Cyber Power And Great Power Gaming

In contemporary international relations,cyberspace has become an important battlefield for great power games.With the update of information technology and the expansion of digital frontiers,new governance challenges such as cybersecurity,the issue of cross-border data flow,and transnational cybercrime,have emerged.Technological changes and new challenges have impacted and influenced online business and economic models,social production,and political logic within cyberspace.The state needs to make decisions on how to protect and develop its interests in these areas.Cyber power view includes ideas of how a state views its identity,defines its interests,and recognizes its strategic environment in cyberspace.Cyber power view can thus influence the type of cyber power a state chooses to exercise,and determine the state’s gaming behavior in cyberspace.Based on the constructivism theory of international relations,this study attempts to construct and verify a theoretical framework of cyber power views and cyber powerseeking paths of state actors,which can be used to explain great powers’ gaming behavior in cyberspace.Firstly,according to the classification of power in classical theories of international relations,power in cyberspace is divided into “compulsory cyber power”,“institutional cyber power”,“structural cyber power” and “productive cyber power”.Secondly,this paper classifies three major views of state power-“hegemonic power view”,“normative power view” and “balanced power view”-based on a study of strategy culture.Respectively,three main views of national cyber power are analyzed and classified: “hegemonic cyber power view”,“normative cyber power view”,and “balanced cyber power view”.From the views of national cyber power,four types of cyber powers are brought into focus,and the path construction model of different types of cyber power is choosen.Finally,this thesis conducts theoretical verification through an analysis of the representative state actors of these three cyber power views: the United States,the European Union,and China.The framework of this thesis can partly explain the complex logic of competition and cooperation among the major powers in cyberspace,which may be helpful to understand the game logic of great powers in order to build a stable international pattern in cyberspace.