A Study of Chinese Policy Attention on Cybersecurity

The rising number of cyberattacks and cybercriminals around the world has put major threats on the cybersecurity and even the national security of many countries. In response, governments started to introduce policies and regulations to improve cybersecurity. It is increasingly realized that effective cybersecurity policy making largely depends upon optimized policy attention and the effective use of public resources. This article draws on the “attention-driven policy choice model” and the punctuated equilibrium theory to analyze the relationship between policy attention allocation, policy agenda setting, and the choice of policy tools in different periods of cybersecurity development. Using Chinese cybersecurity development as the main context, content analysis of policy texts was conducted to examine the pathway of cybersecurity policy development in China between 1994 and 2019. The findings suggest that there is evidence for punctuated equilibrium with policy stagnation and incrementality being broken up by major events which shift policy attention and subsequently affects agenda setting and the choice of policy tools. The findings of this article will provide important implications for the development of strategic foresight of cybersecurity and the effective use of public resources to improve cybersecurity.