BEIJING – The Chinese military accused the U.S. on Friday of
launching a global "Internet war" to bring down Arab and other
governments, turning the tables on allegations of major online attacks
on Western targets originating in China.
The
accusations Friday by Chinese military academy scholars, and their
urging of tougher policing of the Internet, followed allegations this
week that computer hackers in China had compromised the personal Gmail
accounts of several hundred people, including government officials,
military personnel and political activists.
Google
traced the origin of the attacks to the city of Jinan that is home to a
military vocational school whose computers were linked to a more
sophisticated assault on Google's systems 17 months ago. China has
denied responsibility for the two attacks.
Writing
in the Communist Party-controlled China Youth Daily newspaper, the
scholars did not mention Google's claims, but said recent computer
attacks and incidents employing the Internet to promote regime change
in Arab nations appeared to have originated with the U.S. government.
"Of
late, an Internet tornado has swept across the world ... massively
impacting and shocking the globe. Behind all this lies the shadow of
America," said the article, signed by Ye Zheng and Zhao Baoxian,
identified as scholars with the Academy of Military Sciences.
"Faced
with this warmup for an Internet war, every nation and military can't
be passive but is making preparations to fight the Internet war," it
said.
While nuclear war was a strategy of the
industrial era, Internet war is a product of the information age, the
article said. Such conflicts stand to be hugely destructive,
threatening national security and the very existence of the state, it
said.
China needs to "express to the world its
principled stance of maintaining an 'Internet border' and protecting
its 'Internet sovereignty,' unite all advanced forces to dive into the
raging torrent of the age of peaceful use of the Internet, and return
to the Internet world a healthy, orderly environment," the article said.
China
already heavily filters content and blocks numerous foreign websites, a
system known as the "Great Firewall of China." The police employ a
large force of Internet monitors to scour the Web for content deemed
illegal or subversive, and those users transmitting sensitive contact
can be charged with sedition or other crimes.
A
number of foreign governments say they've been targeted by hacking
attacks from China, although Beijing routinely denies undertaking such
operations and says it too is a victim of such activity.
Secretary
of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters attacks such as the one
alleged by Google were a primary reason why the State Department had
for the first time created a cyber-security coordinator.
The
FBI said it was investigating Google's allegations, but no official
government email accounts have been compromised. Google said all the
hacking victims have been notified and their accounts have been secured. AP
