I would say, as others have pointed out, that this is in 
  retaliation to the pieces about graft and wealth building 
  by CN officials counter to the spirit of the revolution 
  because it could cause internal PLA dissent/strife -and to 
  see if they could obtain info about sourc(e)s of that info.

Absolutely. But the greater context is that they see this as a skirmish in the larger campaign to discredit the PRC's current leaders, foment discontent, overthrow the government, and set up a (US-controlled) democracy.

You have presented nothing to connect that to this, except the obvious one: that state sponsored actions have state objectives behind them. You're arguing by insinuation and equivocation, and present nothing relevant to this event. It's like a comment section on the Stuxnet worm being inundated with comments about Iran sponsoring suicide bombers in Israel. Yes, it's related, but the volume of "evidence" you've added to this discussion suggests you just want to have a conversation about something else.

I thought it was helpful to see a rational state objective behind why the Chinese military may be hacking the New York Times (the article leaves motive unanswered beyond insinuating general malevolence).

"It's like a comment section on the Stuxnet worm being inundated with comments about Iran sponsoring suicide bombers in Israel."

This may not be a news flash for Israelis or Americans, but I bet it would make for informed reading for an Iranian (or even for an American sitting next to an Iranian). I've found foreign articles on current events illuminating of my own cultural blinders.

...except the GP provided no rational state objective for this except insinuating general malevolence as perceived by the Chinese government. That's my whole point. There's no argument here except equivocation.

> This may not be a news flash for Israelis or Americans, but I bet it would make for informed reading for an Iranian (or even for an American sitting next to an Iranian). I've found foreign articles on current events illuminating of my own cultural blinders.

Sure, but Stuxnet was built for very specific purposes, and sponsorship of suicide bombers is so far down the list of motives that it becomes essentially a non sequitur. However, it does achieve very well a change in conversation from the implications of introducing a computer worm to sabotage a nuclear program to a discussion of how evil a regime is. The former is a conversation worth having, no matter how much you feel Stuxnet was justified.

Here, we have a comment about the "context" of this action, which is summed up for us pretty well above as "they see this as a skirmish in the larger campaign to discredit the PRC's current leaders, foment discontent, overthrow the government, and set up a (US-controlled) democracy" (which, incidentally, sounds exactly like the greater context for the great firewall and state-controlled media, as well). This completely ignores the very specific correlation the Times points out with a series of articles they ran on Premier Wen Jiabao. That accusation is much more specific then the "context" found above.

Well, you implied in your comment below that you weren't interested in a simple "discussion of how evil a regime is". Very understandable and I agree with you. Yet the thing is that without this context Americans just don't understand why the Chinese military would get involved on a negative story about a leader. It seems like a gross overreaction. Indeed, without understanding the context it just seems "evil".

Until you realize that undercutting popular support for a leader is step 1 in the PNAC handbook for democratic change. We accuse them of atrocities, we accuse them of holding WMDs, we accuse them of suppressing freedom of speech, we get their population to believe that they are illegitimate by funding "democracy" movements. Then the fighting starts and we drop off weapons with the rebels, even if we know full well this could result in something worse ("Obama administration clearly was worried about the consequences of its hidden hand in helping arm Libyan militants").

Now half a dozen countries are burning across the Middle East in the name of setting up US-controlled democracies.

Yet most Americans don't get why the Chinese would defend their leaders reflexively or why the Chinese military would hit out. The view goes something like this: Sure, Wen Jiaobao may have skimmed some money off the top, but politicians are constantly caught in scandals and China has gotten richer while the US has gotten poorer. So China's corruption isn't fatal to growth, while America's bank/Fed chimera may well be. And yet America wants to set China on fire just like it has so many other countries in the world, first with words and then with guns.

So, yes, I do believe this context is relevant. You don't need to agree with their views, but you do need to understand why they see this as self-defense against US imperialism.

Again, all you've done is repeat the same explanation for the Great Firewall and censorship of news as soon as it starts to appear to be capable of "fomenting dissent". It's worth noting that many in China do not share your view, and we have the weibo messages to prove it. While there is certainly a good bit of animosity aimed at the US (both well-sourced and born of invented stories), it's ridiculous to claim that even a large portion of the populace believes that they need to be protected from revolution brought about by american psyops in the news.

Assuming that of them certainly sells the people of China short, not to mention the complete lack of agency you seem to believe the people that actually live in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, etc had in deciding to revolt in the first place. It's not clear what your personal belief is here (you're only reporting on the "context", after all), but you've repeated the libya arms thing enough that I'll assuage your fears: look back through history. Nation building by rebel proxy does not work as intended. You only have to look at your so called new "US-controlled democracies" to dispel any idea of US control.

Meanwhile, the new york times reported on corruption in those around Wen Jiabao, and the Chinese government hacked into their systems apparently so they could find out who provided information to the reporters and how they got the information that they did. It's a silly strawman to suppose that "without this context Americans just don't understand why the Chinese military would get involved on a negative story about a leader." No, it's extremely clear, and I think few here were very surprised.

  the complete lack of agency you seem to believe the people 
  that actually live in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, etc had 
  in deciding to revolt in the first place. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/21/barack-obama-ara...

  Egypt's revolution provided the first hurdle. Obama was 
  criticised for backing stability as the drama of Tahrir 
  Square unfolded. But on 1 February came his call for 
  Mubarak to step down "now". As the New York Times wrote: 
  "Obama upended three decades of American relations with its 
  most stalwart ally in the Arab world, putting the weight of 
  the United States squarely on the side of the Arab street."

As for this:

  look back through history. Nation building by rebel proxy 
  does not work 

Nation building doesn't work. Revolution by rebel proxy sure does. Governments don't overthrow themselves. As for history, the American Revolution succeeded because the French were pumping in money. The Vietnamese beat off the Americans because they had the Chinese and Soviets in their corner. The Afghans repelled the USSR with the help of the US and the Stinger missile. You will be hard pressed to find a revolution that won or even began without the intervention of foreign powers; where are the armaments coming from in the first place? The record shows that the Arab Spring was caused by US training, funding, armaments, and media support.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/world/15aid.html?pagewante...

  “We learned how to organize and build coalitions,” said 
  Bashem Fathy, a founder of the youth movement that 
  ultimately drove the Egyptian uprisings. Mr. Fathy, who 
  attended training with Freedom House, said, “This certainly 
  helped during the revolution.”

  At one time the United States financed political reform 
  groups by channeling money through the Egyptian government. 
  But in 2005, under a Bush administration initiative, local 
  groups were given direct grants, much to the chagrin of 
  Egyptian officials.

  The Egyptian government even appealed to groups like 
  Freedom House to stop working with local political 
  activists and human rights groups.

  “They were constantly saying: ‘Why are you working with 
  those groups, they are nothing. All they have are slogans,’ 
  ” said Sherif Mansour, an Egyptian activist and a senior 
  program officer for the Middle East and North Africa at 
  Freedom House.

  When their appeals to the United States government failed, 
  the Egyptian authorities reacted by restricting the 
  activities of the American nonprofit organizations.

  In the face of government opposition, some groups moved 
  their training sessions to friendlier countries like Jordan 
  or Morocco. They also sent activists to the United States 
  for training.

Further documentation on this topic is not hard to find. But feel free to minimize the explicit, acknowledged support of the most powerful country in the world for violent democratic revolution in favor of local "agency". As for whether this article on the #2 leader in China was printed at random, The New York Times has a track record of coordinating with the US government:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/world/asia/22pakistan.html...

  The New York Times had agreed to temporarily withhold 
  information about Mr. Davis's ties to the agency at the 
  request of the Obama administration, which argued that 
  disclosure of his specific job would put his life at risk. 
  Several foreign news organizations have disclosed some 
  aspects of Mr. Davis's work with the C.I.A. On Monday,  
  American officials lifted their request to withhold 
  publication, though George Little, a C.I.A. spokesman, 
  declined any further comment.

http://www.salon.com/2011/02/21/nyt_16/

  It's one thing for a newspaper to withhold information 
  because they believe its disclosure would endanger lives. 
  But here, the U.S. Government has spent weeks making public 
  statements that were misleading in the extreme -- Obama's 
  calling Davis "our diplomat in Pakistan" -- while the NYT 
  deliberately concealed facts undermining those government 
  claims because government officials told them to do so. 
  That's called being an active enabler of government 
  propaganda. ...

  Following the dictates of the U.S. Government for what they 
  can and cannot publish is, of course, anything but new for 
  the New York Times. In his lengthy recent article on 
  WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, NYT Executive Editor Bill 
  Keller tried to show how independent his newspaper is by 
  boasting that they published their story of the Bush NSA 
  program even though he has "vivid memories of sitting in 
  the Oval Office as President George W. Bush tried to 
  persuade [him] and the paper's publisher to withhold the 
  eavesdropping story"; Keller neglected to mention that the 
  paper learned about the illegal program in mid-2004, but 
  followed Bush's orders to conceal it from the public for 
  over a year -- until after Bush was safely re-elected.

In other words, whether under Bush or Obama, the NYT has an acknowledged track record of coordinating with the US government on stories that could result in international incidents. A hit piece on one of the top people in the Chinese government might not have been done at the State Department's request, but it certainly would not have been published over the State Department's objection. The fact that its effect was to sow discontent with China's leadership is not unnoticed by anyone skeptical of US-exported democratic revolution.

While I totally understand and don't debate that the US has supported many of the revolutions in the Middle East, there is a fundamental difference between supporting and creating said movements.

As far as I can tell, the US has been a follower, not a leader, in these movements. Sure, activists have been trained in the US. That's been the case for decades though, and it took organization and significant change and economic pressure — not brought about by the US — in the region to create an the conditions for change.

I think this comes close to accusing an umbrella seller of conspiring with the weather because she happens to push umbrellas when it rains and switches to selling lemonade when it's hot. I think the NYT and Salon both have readerhips and understand them and try to ride waves of interest.

I think there are coincidences and occasionally there could be coercion (don't publish on account of national security) but I do not see it as "an organ of the gov't". It's self interest. In other words it's not comparable to XinHua News, as you're implying.

W/re ME revolutions. All those examples were in places where the outcome was nearly inevitable (needed some logistical/moral support) and the US/EU didn't want to appear to be on the 'wrong side' of history. Witness CN and RU. Specially RU tends to pour arms into those conflicts to upset the West, to some extent --I don't fully understand their intent but they are unsuccessful in much but delaying the inevitable.

Perhaps. The bigger 'threat' is not so much from foreign media per se, but from internal Chinese (activists) who would translate and disseminate this information via various channels. It's not as though most Chinese know how/bother to avoid the GFC or know how to read English. It's the internal 'conspiracy theorists' and anti-propagandists who the gov't fear the most which is why they have introduced laws governing internet cafes, ISPs, blogs, microblogs, and hire thousands to scrub sites of offending info, etc.

The gov't mostly want to control internal communication. I think in this case they were looking for info on where the NYT got this information, so they could track down and rectify the sourc(e)s.