A Study On UK's Participation In The Making Of International Cyber Rules

The making of international rules of cyberspace is the basis for maintaining the peace and stability of the international community.To a certain extent,the study of UK's practice of promoting the formulation,interpretation and application of the rules in this field and UK's position formed in this process can make up for the lack of research on UK's cyber claims in the academia of China.The analysis of the national needs of the UK in cyberspace and the advantages and disadvantages of UK's positions will provide reference and enlightenment for China's practice of better engagement of international rule making.To achieve these goals,literature research and comparative analysis methods are applied:Based on literature research of official documents and academic works,comparative analysis is adopted to mainly study the UK's practice and positions in the application of existing international law to cyberspace,the implementation and new development of norms of responsible state behaviour,and the formulation of new cyberspace conventions.Claims of the US,France,China and Russia etc.are also incidentally studied.The characteristics of and lessons from UK's practice are then concluded.The first chapter outlines the history of UK's participation in the evolution of international law and its representative practice of international rule making in cyberspace.In history,UK,as the empire where “the sun never sets”,based on internal needs and supported by national hard power and theoretical soft power,not only has provided the source for the formation of international law with state practice,but also has promoted the observance of international law under the guidance of the spirit of the rule of law and the awareness of rules.However,the ultimate goal of these is to safeguard national interests.The British practice and position in cyberspace possess the same performance and purpose.The second chapter takes the application of existing international law as the main content,analyzing UK's positions,reasons and ensuing influences on specific issues.UK denies that sovereignty directly sets obligations for states.This direct denial not only violates the regular requirements of cyberspace,ignores historical national practice and opinio juris,but also may affect the standards of applying principle of Non-intervention.UK actively advocates the application of the right of self-defense and international humanitarian law in cyberspace.The proposed application standards are unreasonable,ignoring technical shortcomings and legal dilemmas,bringing the danger of militarization and cyberwar.UK views secrecy as an exception to the notification obligation of countermeasures.This means disadvantages like endangering the peaceful settlement of disputes,infringing the rights of the responsible state,and retarding development of confidence-building measures.Compared with a collective attribution mechanism,the UK prefers national attribution,which is not conducive to reducing malicious activities in cyberspace.The third chapter analyzes the attitude of UK towards norms of responsible state behaviour,and then analyzes the difficulties and feasibility of a new cyber convention.To meet national needs,UK actively participates in the formulation and implementation of norms of responsible state behaviour.UK also supports new norms like the norm on the protection of Internet public core and general availability and the norm on avoiding intellectual property theft,and refuses to accept norms that are inconsistent with its strategy,like the norm on refraining from offensive uses of ICTs.UK denies the necessity and feasibility of the new convention for reasons of technology,law enforcement,ideological bias,etc.,but this claim does not meet the needs of cyberspace.The fourth chapter summarizes the characteristics of UK's participation in cyber rule making.On the one hand,UK has outstanding active participation and constantly enriches the national propositions;On the other hand,UK's claims possess vivid westernization.This westernization is reflected in common features of western countries,such as focusing on offensive activities,holding double standards,criticizing the ideology of non-western countries.Also,it is reflected in the trend of being partial to US where the views of the EU and US are different.The fifth chapter combines the advantages and disadvantages of UK's practice,and puts forward that,in the content aspect,China can adhere to more detailed standards of principles of sovereignty,the right of self-defense and the international humanitarian law,promote norms of responsible state behaviour in line with the interests of non-western countries,and participate in the formulation of new cyber conventions;While in the method aspect,China needs to strengthen academic research and deepen Sino-British cooperation.