Source: HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR., WSJ Opinion:
. . . If China’s hacking is essentially a power play, silence is the wrong answer. In the early 1990s, the world studiously ignored evidence that China’s military was behind much of the piracy in the vital trade lanes of the South China Sea. The parallel is a close one, because China’s motive appeared to be an assertion of sovereignty as much as a grab for booty.Hong Kong, still a British possession at the time, bravely collected the evidence, including serial numbers of Chinese patrol boats involved in the attacks. But it was allowed to present its findings only orally to the U.N. International Maritime Organization—because a written report would have required the agency to acknowledge the information and act on it.
Nobody wanted to know because nobody knew how to do deal with Chinese state-sponsored piracy, though it turned out the best way to deal with it was simply to advertise what was known about China’s participation in piracy.