[3] The People's Liberation Army (PLA) defines the term informatization to describe the implementation of information technology in the digital age, and as an evaluation criteria of its military modernization effort.
[4] Eric C. Anderson and Jeffrey G. Engstrom define "informationization" and informatized warfare in Chinese military doctrine as follows: "[A]t the operational level appears focused on providing an integrated platform for joint war-zone command, control, communications, computer, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) connectivity, and for peacetime command and control (C2) within the PLA's Military Regions.
"[7] In two articles in the People's Liberation Army Daily, of 13 and 20 June 1995, Senior Colonel Wang Baocun and Li Fei of the Academy of Military Science noted several definitions.
The five major elements are: The two general areas are information protection (defense) and information attack (offense): A July 1998 conference held in San Diego, sponsored jointly by the RAND Center for Asia-Pacific Policy and the Taiwan-based Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies, "brought together Chinese military experts to discuss the non-hardware side of the People's Liberation Army's modernization.
[13] Additionally, local war under informationization is an effort which seeks to fully develop and link land, air, sea, space and the electromagnetic spectrum into one system.
"[15] China's leadership has continuously stressed using asymmetric techniques to counter more powerful nations, such as the United States, and information warfare is a tool that the PLA uses to achieve their goals.
[16][17] In a 2001 paper in the U.S. Military Review, T. L. Thomas examines the writings of Major General Dai Qingmin (Director of the PLA's Communications Department of the General Staff responsible for IW and IO), Senior Colonel Wang Baocun (of the PLA's Academy of Military Sciences) and others on the ways that China is employing "Electronic Strategies" to realise the benefits of asymmetric warfare.
Thomas also summarises the April 2000 issue of the Chinese journal China Military Science which contains three articles on information warfare subjects.
"[22] On the defensive side, China employs a combination of legal policies and information technology for censorship and surveillance of dissenters in a program called Golden Shield.
[34] In 2022 Taiwan's Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau revealed that it had identified more than 400 social media accounts being used to push disinformation to Taiwanese citizens as part of Chinese content farms.
"[42] Chinese government information operations have also attempted to co-opt local NIMBY sentiment to drive opposition against perceived economic threats such as the development projects that compete with the rare earth industry in China.
[44] The report accuses the Singham Network of stoking unrest at the grassroot level and amplifying the voice of SID4P and says that at least one member of SID4P has ties to extremist groups with anti-American, anti-Israel, and anti-Jewish agendas.
[45] A 2012 report by the Government Accountability Institute[46] cites other examples: It was discovered that officers from the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C. "sought to direct contributions from foreign sources to the Democratic National Committee before the 1996 presidential campaign.
"[47] While these allegations have been denied by the PRC, "Secret communications between Beijing and the Chinese Embassy in Washington establish that the influence-buying plan was 'government sanctioned...'"[48] In 1996, People's Liberation Army intelligence officer Gen. Ji Shengde provided Johnny Chung, a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee, with $300,000 to donate towards President Bill Clinton's reelection.
[49] In September 2022, Meta Platforms removed fake accounts linked to a China-based influence operation ahead of the 2022 United States elections.
[50][51] In the run-up to the 2024 United States elections, the Ministry of Public Security's Spamouflage influence operation was identified as having used fake social media accounts in an attempt to amplify divisions in US society.