Sometimes a huge amount of insight can fit into two tweets:

.cn sees cyberwar on West as an active defense. Control of info (Great Firewall) is protection, not repression. No room for compromise here.

One reason .cn wages cyberwar on the West is .cn belief that we (esp .us) wage cyberwar as psyops on .cn, eg, Western values attack Marxism

Regardless of how we see it, that's how China sees it.

Notice that both the operation of the Great Firewall and the approval of information operations falls under the direction of Li Changchun, the propaganda chief on the standing committee.