Professor Irene Wu, senior analyst at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), selected this essay as one of the best research projects in her Georgetown University: Communication, Culture, & Technology class, “Network Communities.”

East Asia is a region encumbered by its past as memories of the colonial period and world wars continue to influence the politics and actions of China, Japan, and the Koreas. Professor Gi-wook Shin at Stanford University’s Asian Pacific Research Center notes, “what happened in the past touch upon the most sensitive issues of national identity, the formation of historical memories, and national myths that play a powerful role to this day” (Shin). In particular, information technology has played a vital role in transforming China’s sense of social grievance into organized action by the hacker community and the government’s national security policy (Zheng pg. 47). While the motivations behind the Chinese government and hacker community may diverge in conducting cyber network operations (CNO), their ability to unofficially collaborate is partly due to a shared understanding of seeking vindication for the nation’s past humiliation via the organization and exercising of informational power. The following essay examines 1) how China’s century of humiliation has had an influence on the country’s approach to technology, 2) the origins of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) cyber operations, 3) the emergence of the hacker community, and 4) the factors that encourage collaboration between the government and hacker community. Because the paper examines the origins and development of China’s cyber operations, the essay largely focuses on the period from the early 1990s to 2004 and borrows from the various theories that have been discussed in class to better understand the use of information technology by the Chinese government and hacker community. As noted in Scott Henderson’s The Dark Visitor, the year 2004 was chosen because it marks the time when the Honker Union of China, also known as the Red Hacker Alliance, first dissolved, but would then later re-emerge a month later (Henderson pg. 42).