By Tian Yongjing (Secretary of the Party Committee and Professor, School of Marxism, Beijing Jiaotong University); Yuan Weiguo (Senior Engineer, China Internet Network Information Center)
The 2026 Report on the Work of the Government put forward the goal of “forging a new form of the smart economy”. At present, the once-in-a-century global changes are unfolding at an accelerated pace, network technologies keep evolving, and instability and uncertainty in the global cybersecurity landscape continue to rise. This requires us to continuously strengthen national security capacity in key areas such as cybersecurity, and actively deploy cybersecurity protection measures in emerging fields.
At present, China’s top-level design for cybersecurity has been continuously improved, and its protection capabilities have been steadily enhanced. A cybersecurity legal and regulatory system has been established, with the “Three Laws and Two Regulations” as the backbone: the Cybersecurity Law, the Data Security Law, the Personal Information Protection Law, the Regulations on the Security Protection of Critical Information Infrastructure, and the Regulations on the Administration of Network Data Security. Protection capabilities have been further strengthened through ongoing revisions and improvements. In October 2025, the revision of the Cybersecurity Law further tightened requirements for the protection of critical infrastructure and increased penalties for violations. Protection of China’s network infrastructure has been continuously consolidated, with a total of 21,000 cybersecurity threats of various types addressed in 2025. Decisive new breakthroughs have been made in core and key technologies in key fields such as integrated circuits and basic software. The “information technology application innovation industry” has accelerated the localization of core software and hardware, providing security guarantees for the safety of critical infrastructure.
Meanwhile, China’s cybersecurity industry has expanded in scale and shown growing potential, with strong resilience and growth momentum. The industry has maintained steady growth and is expected to reach 220 billion yuan in scale in 2025, with a growth rate of approximately 3%. Emerging security sectors such as the industrial internet, internet of vehicles, low-altitude economy, and satellite internet will become new engines for the development of the cybersecurity industry. Artificial intelligence has deeply empowered the cybersecurity industry, with large models in cybersecurity covering multiple scenarios including threat detection, alert noise reduction, and security operations. Large cybersecurity models in major industries are accelerating development and practical application.
However, we must also recognize that cyberspace security faces new challenges, requiring us to further strengthen the national cybersecurity barrier.
First, state-level cyberattack threats triggered by geopolitical conflicts will continue to intensify. Following the outbreak of conflicts such as those between Russia and Ukraine, and Israel and Palestine, fierce confrontations have unfolded in cyberspace, with state-level cyber forces and professional hacker groups launching offensive cyberattacks against critical infrastructure including electric power, energy, and communications.
Second, traditional cyberattacks remain the primary security threat. The scale and impact of DDoS attacks continue to expand, with explosive growth in their number, scale, and complexity. In 2025, multiple well-known global industrial manufacturing enterprises were attacked, resulting in the disruption of key businesses or the shutdown of some factories. Major data breaches remain frequent. Threats targeting important data are on the rise, with frequent cyber intrusions into information systems in finance, healthcare, transportation, logistics, national defense, and military industries leading to the leakage of user and sensitive information, and rampant underground industrial chains for data trading. Supply chain security has become a major focus. Sophisticated supply chain attacks are usually launched by professional hacker organizations, and incidents caused by critical security vulnerabilities in widely used third-party software often affect thousands of companies.
Third, AI-driven cybersecurity threats are exhibiting new characteristics. Artificial intelligence has become a dominant factor shaping cybersecurity. In January 2026, the World Economic Forum released the Global Cybersecurity Outlook report, in which 94% of respondents identified AI as the most transformative driving force affecting cybersecurity, and 64% stated that their organizations had established security assessment processes for AI application deployment. AI technologies have exacerbated the imbalance between cyber offense and defense. AI has been integrated into the entire lifecycle of cyberattacks, including malicious code generation, automated penetration, and phishing emails. Intelligent attack chains and dynamically adjustable attack strategies have made cyberattacks more frequent, complex, and difficult to detect. Security risks arising from AI applications are growing rapidly. High-risk vulnerabilities such as service interruptions and data theft have emerged in open-source frameworks for large models, causing security risks to spread rapidly along application chains. AI-driven ransomware and malware attacks are on the rise. Automated cyberattacks targeting critical infrastructure pose greater threats. The automation of cyberattack processes against critical infrastructure continues to increase. As large models are widely applied in key areas of domestic social production such as industrial control, energy grids, government affairs, and finance, cyberattacks targeting industry-specific large models have extended to the infrastructure supporting their operation.
Faced with these challenges, we should comprehensively advance the modernization of China’s national cybersecurity defense system and capabilities.
We will strengthen an integrated cybersecurity defense system, and enhance top-level design and supervision over cybersecurity. Focusing on new fields and scenarios of cybersecurity, we will continue to improve the legal and regulatory system. Targeting key risks in cybersecurity, we will carry out a series of special campaigns to combat cybercrime and safeguard cyberspace security.
We will strengthen collaborative cybersecurity defense mechanisms. We will deepen the three-level threat intelligence sharing and collaborative defense mechanism among the state, industries, and enterprises, and build a comprehensive, flexibly dispatched, and rapidly responsive collaborative defense system.
We will continue to consolidate security capabilities for critical infrastructure. We will enhance the cybersecurity resilience of critical infrastructure, and strengthen supply chain security supervision, major vulnerability notification, emergency drills, and other work. We will ensure the operational security of critical infrastructure and improve their cybersecurity operation capabilities.
We will enhance AI security protection and governance, and systematically advance the development of AI legal systems. We will establish and improve a classification and grading mechanism for AI applications and corresponding compliance laws and regulations, promote the construction of an AI security protection system, and strengthen security supervision over AI applications in key industries.
We will leverage AI to boost cybersecurity capabilities. We will expand the application of AI technologies in cybersecurity, including threat detection and noise reduction, cybersecurity operations, offensive and defensive intelligent agents, and deepfake detection.
We will strengthen the endogenous and application security of large models. We will enhance the security of large model infrastructure and vulnerability management of open-source frameworks, improve model security protection and cyberattack resilience, and upgrade security protection for large model application systems in key industries.
We will foster an open and collaborative cybersecurity industrial ecosystem and strengthen innovation in core and key technologies for the cybersecurity industry. Enterprises will be encouraged to tackle core technological problems and enhance the core competitiveness of products and services. Focusing on key fields such as independent chips and information technology application innovation systems, we will launch major national cybersecurity technology projects, support joint innovation among enterprises, universities, and research institutes, and promote basic research, industrialization, and talent development.
We will promote the internationalization of China’s cybersecurity industry. We will support leading domestic cybersecurity enterprises in expanding their products and services to overseas markets, with a focus on countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative such as Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.
We will strengthen international exchanges and cooperation on cybersecurity. We will actively participate in the formulation of international rules and standards for cybersecurity and data security, and enhance the global influence and competitiveness of domestic cybersecurity enterprises.
