Digging through some old files and found this from 1996:

:::::::::::::::::::::

May 10, 1996, Friday

SECTION: Part 3 Asia-Pacific; CHINA; MILITARY; EE/D2609/S2

LENGTH: 308 words

HEADLINE: INFORMATION WARFARE;
China: characteristics of information warfare explored

SOURCE: Source: Jiefangjun Bao’, Beijing, in Chinese 16 Apr 96 p6

BODY:
[6] Text of report by Chinese army newspaper Jiefangjun Bao’

At present, information warfare remains a very abstract concept. In order
to clearly understand and master information warfare, we have to conduct a
more detailed analysis of information warfare by dissecting it into a number
of combat forms, each with a unique content, including an all-frequency
electromagnetic war, a computer virus war, a precision war, a small-scale war,
a non-destructive war, a geophysical war, and so on. After categorizing these
combat forms, we can divide information warfare into two major types: the
“visible” information war and the “invisible” information war. Only by
conducting such a detailed analysis of information warfare will we be able to
know clearly about human conceptual and behavioural changes wrought by
information warfare.

Owing to the increasing internationalization of information technology
development and the integration of social, political and economic development,
people now have to employ stealthier, more indirect and more “surplus” combat
means when applying war means to resolve bilateral political contradictions.
This means that along with the development of information technology and the
constant perfection of information warfare, “visible” information wars are
going to be reduced in scale so that it will be more difficult to predict when
and where a “visible” information war will break out and what type of a threat a
“visible information war will create. As ” invisible” information wars are going
to be waged like “the water and the sky blended in one colour” , it will be
especially hard to know their “true faces” . Thus we should reach this
conclusion: Information wars in an information era are going to be small-scale,
difficult to locate, short and quick wars known for multiple and tremendous
threats.