Washington the main threat to cybersecurity: China Daily editorial

A thief crying "Stop thief!" is the only way to describe the statement by the United States and its allies on Monday accusing China of "malicious cyber activities".

The statement said that the Chinese government has been the mastermind behind a series of malicious ransomware, data theft and cyber espionage attacks against public and private entities, including the sprawling Microsoft Exchange hack earlier this year.

But although they've tried to step onto the moral high ground, the lack of any evidence to support their allegation has pulled the rug from under their feet, leaving them squirming under the weight of evidence piled up against them, especially the US.

The world should know by now which country is the main protector and accommodator of the largest number of hackers, and which country's official agencies have been repeatedly exposed engaging in malicious cyber activities. The malign behavior of the US in cyberspace is inconsistent with its stated objective of upholding rule-based behavior and being a responsible world leader.

By virtue of its technology advantages, the US has gone to great lengths to monitor even leaders of its allies and spy on other countries and individuals. It has even been revealed to be employing its state-sponsored snooping for the cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property and commercial information. Its dirty cyber profiteering poses a threat to other countries' economies as well as their national security.

China's National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team/Coordination Center of China released a report on Wednesday, which says that 42 million malware attacks were detected in China in 2020, with the US and India being the leading sources of the attacks. The number of malware attacks from the US accounted for 53.1 percent of the total.

The US also has the highest number of servers controlled by foreign malware that launched cyberattacks against China, the report said, having 19,000 such servers in 2020, followed by the Netherlands with 2,083 and Germany with 1,923.

The report also revealed that the CIA's hacking unit APT-C-39 has sought to infiltrate and attack China's space and aviation research institutes, petrochemical enterprises, internet companies and even government departments for the past 11 years.

It should alarm the world that the US and NATO consider cyberspace a battlefield. Their military deployment in the virtual world has considerably increased the risk of cyber conflict.

China has long denounced any form of malevolent cyber activity and maintains that countries should safeguard cyber security through talks and cooperation. China has proposed a global data security initiative to make governing rules for a peaceful, safe, open, cooperative and orderly cyberspace.

However, China's initiative has been cold-shouldered by the Western countries, fearful it will mean losing their hegemony in cyberspace.

The US and its allies act in the virtual realm with the same disdain for other countries as they do in the real world, with similar damaging consequences.