In modern military operations, it is nearly impossible to find forms of military activity that do not in some way depend on information technology. Navigation and positioning is no longer done with compasses or sextants, maps, or charts; it is done with satellite broadcasts. Physical reconnaissance is complemented by electronic means and a range of sensors employed on land or in the in air, sea, and space. Information systems support logistics activities, such as resupply and refueling, and facilitate personnel and casualty management. Information technology and instantaneous data exchange provide commanders and deployed forces with a shared awareness of the battle area. In most military organizations, units that were engaged in signals intelligence collection and electronic warfare also have taken on the mission of cyber warfare and cyber penetration.
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army and Information Warfare (PDF)
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army and Information Warfare
by Larry M. Wortzel
Strategic Studies Institute (SSI)
and
U.S. Army War College Press
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB1191.pdf
Media (Public Opinion) Warfare
The idea in public-opinion warfare is to use all forms of media to influence both domestic and international public opinion on the rectitude of China’s policies and actions. This includes newspapers, television, radio, social media, and the use of front organizations to convey messages to foreigners. Some of these activities are close to traditional propaganda operations, but others border on sophisticated deception operations or perception management.113 In this sense, psychological warfare and media warfare have similarities.
Inside China, the PLA (and the Communist Party) want to guide public opinion to conform to party policy and objectives, and to ensure that workers, the intelligentsia, and the populace understand and embrace the party’s line on matters. When aimed at Taiwan, media warfare efforts are designed to promote a “united front” between the citizens of Taiwan and the Chinese Communist Party on specific policy issues. The Communist Party’s International Liaison Department and the GPD take the lead on Taiwan-related “united front” operations.
Internationally, media warfare efforts seek to counter the dominance (hegemony) of the Western media, while promoting the Communist Party’s positions and views. These efforts are increasingly sophisticated and include such measures as inserting paid advertisements, written like news articles from Chinese publications, into American or other target foreign newspapers. In assessing this phenomenon, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission’s 2011 report to Congress noted as an example that China Daily, a Communist Party–affiliated state-owned newspaper, paid for inserts in newspapers such as The Washington Post and The New York Times. The insert made the argument that one-party rule in China benefits both American and Chinese economic policies because it keeps harmony in Chinese society and keeps the steady production of goods at cheap prices for the U.S. economy. The obvious objective of such advertising efforts is to attempt to discourage
Psychological Warfare
The second of the three forms of warfare has a longer history and primarily targets enemies and potential adversaries. Psychological warfare has been a central responsibility of the GPD since it was established. The PLA targeted Nationalist forces and the Japanese with psychological operations and also used them in the Korean War. The PLA believes that this form of warfare serves national defense. It targets the adversary’s will to fight and is designed to lower the efficiency of enemy forces by creating dissent, disaffection, and dissatisfaction in their ranks.
Preparation for War and Legal Warfare
While students of warfare are thinking through Beijing’s military doctrine in space, other Chinese strategists and legal scholars are engaged in an internal debate on how traditional ideas of sovereignty and the laws of war apply in space. The authoritative PLA book, The Science of Military Strategy, puts the legal aspects of the three warfares at the top of its means to “influence and restrict international law and the conduct of modern war.” The PLA sees war as a struggle in the military, political, economic, diplomatic, and legal domains. For the PLA, “international law is a powerful weapon to expose the enemy, win over sympathy and support of the international community [for China], and to strive to gain the position of strategic initiative.” The Science of Military Strategy further argues that one must:
Responding to the Three Warfares
Much of the PLA’s campaign, whether in public opinion and media warfare or psychological warfare, depends on the fact that Westerners in general enjoy a free press. Thus, the PLA seems to believe that by constantly repeating its message in the Western press and in other forms of contact, it will be accepted. In China, there is no free press, and the PLA uses the controlled media there and Hong Kong’s Communist-controlled media to deliver its message to the Chinese populace.
In the United States and other Western countries, the free press remains the major counter to China and the PLA’s controlled messages. Most reporters are careful enough or cynical enough not to accept every message they are given; they check facts. Still, many Americans have no idea that the China Association for International Friendly Contact is controlled by an intelligence bureau under the PLA’s GPD. Nor are most Americans or others in the West aware of the relationships among the Military Intelligence Department of the PLA, its GPD counterpart, and CAIFC. Public education, therefore, also is an excellent way to counter the PLA’s efforts at public opinion, or media, and perception management; and psychological warfare.
The U.S. Government is working to counter China’s internal propaganda campaigns through broadcasts on media outlets such as Voice of America or Radio Free Asia as a means to keep Chinese citizens informed. The Internet and social media also make it more difficult for the PLA to succeed with the type of controlled molding of public opinion it conducts. However, that does not stop the Chinese government from working to control social media and the Internet as well as to identify Internet activists.155 This vying for public opinion and countering of propaganda is an example of one area in which the PLA has become more sophisticated, and its reach more global. In legal warfare, the PLA may be ahead. Few American legal or military scholars are engaging in arguments in legal journals that counter China’s positions. At U.S. military schools and headquarters, there is no systematic effort to establish precedent or to counter some of the PLA’s positions. International awareness of the PLA’s strategy would be useful, making this another area in which public education could be the most effective counterbalance to propaganda.