Yet, surveillance and cyber attacks are not the worst part of the story in the China-U.S. row over cyber security. Worse still is the fact that the thief is pointing his finger at the victim. The U.S. government has proved itself to be a thief disguised as a policeman. The criminal has framed a case committed by himself against the victim. When a thief is lying, he has one advantage: experience. American accusations of China's cyber attacks are full of details because the only thing it needs to do is substitute China as the perpetrator of the crimes. Once one accusing narrative was produced, it kicked off a process of repetition among the American commercial media, congressmen and think tanks. More evil scenarios were created. The rest of the five eyes countries followed suit, forming in this way a China-bashing chorus.

This American propaganda machine is so powerful that many of its believers were willfully blind to the fact that the United States hacked into Chinese key infrastructure for years. The worst part of the story is that the liar is also a hypocrite. Hacking brings physical damage. Framing and hypocrisy feed anger into Chinese public.

While the Chinese public mostly ridicule the cyber attacks accusations the United States unleashed on China, many of them don't reject values such as freedom of expression or free flow of information. Neither do they belittle Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Nor do they hate the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. What polarizes the Chinese public is their attitude to China's Internet management policies and their varying ability to observe the divergence between American domestic practices of its values and its foreign policies aimed at regime change, as well as the gap between idealistic statements and harsh realities.

Many Chinese, therefore, subscribe to the American conceptions about Internet governance as expressed in President Obama's 2009 Shanghai Town Hall speech, former Secretary of State Clinton's 2010 Internet freedom speech, as well as Secretary of State Kerry's most recent meeting with Chinese Internet activists. Many others, however, observe that a singular American conception of democracy is being de-legitimized in many parts of the developing world, its accompanying discourse saturated with freedom narratives fail to inspire, and alternative ways to build a better society based on one's own culture, tradition, and history should be explored and respected.

That is why Google's staged departure from China polarized the Chinese public and media. Google showcased this drama partly to test the power of Obama administration's new statecraft of using new media as diplomatic tools. The cyber security issues cloaked with Internet freedom narratives propagated by the Obama administration pose an ideological threat to China.

Consequently, last week's formation of the Central Leading Group on Cyber Security can be interpreted as a defense against external threats. It also indicates that China realizes that it is almost impossible to convince the United States that China is also the victim of cyber attacks.

American foreign policy is often marked with a zero-sum mentality. You give them an inch and they'll take a mile. Against this awareness, China eventually made the right move to get better prepared on both fronts.

The author is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit: http://china.org.cn/opinion/xupeixi.htm

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.

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