An investigation into Chinese cybercrime and the underground economy in comparison with the West

Although China has the world’s largest Internet population with over 420 million users, its Internet penetration rate is only 31.6%. The country faces a potentially large growth of cybercrime activity as the penetration rate increases. Cybercrime could increase due to China’s low average monthly income, strong educational focus on mathematics and science, flourishing underground economy, and the Chinese hacktivists called “red hackers,” which aim to protect the communist state from political humiliation by the West. Concludes that it is within the interest of Western countries to increase attention to China’s cyber-security.