Every year, tens of thousands of Chinese organizations spend weeks bracing for an attack that could come at any hour, from any direction, with no advance warning of when or how – standing watch around the clock to defend their networks. The exercise is known as HuWang Operation (护网行动, hù wǎng, literally “protect the network”), or simply HW. Organized by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), HW has evolved from a limited pilot covering “some important industries” into an annual nationwide stress test.1 The 2026 edition, which ran through July and August, marked its tenth anniversary. Its scope and priorities have shifted alongside changes in China’s cybersecurity policies and legal framework, with AI assuming an increasingly prominent role in recent editions.2
Most importantly, HW has become a significant driver of demand for China’s domestic cybersecurity industry, helping push the sector from compliance-driven spending toward attack-defense capabilities, and an increasingly central mechanism through which China cultivates and evaluates offensive and defensive cyber talent at scale.
This piece examines what sets HW apart from a conventional penetration test or exercise, walks through how the exercise actually runs, from months of preparation through the “wartime” response period to post-battle review, and compares it with the U.S.’s closest analog, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Cyber Storm exercise, whose tenth edition took place last week. It then traces HW’s evolution over the past decade against China’s shifting legal and geopolitical landscape, before closing with the exercise’s broader ripple effects across the cybersecurity industry, talent development, and China’s APT ecosystem.3
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Article Link: HuWang—“Protect the Network”: Inside China’s Largest Nationwide Live-Fire Cyber Exercise