Is there a way for China and the West to cooperate in cyberspace?

Cyberspace, like the high seas or space before it, has become another contested arena where nation-states jostle for influence, security and to further their strategic interests. Understandably, the relationship between the West and China has been severly strained by disagreements over issues including internet governance, allegations of espionage and even the definition of cybercrime itself.

It is important to acknowledge these differences - tensions are very real - but also to understand that strategic competition, a changing world order and the 'great game' is not new. The past shows even in the most fraught circumstances there can be a way forward for great powers and rivals to cooperate in the most contentious policy areas. Now, combating an unfolding financial cybercrime might need to become another example.

During the Cold War, cooperation on nuclear disarmament and the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) are, perhaps, the most famous examples of where common ground was struck. However, transnational crime often shows a much clearer pathway. The US and Cuba, despite decades of hostility, cooperated to tackle hijackings and air piracy, and the USSR and the West did have success combating drug trafficking, despite deep ideological divides. Working through Interpol and bilateral channels, they shared intelligence to disrupt trafficking networks and attempt to curb heroin flows.

Today, the overlooked trans-national crime partnership between the West and China (involving the collaboration on countering-narcotic production from the Golden Triangle and Mekong Delta of SouthEast Asia) could again offer a precedent for today’s policy-makers. Emanating from the 1972 historic Nixon-Mao Summit, ebbs and flows of cooperation were managed even in the most strategically charged times in the following decades. Successes, most notably in the late 1990s and early 2000s, as well as high-profile failures in the intervening years, emanated from a willingness to try to find and constructively engage on soft security issues where there were shared principles and outcomes at stake.

Now, across Southeast Asia, and especially in the same Mekong Delta of Cambodia, Laos and Burma, highly effective, technically proficient cybercrime factories have morphed from those historic organized crime groups and drug syndicates. These financial cybercrime gangs have exploded in growth following the COVID-19 pandemic and, in just five years, are now set to cost $3 trillion dollars in accumulated illegal capital to the global economy - equivalent to the entire GDP of France.

Last year, the United Nations and Interpol declared that this region was descending into a ‘cybercrime crisis’ that required urgent global cooperation to tackle. Not least because of the human misery of hundreds of thousands of 'cyber slaves' being trafficked into these regions. This included high-profile Chinese actor, Wang Xing, who was forcibly abducted from a street in Thailand while on holiday.

These are not just simple scams; targeting is on an ‘unprecedented scale’. Even more concerning, this ecosystem is already hardening and becoming more sophisticated; developing and deploying a full suite of malicious cyber tools, derived from a booming underground cyber marketplace.

The crime syndicates are trafficking Chinese and English speakers to work in these cybercrime factories to maximize the potential available global victims. China is heavily targeted due to its proximity and its highly integrated mobile chat, apps and digital payment infrastructure. Western consumers and businesses are also directly targeted with losses to the UK and the US now estimated in the tens of billions. It is a record explosion of cybercrime that exploits Western and Chinese technology infrastructures and drives major in-country money laundering networks.

More strategically, the West and China have learnt painful lessons when online fraud gangs have been able to harden over time into deeply sophisticated, intractable underground cyber economies.

Following the fall-out of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian-speaking pioneers of the online credit card fraud and cybercrime marketplaces of the late 1990s and 2000s eventually gave way to the much more sophisticated banking, extortion and ransomware gangs of the 2020s. This same ecosystem is now responsible for the most sophisticated financially motivated cyber attacks globally; which governments declare as national emergencies. The UK, for example, rates them as a tier-one security threat. Ultimately those tools and tactics have been copied and transposed globally and are now driving a record increase in Chinese reports of ransomware attacks.

Cooperation on transnational crime historically has always been treated of secondary importance by governments to strategic issues, like trade and national security. Recognizing that any cooperation can and will be impacted by these concerns is fundamental, but that doesn’t mean collective cooperation cannot or should not take place. China and the West can try to help with this cyber crisis in three primary ways:

It is clear some Southeast Asian countries urgently need more expertise, stronger governance and enforcement strategies to stop this malicious activity from spreading even further. China and the West, bilaterally, or collectively through multilateral vehicles like the ASEAN Cyber Capacity Programme, can do more to promote regional activity.

Specifically with more direct funding, sharing domain expertise and leaning into accelerating agreements on issues like the sharing of electronic evidence. Not least, more dedicated European, American and Chinese police experts are sorely needed to train blockchain analysts, programmers and cybersecurity investigators to aid regional law enforcement forces in tracking and disrupting the gangs.

Cybercriminal groups exploit ineffective enforcement systems and the West and China can work to try and close those gaps. While there has been progress, there is clearly more opportunity for intelligence sharing and coordination. As in the 1980s and 1990s, when trust was also low, multilateral agencies, especially Interpol or other regional task forces and joint operating models, can be highly effective in sharing intelligence and coordinating operations when bilateral engagements are politically fraught.

Direct law enforcement action ultimately has limitations in cyberspace. Effective action against cybercrime is defined by public-private partnerships that draw upon the expertise, technology and capabilities of the private sector. Mitigation at this scale can only be possible if the West and China directly bring in a wider group of invested technology companies and other civil society groups who can act in global coalitions with regional partners to disrupt human trafficking, as well as financial crime operations.

At times of heightened tension finding common ground is of vital importance. History shows that even in the most fraught geopolitical environments, pragmatic, issue-specific cooperation can be found to help build trust and foster dialogue that can ultimately lead to greater stability between powers. Both China and the West can ill afford yet another cyber safe haven to emerge that can further threaten global prosperity, propagate harm and become another thorn in the side of peace and stability.