The Cyber Great Power strategy is China’s national development strategy for transforming itself from a cyber major power to a cyber great power. In February 2014, General Secretary Xi Jinping set the strategic goal of making China a Cyber Great Power and laid out clear requirements for achieving it, including mastering core Internet technologies, fostering a healthy online culture, improving information infrastructure, strengthening the ranks of Internet talent, and promoting international cooperation on the Internet. 网络强国战略是中国为实现由网络大国到网络强国而拟定的国家发展战略。2014年2月，习近平总书记提出了努力把中国建设成为网络强国的战略目标，并从掌握互联网核心科技、建设健康网络文化、完善信息基础设施、加强互联网人才队伍建设、开展互联网国际合作等方面，对如何建设网络强国提出了明确的要求。

“The ‘Cyber Great Power’ Strategy,” State Council Information Office, March 16, 2018

Note: The State Council Information Office incorrectly translates “网络强国战略” as “Internet Power Strategy” in its official English language translation

Last updated on August 13, 2025 to add CAE Academician Liu Yunjie’s commentary on Cyber Great Power. This explainer was first published on February 28, 2014.

China Has a National Cyber Strategy: Cyber Great Power

Cyber Great Power (网络强国) is China’s national cyber strategy for securing, controlling, and strengthening the cyber domain. It seeks to assert sovereignty over networks, data, platforms, infrastructure, technology, and online content while strengthening the state’s ability to defend, govern, and project power in cyberspace.

Cyber Great Power is not simply a slogan, a cybersecurity policy, a technology program, or an Internet governance agenda. It is a national strategy for power in the cyber domain. It connects technological self-reliance, network control, data security, information infrastructure, online ideology, international rulemaking, and military-civil capabilities into a single strategic framework.

Cyber Great Power should therefore be understood differently from Digital China. Digital China is broader and more transformative at the national level, focused on building a digital system for development, governance, economy, society, and national modernization. Cyber Great Power is narrower and more explicitly competitive. Its central concern is not digital transformation in general, but the accumulation of Chinese strength in cyberspace amid the Party’s perception of growing external pressure, technological dependence, and U.S.-led containment.

In the Party’s national cyber strategy, cooperation is real, but it is not the end state. Cooperation is a tool. The ultimate objective is the attainment of Cyber Great Power status.

The Cyber Great Power Transition, Missed

One of the key architects of China’s national cyber strategy, Zheng Bijian, set a target of 2023 for China to match the United States in the cyber domain. By that standard, the transition was not completed on schedule.

This is important because PRC theorists were still describing China’s “great power transition” from a cyber “major power” (网络大国) to a cyber “great power” (网络强国) well after the strategy had been launched. The persistence of that language suggests that Cyber Great Power was not merely a slogan. It was a strategic benchmark: a status to be achieved, a gap to be closed, and a hierarchy of power to be overcome.

We should therefore ask why the 2023 target was missed, whether Beijing itself understands the transition as incomplete, how success or failure is measured, and what comes next. These questions are central to understanding the future direction of China’s national cyber strategy.

They are also central to understanding the Party’s broader digital end state. Cyber Great Power is one part of a larger strategic triad that also includes Digital China and China’s strategy for building a Smart Society. Together, these strategies point toward a state-led digital system in which development, governance, security, and power projection are increasingly fused.

This guide begins that process by tracing the emergence of the Cyber Great Power concept in April 2013, its elevation by Xi Jinping in February 2014, and its publication as a national strategy in December 2017.

Origin and Intent of China’s Cyber Great Power Strategy

Two classified Party-state documents published in 2013 provide a rare opportunity to understand the origin and intent of China’s Cyber Great Power strategy authoritatively.

These documents, translated, archived, and described below, laid out the concept of Cyber Great Power for China’s senior civilian and military leaders before Xi Jinping formally adopted it in 2014. They were likely part of the policy package that reached Xi’s desk as the Party prepared to define China’s national cyber strategy.

Together, they show that Cyber Great Power emerged not as a vague slogan, but as a strategic response to perceived U.S. dominance in cyberspace. From the beginning, the goal was to move China from cyber dependency to cyber strength, from rule-taker to rule-shaper, and from cyber major power to cyber great power.

Article Roadmap

If this is your first encounter with Cyber Great Power, the sections below provide a structured primer on its historical evolution and strategic goals.

April 3, 2013: Zheng Bijian proposes Cyber Great Power to the State Council Secretariat

On June 4, 2013, the State Council Secretariat published a classified summary of an April 3, 2013 proposal on Cyber Great Power made by the brilliant Marxist theorist Zheng Bijian. Zheng and I sat in a graduate seminar together in the 1980s so I can say brilliant with some authority. Zheng argued to central authorities that China must build itself into a world class Cyber Great Power within 10 years.

Zheng’s timeline and recommendation were based on his assessment that U.S. policy to contain China had expanded from physical space to cyberspace, and China needed a strategy to respond. For Zheng, “cyber warfare is no longer a matter of whether China wants to fight, but instead how long before it will be forced to act.”

July 28, 2013: The Central Committee accepts Zheng Bijian’s Cyber Great Power proposal

Zheng Bijian’s April 2013 proposal for China to become a world-class Cyber Great Power within ten years was considered, accepted, and then forwarded in July 2013 for “further review” by four members of Politburo (one of them a Standing Committee member and two of them Central Military Commission vice chairs). The notice specified that China must catch up (with the U.S.) and build itself into a Cyber Great Power with a clear strategy, advanced technology, industrial leadership, and a well-equipped government.

The Central Committee Notice was signed by senior Party leaders, both military and civilian. In China, cyberspace was a “fused” military-civil domain from the start. A lot more to come on that, and what it means for Digital China.

February 27, 2014: Xi Jinping proposes Cyber Great Power at the Central Leading Group for Cybersecurity and Informatization

Zheng’s proposal was publicly accepted by Xi Jinping when he called for China to achieve Cyber Great Power status during the first meeting of the newly formed Central Leading Group for Cybersecurity and Informatization on February 27, 2014.

Interestingly, there is some evidence that Zheng Bijian’s 10-year timeline still stands. Party discourse on the status of China’s transition from a cyber (major) power to a cyber (great) power has appeared more regularly in Party discourse, just as Zheng’s 2023 deadline has past.

December 27, 2016: The Cyberspace Administration of China releases the National Cyberspace Security Strategy

On December 27, 2016, with the approval of the the Central Leading Group for Cybersecurity and Informatization, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) released the National Cyberspace Security Strategy (国家网络空间安全战略). You can read full translations of the strategy at China Copyright and Media and digwatch. Rogier Creemers provides an excellent analysis of the Chinese concept of cybersecurity, and includes the strategy in his historical review, in the Journal of Contemporary China. State-run English-language outlets have also published both brief and detailed summaries. In short, the document has been well covered.

But what is overlooked in English is its deeper purpose: the strategy’s direct line to Zheng Bijian’s 2013 call for China to become a Cyber Great Power. The public-facing text in the strategy is important as it explains the “how.” But what truly matters is its strategic goal, the “why,” and it is difficult to find in English.

Yet the strategy’s strategic objective is stated plainly in the final clause of the opening paragraph of Section Two (Objectives): “…achieve the strategic objective of building a Cyber Great Power (…实现建设网络强国的战略目标).”

Cooperation is a means, not the end. The ultimate aim is the attainment of Cyber Great Power status.

You’ve got the history. Now take a master class on Cyber Great Power by CAE Academician Liu Yunjie

A word on the translation of Cyber Great Power

“Cyber Great Power,” not “cyber powerhouse”

Translating Cyber Great Power (网络强国) into English presents a special challenge, as both elements of the term, “cyber” and “great power,” raise distinct translation issues that need to be addressed individually.