves understanding the mechanisms behind censorship by analyzing which elements are censored or not (e.g., Bamman, O’Connor, & Smith, Reference Bamman, O’Connor and Smith2012; Crandall et al., Reference Crandall, Crete-Nishihata, Knockel, McKune, Senft and Tseng2013; King, Pan, & Roberts, Reference King, Pan and Roberts2013, Reference King, Pan and Roberts2017; Liu & Zhao, Reference Liu and Zhao2021; Qin, Strömberg, & Wu, Reference Qin, Strömberg and Wu2017). In bottom-up studies, large-scale datasets are harvested through application programming interfaces and analyzed via complex computational and statistical approaches to depict nuanced pictures of how the control, surveillance, manipulation, and censorship program is implemented on the ground (e.g., King, Pan, & Roberts, Reference King, Pan and Roberts2013, Reference King, Pan and Roberts2017; Liu & Zhao, Reference Liu and Zhao2021; Lu & Pan, Reference Lu and Pan2021; Roberts, Reference Roberts2018). Yet, without denying its significance, the bottom-up approach suffers from the lack of a holistic view of policies, as well as the discourse and narratives revolving around these policies, that would better draw a full picture of the evolving internet politics in China.

In recent years, more and more studies have looked beyond policy as relatively stable to track a combination of policy change and policy stability in the internet policies, given the complexity of “allowing access and giving a fair amount of freedom to non-political and less-political information exchange in this country … [while] resisting with firewall solutions and regulations” (Zhang, Reference Zhang2006, p. 285) in China. F. Yang and Mueller (Reference Yang and Mueller2014), for example, used the content analysis approach with the laws and regulations on internet governance between 1994 and 2012 to track how these policies changed over time, identify different policymaking agencies, and ascertain various scopes of application and topical focuses for these policies. Among the many issues and themes, content regulation and cybersecurity have occupied significant and substantial parts of internet policies (57 percent and 41 percent, respectively, see F. Yang & Mueller, Reference Yang and Mueller2014, p. 458). Similarly, the study by Miao, Jiang, and Pang (Reference Miao, Jiang and Pang2021, p. 2021) on Chinese internet policies issued between 1994 and 2017 uncovered the paramount concern over cybersecurity that exemplifies the state’s “deep-seated insecurity over regime stability” in numerous internet regulations. Still, in comparison to the extensive scholarship on content regulation and moderation in China, as discussed earlier, the topic of cybersecurity seems to be relatively understudied, despite its emerging visibility in recent years (but see Lindsay, Cheung, & Reveron, Reference Lindsay, Cheung and Reveron2015; Mueller, Reference Mueller, Deibert, Palfrey, Rohozinski and Zittrain2011). This chapter aims to enrich the discussion with the concept of “domestication.”

Domestication: National Lens on Cross-border Events and Beyond

A key concept in journalistic practice, domestication (Gurevitch, Levy, & Roeh, Reference Gurevitch, Levy, Roeh, Dahlgren and Sparks1993) refers to the framing of foreign or international events to render them comprehensible, compatible, appealing, and relevant to national or local audiences (e.g., Alasuutari, Qadir, & Creutz, Reference Alasuutari, Qadir and Creutz2013; Clausen, Reference Clausen2004; Huiberts & Joye, Reference Huiberts and Joye2018). The fundamental idea, as Gurevitch, Levy, and Roeh (Reference Gurevitch, Levy, Roeh, Dahlgren and Sparks1993) explain, is that “the ‘same’ events are told in divergent ways, geared to the social and political frameworks and sensibilities of diverse domestic audiences” (p. 217, emphasis added). A substantial amount of work has been conducted to interrogate different discursively adaptive ways in which cross-border news is domesticated to make it suited for different audiences nationally and locally (e.g., Clausen, Reference Clausen2004; Joye, Reference Joye2015; Lee, Chan, & Zhou, Reference Lee, Chan and Zhou2011). Olausson (Reference Olausson2014) further differentiates three discursive modes of domestication: “(1) introverted domestication, which disconnects the domestic from the global; (2) extroverted domestication, which interconnects the domestic and the global; and (3) counter-domestication, a de-territorialized mode of reporting that lacks any domestic epicenter” (p. 715). In short, domestication entails a deliberate choice in how one talks about and understands the world.

The research on domestication beyond cross-border events has been expanded by a growing body of studies. Domestication as the process of discursive appropriation and transformation occurs not only in the genre of cross-border news, which has been extensively studied, but also in other genres, such as entertainment (Adamu, Reference Adamu2010), technology (Matassi, Boczkowski, & Mitchelstein, Reference Matassi, Boczkowski and Mitchelstein2019), education (Alasuutari & Alasuutari, Reference Alasuutari and Alasuutari2012), popular culture (H. Fu, Li, & Lee, Reference Fu, Li and Lee2023), and the implementation of exogenous policy (Alasuutari, Reference Alasuutari2009). H. Fu, Li, and Lee (Reference Fu, Li and Lee2023), for instance, expand the term to examine the process “in which a non-native cultural artifact or practice becomes embedded in and tamed by a techno-cultural arena in a receiver country” (p. 77). In other words, broadly speaking, domestication research should pay attention to the strategies that could generate resonance with national or local audiences and contexts beyond the genre of foreign news. By doing so, domestication not only makes events and artifacts meaningful for the domestic audience but it could also be utilized by various actors to reinforce “nation-state discourse and identity” (Olausson, Reference Olausson2014, p. 711).

Following this argument, in this study, we ask the following research question: How does news coverage domesticate “cybersecurity” in internet regulations and policies in China?

Methods

To answer the research question, this study explored the semantic meaning in media narratives and frames as units of analysis. Gamson and Modigliani (Reference Gamson and Modigliani1989) refer to such narratives and frames as “media packages” – that is, as “interpretive packages that give meaning to an issue” (p. 3). Media frames denote structured semantic representations of associated contextual and cultural information (Werner & Cornelissen, Reference Werner and Cornelissen2014). Examining media frames detects the background structure of a shared reality and identifies “the role of political culture and practices in stabilizing particular imaginaries” (Jasanoff & Kim, Reference Jasanoff and Kim2009, p. 121). Given the idea of “associative framing” (Ruigrok & van Atteveldt, Reference Ruigrok and van Atteveldt2007, p. 72), this study operationalizes media narratives and frames as complex patterns of associations between different concepts, with the main associations in a message being its “central organizing idea” (Gamson & Modigliani, Reference Gamson and Modigliani1989, p. 3). In other words, media narratives and frames involve not only the selection of concepts but also their mutual associations that stand for schemata of interpretation. Such associative framings and narratives – recognized as domestication, or discursive appropriation and transformation to local context – are therefore examined through semantic networks derived from the occurrences and co-occurrences of concepts.

Mapping Out Semantic Networks about “Cybersecurity” in News Narratives

There are 41,053 words and 578,008 edges in the whole news articles’ semantic network. The semantic networks for Chinese news articles were visualized using Gephi (Bastian, Heymann, & Jacomy, Reference Bastian, Heymann and Jacomy2009). We then filtered the ego-network for the term “cybersecurity” that consists of 990 words (2.4 percent of the total number of words) and 84,801 edges (14.7 percent of the total number of edges) (Figure 12.1). We ran the average degree to calculate the node strength for each word, which is determined as the number of edges that are incident on that node; the average degree (85.658) refers to the average number of edges per node. Each node represents a word, and the size of the label indicates the node strength, which is calculated by summing the weights of the edges belonging to the node. Edges are undirected and weighted. The modularity partition algorithm suggested that the network could be divided into eight communities, with a modularity score of 0.231.

Figure 12.1 Ego-network of cybersecurity in news coverage in the Chinese mainland, 2017–2023

We identified topics for each word community by their top words and inductively summarized those topics into different themes. Six main clusters could be identified from the semantic network, in ranking order: control and contestation, development and collaboration, personal information, infrastructure, governing actors, and mass media. Figure 12.1 presents the themes and top words for the semantic networks.

Control and contestation (Figure 12.2) is the largest cluster (283 nodes, or 28.6 percent of the total words) in the semantic network. Within the cluster, the word “cybersecurity (网络安全)” is associated with “中国 (China),” “国家nation(al),” “安全 (security),” and “主权 (sovereignty).” Terms such as “党 (the CPC, i.e., the Communist Party of China),” “习近平(Xi Jinping),” “法治 (rule of law),” “领导 (leadership),” “统一 (unity),” “意识形态 (ideology),” and “防火墙 (firewall)” encapsulate control over cybersecurity. The contestation of the term “cybersecurity” is specifically delineated through the use of words such as “保障 (safeguard),” “风险 (risk),” “维护 (maintain),” “防控 (prevention and control),” “挑战 (challenge),” “破坏(undermine),” and “威胁 (threat).” Threats to cybersecurity are epitomized through specific terms such as “恐怖主义 (terrorism),” “反恐 (anti-terrorism),” and “反间谍(counterintelligence).” Notably, this cluster is the only one that includes foreign entities, such as “美国 (the USA),” “欧盟 (European Union),” “美方 (the US),” “英国 (Britain),” “俄罗斯 (Russia),” and “乌克兰 (Ukraine).”

Figure 12.2 Control and contestation cluster

The second largest cluster, development and collaboration (Figure 12.3), involves 258 nodes (or 26.1 percent of the total words) that address cybersecurity in concert with economic development, technological innovation, and international collaboration. This cluster involves key terms related to the theme of development, such as “发展 (development),” “加强 (strengthen),” “创新 (innovation),” “推进 (improve),” and “完善 (enhancement),” while specifying different “domains (领域),” including “经济 (economy),” “科技 (technology),” “产业 (industry),” “政策 (policy),” and “战略 (strategy).” It also contains words describing the scope of “collaboration (合作)” in cybersecurity, such as “国际 (international),” “全球 (global),” “世界 (world),” “各国 (different countries),” “地区 (regional),” and “双方 (bilateral).”

Figure 12.3 Development and collaboration cluster

Next is the personal information cluster (Figure 12.4), with 246 nodes (or 24.8 percent of the total words), which in essence discusses issues related to personal “data (数据)” in business. Terms such as “企业 (enterprise),” “平台 (platform),” “政府 (government),” “法律 (law),” “用户 (user),” “行业 (industry),” “公司 (company),” “未成年人 (juvenile),” “个人 (individual),” and “消费者 (consumer)” allude to various actors involved in the processes of, for instance, “管理 (manag[ing]),” “保护 (protect[ing]),” “规范 (standardiz[ing]),” and “监管 (supervis[ing]).”

Figure 12.4 Personal information cluster

Following the personal information cluster, the infrastructure cluster (Figure 12.5), with 109 nodes (16.5 percent of the total words), addresses aspects of technological and infrastructural applications in cybersecurity with keywords such as “建设 (construction),” “服务 (service),” “技术 (technology),” “系统 (system),” “人工智能 (AI),” “智能 (intelligence),” “基础设置 (infrastructure),” and “智慧 (smart).”

Figure 12.5 Infrastructure cluster

The governing actors cluster (Figure 12.6) consists of fifty-five nodes (5.6 percent of the total words) that allow us to pin down concrete agencies involved in cybersecurity issues. More specifically, the included words identify the national- and local-level actors and agencies that handle cybersecurity, including, for instance, “中央 (central government)”; different levels of “人民政府 (people’s government[s]),” “有限公司 (Company Limited),” “公安部 (Ministry of Public Security),” and “网信(办) ([office of ] Cyberspace Affairs Commission)”; municipal- and provincial-level public security bureau such as the “北京市公安局 (Beijing public security bureau)” and “信息化(办) ([office of] informationalization)”; and public health agencies (“卫生 [public health]” and “健康 [health]”). Most importantly, a critical group of governing actors are the various levels and divisions of party organizations, such as the “省委 (provincial CPC committee),” “市委 (municipal CPC committee),” “书记 (party secretary),” and “宣传部 (propaganda department),” to mention just a few. In other words, these terms signify the essential role of the CPC as well as its in-depth, multidimensional control in the governing of cybersecurity.

Figure 12.6 Governing actors cluster

The three remaining clusters (Figure 12.7), with a total of thirty-seven nodes (3.7 percent of words), involve words that narrate the relationship between news industries and cybersecurity, as demonstrated in terms such as “媒体 (media),” “要闻 (hard news),” and the names of news organizations, including “新华社 (Xinhua News Agency),” “人民日报 (People’s Daily),” “新京报 (Beijing News),” “环球时报 (Global Times),” and “南方都市报 (Southern Metropolis Daily).”

Figure 12.7 Mass media cluster

Conclusion

This chapter enriches extant scholarship on internet governance and policies by focusing on media narratives on cybersecurity in authoritarian China. It delineates the specific way in which the term cybersecurity has been implicated and domesticated in local politics since the enactment of the Cybersecurity Law in 2017. The findings indicate that, although China was initially “a latecomer on the global cybersecurity scene” (Qi, Shao, & Zheng, Reference Qi, Shao and Zheng2018, p. 1343), the regime has strategically crafted and propagated cybersecurity narratives to resonate ideologically with the domestic audience, notably by portraying democracies as sources of cyber threats, including cyberterrorism. This domestic framing of cybersecurity serves to reinforce the CPC’s control over the internet and engenders anti-Western and anti-democratic sentiment. This study highlights at least two further implications. First, the concept of domestication could reconcile the false binary between inward- and outward-focused internet policies (e.g., X. Fu, Woo, & Hou, Reference Fu, Woo and Hou2016), recognizing their interdependent nature as shaped by domestic narratives. Second, this lens reveals a significant shift in discourse over a decade, from sporadic mentions of cyber warfare (Cai & Dati, Reference Cai and Dati2015) to positioning cybersecurity as a critical issue that, if mismanaged, poses a threat to both national security and internal stability, including terrorism and territorial disputes in domestic Chinese politics. Recognizing this evolution is essential for a comprehensive understanding of China’s ascent and its approach to global cyber governance.