Despite horrendous conditions, a decent audience braved the weather on Tuesday evening, 21 April, to hear Dr Greg Austin, visiting professor at UNSW (Canberra)’s Australian Centre for Cyber Security, talk at Glover Cottages about China’s cyber policy.

Greg had recently published a book outlining several strands of a complex, even contradictory Chinese cyber policy. On the one hand, China’s goal was to transform China into an ‘informatised society’. It was already the world’s largest manufacturer of personal computers, and at the forefront of world research in some small areas – such as a demonstrated capacity to teleport quantum properties between remote particles. It also had the world’s fastest super computer. On the other hand, China’s leaders were conflicted: a fully computer-literate society would degrade their authority over the masses. Defence applications of cyber technology would also inhibit the importation of foreign cyber technology. The United State was concerned about Chinese cyber espionage, and had already blocked export to China of several categories of computer chips. But China could not become a world leader in cyber power without practising ethical values – mainly the  freedom and protection of information exchange. Nor could it do so without substantial foreign investment in cyber technology. Its leaders were also concerned about a massive brain drain – only 25% of Chinese studying in the US came back to China, most of its good brains remained there. Greg concluded his address by observing that China’s leaders were on the horns of one of the biggest dilemmas in China’s  modern history: they wanted information democracy, but also to preserve dictatorial powers; they wanted to promote international peace through cyber applications, yet needed to continue to apply cyber technology for defence; they were deeply involved in cyber espionage and a cyber arms race. The most likely probability in this complex mix was that Chinese leaders would prove themselves incapable of resisting the computer-driven spread of information technology.

Summary by Richard Broinowski

Powerpoint presentation by Dr Greg Austin  Greg Austin-Cyber Policy in China presentation

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