What you might not understand is that the Chinese government has its hands in every corporation, organization, competitor, etc.
You might have false assumptions coming from the US system, where corporations and government are separate entities. They even sue one another at times.
In China, large corporations are overseen by the government. The government funds them, decides what they can and cannot do, and decides which corporations will succeed. You cannot build a search engine or social network right now, unless you pull a political coup, because the government controls which companies succeed. Baidu and Tencent are the "blessed children" for the time being.
Within the government, China is run by various clans, continually vying for power in the Communist Party. It's easiest to build a large company by having a family member in the upper echelon of the party, to push things through.
Everything is connected to the government in China. It's in your company's interest to keep the party in power, because the corrupt politicians keep you in business. It's in your wealthy family's interest to keep the government in power, because they keep you wealthy. It's a giant corrupt system, keeping itself in place.
Most likely, these attacks were actually executed by some low-level hackers somewhere. But most certainly, someone in the government has something to do with their funding, organization, or guidance.
>> What you might not understand is that the Chinese government has its hands in every corporation, organization, competitor, etc.
Yes, this is the point. Being a 30-year-old Chinese, I've already known under a dictatorship almost everything is controlled by gov. Want to give birth to a child? need a permit (or your kid won't have ID nor social security); want to start up your own NGO? need a extremely complex license which is designed to scare you away; want to publish a book? need a license and it will be censored or even be banned; want to form a street demonstration? almost impossible.
I think for a dictator, he needs a system to restrain the free flow of people and information (a good example, North Korea), to do this the gov uses its power/money/people to reach out as far as possible into every corner of social and personal lives. It wants to know everything and wants to control everything (whether it can do is another story).
I cannot say I have any evidences to prove a sophisticated operation like this can only be done by gov, but I believe only gov or gov sponsored organizations can do this.
"Government" is not one cohesive entity, certainly not in a country as big as China. Sure, there might be some rogue actors sympathetic to such attacks. But that doesn't imply that "Chinese government" in general is supportive of such acts, just like a few corruption scandals do not imply that entire US government is corrupt.
But for each scandal we need to re-evaluate the prior.
I'm irritated that you post this as if presupposing that the US government is not corrupt. I know you are factually correct, but the connotation bothers me.
When they failed to stop SOPA of their own accord, I realized that the majority are either incompetent or corrupt.
Well, my main point was about China and mentioned US govt just as an example. If you don't like that example, how about: "Its wrong to call a corporation corrupt just because a few mid-level employees go rogue"
What you might not understand is that the Chinese government has its hands in every corporation, organization, competitor, etc.
You might have false assumptions coming from the US system, where corporations and government are separate entities. They even sue one another at times.
In China, large corporations are overseen by the government. The government funds them, decides what they can and cannot do, and decides which corporations will succeed. You cannot build a search engine or social network right now, unless you pull a political coup, because the government controls which companies succeed. Baidu and Tencent are the "blessed children" for the time being.
Within the government, China is run by various clans, continually vying for power in the Communist Party. It's easiest to build a large company by having a family member in the upper echelon of the party, to push things through.
Everything is connected to the government in China. It's in your company's interest to keep the party in power, because the corrupt politicians keep you in business. It's in your wealthy family's interest to keep the government in power, because they keep you wealthy. It's a giant corrupt system, keeping itself in place.
Most likely, these attacks were actually executed by some low-level hackers somewhere. But most certainly, someone in the government has something to do with their funding, organization, or guidance.