China says suffers "massive" Internet spy damage

By Chris Buckley

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has suffered "massive" losses of state secrets through the Internet, a senior official said, as China faces reports that it has raided the computer networks of Western powers.

Vice Minister of Information Industry Lou Qinjian said his country was the target of a campaign of computer infiltration and subversion and proposed a raft of counter-measures including toughened censorship, new security bodies and commercial controls.

He did not address recent Western allegations of cyber-spying against China.

"The Internet has become the main technological channel for external espionage activities against our core, vital departments," he wrote in Chinese Cadres Tribune, a magazine.

"In recent years Party, government and military organs and national defense scientific research units have had many major cases of loss, theft and leakage of secrets, and the damage to national interests has been massive and shocking."

He did not give details of any specific cases.

China's computer networks were riddled with security holes that made a mockery of the ruling Communist Party's censorship and exposed valuable secrets to spies, Lou said.

The United States and other "hostile" powers were exploiting those weakness and their dominance of technology to use the Internet for "political infiltration", he said.