Some of this might be explained by the difficulty of attribution in cyberspace, and, for years, analysts and security specialists opined about the challenge of identifying the perpetrators of network intrusions. In the months leading up to the indictment of five Chinese military officers for economic espionage in 2014, industry reports pinpointing China as the source of the latest intrusions into U.S. and international networks suggested attribution was becoming easier if still imperfect. And with cybersecurity rising in importance as an international policy issue, it was only a matter of time before governments and their intelligence services moved beyond forensic analysis.

Publicly-available information offers no clear reason why China’s risk calculus on intelligence operations has changed; however, several possible considerations, likely in combination, are leading Beijing toward more aggressive intelligence operations.

Imperative of Intelligence Collection: China’s international interests abroad have expanded dramatically, and, with the increasingly competitive nature of U.S.-China relations and tensions in the East and South China Seas, national security probably has become more important. With the PLA’s capabilities still not sufficient for many missions outside China’s periphery, intelligence can provide the advance warning and time for Beijing’s more slowly-moving diplomatic tools to work. The more Chinese interests expand beyond Beijing’s ability to protect them, the greater the imperative for a far-reaching and active intelligence effort.

Change in Bureaucratic Balance of Power: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs may no longer have the standing to make such an argument and win in the face of opposition from the Minister of State Security (MSS) and its military counterparts. According to one former Chinese diplomat, the MSS had little voice in foreign policymaking during the 1980s—and the MSS did not sit on China’s leading foreign policy body, the Central Foreign Affairs Leading Small Group until the mid-1990s—but more current analysis suggests the MSS became more influential. China’s foreign policy making process also has become more pluralized, watering down the MFA’s influence.

Earlier Risk Overstated Lowering Current Concern: Beijing has not faced any political and few economic consequences for its intelligence activities abroad, including exposed operations in cyberspace. In 1985, the MFA may simply have overstated the risks Chinese intelligence operations posed to the country’s relationships to the outside world. Diplomats often play the role of nay-sayers. Beijing knew other countries had uncovered the operations of its intelligence services and its open source collectors who vacuumed up foreign scientific materials, sometimes crossing the line into national security information. As time passed, this knowledge would have suggested that the risks MFA had outlined were no longer (or never were) as serious as Chinese leaders had imagined.

Lower Perceived Vulnerability: This is closely related to the previous thought. Chinese leaders may not think China and its peaceful development project face significant international consequences for its intelligence operations abroad. China may be heavily reliant on trade and external sources of investment and technology; however, it also is a leading trading partner of most major economies. Those in other countries fear that any move against Beijing could generate corresponding Chinese moves and lead to a trade war. This situation now encourages a caution in dealing with Beijing that simply was not the case in the 1980s.

China may have one of the longest traditions in intelligence, but invoking this tradition as a quasi-mystical explanation for how Beijing manages intelligence does not provide insight into Chinese intelligence today. The Chinese intelligence apparatus as it is configured today only dates to 1983, and, up through the 1970s, the services were heavily dependent on their leadership’s personalities and politics. The policymaking apparatus it supports has been evolving during that time as Chinese politics became more institutionalized.

As noted elsewhere, the behavior of intelligence services can be seen as a leading edge of a country’s foreign policy. Chinese-language sources define intelligence in much the same way as their Western counterparts: information collected, processed, and distributed to inform decision making. Whether politicized or objective, the intelligence collected by China’s spies provides clues that can serve as an indicator of where Beijing’s policy is heading.

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