Information Controls Global Media Influence And Cyber Warfare Strategy

The first panel will address censorship and Internet controls within China. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) relies on what is known as the Great Firewall, an assortment of sophisticated electronic censorship and surveillance mechanisms, to monitor online activity within China's borders. It prevents web users within China from accessing foreign ideas, which the Party regards as an ideological threat. It also allows the CCP to maintain effective control over the news by blocking sensitive stories. The second panel will focus on Beijing's efforts to manipulate global coverage of China, including its attempts to increase its own soft power by gaining influence over the American film industry. The Chinese leadership sees American soft power as a major obstacle to China's rise. To counter this aspect of "soft power," the CCP seeks not only to prohibit negative portrayals of China in popular culture but also to curtail positive depictions of the United States while incentivizing Hollywood to portray China positively. Acquisitions by Chinese companies of cornerstone companies in the U.S. film industry have economic and security implications for the United States. We will also hear about the current situation for journalists in China, both foreign and Chinese, who have in recent years been subjected to markedly increased harassment by the Chinese government. The third panel today will address Beijing's views on norms in cyberspace and China's cyber warfare strategy. The Chinese government advocates for a concept known as "Internet sovereignty" in which countries have the right to control their part of cyberspace. And it also asserts that Internet governance should be the purview of national governments and no other actors, which really contrasts with the "multi-stakeholder" model that the United States and certainly others in Europe currently use and is in place. And it would mean that the Internet is no longer a virtual common. The Chinese government has declared that cyberspace and space are now the "new commanding heights in strategic competition." That means war starts there.