As follow-on to my earlier postings about Chinese methods for accelerating their economic prowess, I offer this: There’s a stealthy cyber war going on between China and the rest of the world. It began about five years ago when there were many cyber attacks originating from China. In 2003, there was the “Titan Rain” incident, which was a massive and well organized attack on US military networks. The people carrying out the attack knew what they were doing, and thousands of military and industrial documents were copied by the Chinese.
In the wake of Titan Rain (See Time article from Aug 2005), governments around the world began to improve their Internet security. But the attacks from China continued and the attackers were getting better. In 2005, a well organized attack was made on the networks of the British parliament. The Chinese attackers used techniques similar to those employed by criminal gangs trying to get into banks and brokerages.
The Chinese cyber army keeps getting better, and that includes covering their tracks. Meanwhile, the Chinese reap enormous economic benefits from their raids on economic and technical secrets in the West.