State-led Back-scratching Alliance in Cyber Warfare China’s Strategies in Sino-American Cyber Warfare in the Post-Cold War Era

The confluence of the end of the Cold War, globalization, and the information revolution created a new space not only for the emergence of cyber warfare but for non-state actors as major participants. This growing phenomenon raises questions the relationship between the state and society in cyber warfare. Whether traditional capacity of the state has declined is debatable; however, private actors have gradually been empowered. This paper argues that cyber warfare shows a new or at least novel type of the state-society relationship, or state-led back-scratching alliance. The state, continuing to be resilient, has redefined and redeployed its roles of mobilizing private actors on the one hand while regulating them on the other. Depending on the state’s strategic interests, the state can choose and combine one of these strategies in cyber warfare, in the form of selective censorship, unofficial condoning, coercive collaboration and reciprocal partnership. This paper analyzes thirteen cases of China’s cyber warfare against the United States to examine in detail how the state has redefined its role in cyber warfare and to evaluate whether redeployment involves more or less state capacity. KCI Citation Count: 0