Cries of outrage greet reports of computer hacking and cyber-crime. It’s the same whenever outsiders who want in resort to doubtful methods. Today, China sees itself as the ultimate outsider, so it’s unsurprising that attacks on US journalists and websites are being blamed on the secretive Middle Kingdom. It’s also part of a broader concern about theft of information.
Insiders are never happy to have their knowledge stolen, but there are cases when intellectual property theft has made the world much richer. A Jesuit priest spread the secret Chinese techniques of porcelain manufacture to Europe in the 18th century and a century later British spy Robert Fortune transferred the secrets of Chinese tea production to India. Any Chinese efforts to extract the secrets of today’s industrial leaders stand in that long tradition. And, the fivefold increase in US cyber-security forces echoes the British 1719 law prohibiting the emigration of skilled workers.
Whether the motivation for espionage is political stability or economic growth, both are attempts to counter a perceived geopolitical disadvantage. For a regime trying to preserve its legitimacy, hacking the Dalai Lama’s email may seem not much different from stealing a formula for paint, except that that the benefits of the paint knowledge are clearer. Hacking hasn’t noticeably slowed the flow of critical and investigative stories about China.
In any case, China should gradually turn into an insider, and behave accordingly. Entry into the World Trade Organization was a major step. And, the aggressive approach to gaining foreign knowledge already comes with high costs. For example, telco equipment-maker Huawei is having trouble gaining access to Western markets.
But as long as China remains an outsider, fear of information theft should spur rich countries to do better.
The threat of intrusive Chinese rivals gives Western companies an incentive to develop better techniques to protect privacy. Right now, hacking looks like one event in a broad industrial contest between China and the developed world. Perhaps it will be as productive as the 1960s space race between the United States and Soviet Union, which spurred the development of such innovations as satellite TV, smoke alarms and the laptop.
