The People's Republic of China (PRC) engages in information warfare through the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and other organizations affiliated or controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Laid out in the Chinese Defence White Paper of 2008, informatized warfare includes the utilization of information-based weapons and forces, including battlefield management systems, precision-strike capabilities, and technology-assisted command and control (C4ISR). The term also refers to propaganda and influence operations efforts by the Chinese state. Consequential Chinese information operations have been carried out to influence Taiwanese sovereignty, U.S. elections, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. China has also exploited artificial intelligence and increasingly complex communications structures to enhance its cyber-warfare capabilities.

Definitions China's military authority, the Central Military Commission, aimed to transform the People's Liberation Army (PLA) from conducting a "people's war" to engaging in warfare conditions of informatization, which includes moving the military doctrine from weapon platform-centric to cyber-centric. This may include algorithmically generated narratives, AI-coordinated social media accounts, and targeted attacks on communications infrastructure. The indicated characteristic of the cyber-centric force is the utilization of network linkages (data-link) among platforms.

Eric C. Anderson and Jeffrey G. Engstrom define "informationization" and informatized warfare in Chinese military doctrine as follows: "[A]t the operational level appears focused on providing an integrated platform for joint war-zone command, control, communications, computer, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) connectivity, and for peacetime command and control (C2) within the PLA's Military Regions."

The United States Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) defines China's "informatized warfare" as similar to the U.S. military's concept of net-centric capability, which means the military's capability to use advanced information technology and communications systems to gain operational advantage over an adversary.

In 1995, Major General Wang Pufeng wrote: "Information war is a crucial stage of high-tech war... At its heart are information technologies, fusing intelligence war, strategic war, electronic war, guided missile war, a war of 'motorization' [jidong zhan], a war of firepower [huoli]—a total war. It is a new type of warfare."

In two articles in the People's Liberation Army Daily, of 13 and 20 June 1995, Senior Colonel Wang Baocun and Li Fei of the PLA Academy of Military Science noted several definitions. They concluded: We hold that information warfare has both narrow and broad meanings. Information warfare in the narrow sense refers to the U.S. military's so-called "battlefield information warfare," the crux of which is "command and control warfare." It is defined as the comprehensive use, with intelligence support, of military deception, operational secrecy, psychological warfare, electronic warfare, and substantive destruction to assault the enemy's whole information system including personnel; and to disrupt the enemy's information flow, in order to impact, weaken, and destroy the enemy's command and control capability, while keeping one's own command and control capability from being affected by similar enemy actions.

They went on to state:

A July 1998 conference held in San Diego, California, sponsored jointly by the RAND Center for Asia-Pacific Policy and the Taiwan-based Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies, brought together Chinese military analysts to discuss the "software" side of the PLA's modernization, including information warfare (IW). In his presentation, James C. Mulvenon stated: "Chinese writings clearly suggest that IW is a solely military subject, and as such, they draw inspiration primarily from U.S. military writings. The net result of this 'borrowing' is that many PLA authors' definitions of IW and IW concepts sound eerily familiar."

In December 1999, Xie Guang, the then Vice Minister of Science & Technology and Industry for National Defence, defined IW as: IW in military sense means overall use of various types (of) information technologies, equipment and systems, particularly his command systems, to shake determination of enemy's policy makers and at the same time, the use of all the means possible to ensure that that one's own systems are not damaged or disturbed.

In a strategic analysis paper for the Indian Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses written in 2006, Vinod Anand examines the definitions of Chinese Information Warfare. He notes that although Chinese understanding of IW was initially based on western concepts, it has increasingly moved towards evolving its own orientation.

Background and characteristics

China's interest in information warfare began after the United States victory in the first Gulf War (1990–1991). U.S. success was the result of information technology and the total dominance it achieved in the battle space. From that point forward, the PLA began to seriously invest in and develop its own concepts of information warfare and what they mean to China.

As a result of technological advancement, China has now entered an era where informationization can be applied to military domains.Ferguson, Robyn E. (2002). Information Warfare with Chinese Characteristics: China's Future of Information Warfare and Strategic Culture . Masters Thesis, US Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. (Accessed 23 April 2011).

China's 2004 White Paper on National Defense outlines the importance of informationization. The PLA, aiming at building an informationalised force and winning an information war, deepens its reforms, dedicates itself to innovation, improves its quality and actively pushes forward the [Revolution in Military Affairs] with Chinese characteristics with informationalization at its core.

According to the U.S. Department of Defense's 2009 Annual Report to Congress on "Military Power of the People's Republic of China", the PLA at the time was preparing for what it called "local wars under conditions of informationization": high intensity and short duration fighting against high technology adversaries along the periphery of its territory.U.S. Department of Defense (2009). Military Power of the People's Republic of China 2009. . Office of the Secretary of Defense, Washington, D.C. – via dtic.mil (Defense Technical Information Center). Additionally, local war under informationization is an effort which seeks to fully develop and link land, air, sea, space and the electromagnetic spectrum into one system. China's military strategy is focused on fighting and winning "informationized local wars."

China's leadership has continuously stressed using asymmetric techniques to counter more powerful nations, such as the United States, and information warfare is a tool that the PLA uses to achieve their goals.Yoshihara, Toshi (November 2001). Chinese information warfare: a phantom menace or emerging threat?. . Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA. . (Accessed 23 April 2011). In a 2001 paper in the U.S. Military Review, Timothy L. Thomas examined the writings of Major General Dai Qingmin (Director of the PLA's Communications Department of the General Staff responsible for IW and IO), Senior Colonel Wang Baocun (of the PLA's Academy of Military Sciences) and others on the ways that China was employing "Electronic Strategies" to realise the benefits of asymmetric warfare. Thomas also summarised the April 2000 issue of the Chinese journal China Military Science which contains three articles on information warfare subjects. The only article written in English ("The Current Revolution in Military Affairs and its Impact on Asia-Pacific Security", by Senior Colonel Wang Baocun) presents a quite different approach to an article Wang Baocun wrote only three years previously where he presented a description of IW which contained the elements of Soviet/Russian military science.Thomas, Timothy L. (May–June 2001). "China's Electronic Strategies". . Military Review. pp. 47–54.

In the article "On Information Warfare Strategies", by Major General Niu Li, Colonel Li Jiangzhou and Major Xu Dehui (of the Communications and Command Institute), the authors define IW stratagems as "schemes and methods devised and used by commanders and commanding bodies to seize and maintain information supremacy on the basis of using clever methods to prevail at a relatively small cost in information warfare."Niu Li, Li Jiangzhou, and Xu Dehui (12 January 2001). "On Information Warfare Stratagems". Beijing Zhongguo Junshi Kexue, 115–122. Translated and downloaded from FBIS.

In 2003, the CCP approved the three warfares strategy for the PLA, which involves using public opinion (or media) warfare, psychological warfare and legal warfare (lawfare).

While China has adopted the idea of information dominance, its method for going about information dominance differs, using ancient political warfare methods such as the Thirty-Six Stratagems. The PLA has also increasingly stressed an operational concept called "cognitive domain operations."

On the defensive side, China employs a combination of legal policies and information technology for censorship and surveillance of dissenters in a program called Golden Shield. This is often referred to as the Great Firewall of China. In response to the criticism of Internet censorship in China, CCP general secretary Xi Jinping has called for the avoidance of "cyber hegemony", stating that countries should respect each other's national security in cyberspace, a notion that China's officials have described as the country's right to "national cyber sovereignty".

Information operations

The PLA began developing social media influence operations in the mid-2010s and began employing them since at least 2018, according to RAND Corporation. Pro-China disinformation campaigns in 2021 showed greater sophistication compared to 2019. It has been difficult to attribute with certainty whether Chinese state actors are behind these actions.

COVID-19

Disinformation campaigns sought to downplay the emergence of COVID-19 in China and manipulate information about its spread around the world. In 2020, the Chinese government created a social media campaign in response to online civilian outrage at the COVID-19 pandemic. A look at Chinese controlled media would show how the government reportedly was able to efficiently contain the spread of the virus. The Chinese government took measures such as silencing Li Wenliang, the "whistleblower" doctor, and many other journalists in order to maintain this image.

In January 2023, Google stated that it shut down more than 50,000 accounts promoting disinformation about COVID-19, Taiwan, and U.S. politics. The campaign is believed to be linked to Chinese public relations firm Shanghai Haixun Technology Co. Haixun has planted pro-Beijing stories in dozens of American news outlets online.

Taiwan

The PRC seeks unification with Taiwan and uses information operations, sometimes referred to as "information war", as an important part of that work. Despite the large resource outlay, the Chinese have been relatively ineffective in influencing the Taiwanese public. According to James C. Mulvenon, rather than risk failure of a militarily forced unification, which could lead to international recognition of the independence of Taiwan, PRC leadership could potentially use computer network operations to undermine the will of Taiwan by attacking Taiwanese infrastructure.