Defense comes to forefront at China's Communist Party Congress

For China technology watchers seeking a road map through the Olympics and into
the next decade, the 17th Communist Party Congress in October was a disappointment.
China's current president, Hu Jintao, has positioned himself as more of a grassroots,
folksy leader than his technocratic predecessor, Jiang Zemin, or China's great
reformer, Deng Xiaoping. Hu became president following the end of Jiang's term
in 2002.

On the technology stage, Jiang is a tough act to follow. During his 10 years
as China's president, Jiang oversaw perhaps the greatest telecommunications
infrastructure build-out in history, where China went from having an insufficient
number of fixed line telephones to the world's largest mobile market in a decade.

However, Hu was specific in his references to one area of IT guaranteed to
raise eyebrows outside the country: defense.
"We must build strong armed forces through science and technology. To attain
the strategic objective of building computerized armed forces and winning IT-based
warfare, we will accelerate composite development of mechanization and computerization,
carry out military training under IT-based conditions, modernize every aspect
of logistics, intensify our efforts to train a new type of high-caliber military
personnel in large numbers and change the mode of generating combat capabilities."

For Germany
and other nations that feel they have already been targeted by Chinese cyberattacks,
Hu's words are likely to make defense officials in Europe, North America and
Japan even more nervous.

"Both military and civilian sectors in China are actively exploring the
information warfare concept, which could be gradually developed into a corps
of 'network warriors' able to defend China's telecommunications, command, and
information networks, while uncovering vulnerabilities in foreign networks,"
according to Sinodefence.com,
an independent China military-monitoring Web site based in the U.K.

Add to this the report
that every one of China's local police stations has special officers patrolling
the Internet, and suddenly the happy face that Beijing is painting on itself
for the 2008 Olympic Games seems more than a bit smeared.

The Chinese leader also devoted a section of his keynote speech to innovation.
"We will speed up forming a national innovation system and support basic
research, research in frontier technology and technological research for public
welfare."

He also said China will "improve the legal guarantee, policy system, incentive
mechanism and market conditions to encourage technological innovation and the
application of scientific and technological achievements in production,"
which should be music to the years of intellectual-property rights activists.