Since Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced a "sophisticated state actor" had tried to hack into Australia's major political parties' networks, the government has shut down any efforts to pin the blame on China.
Mr Morrison dodged multiple questions from 3AW broadcaster Neil Mitchell about China's involvement in the hack this morning.
"It's a government, but we're not in any position to attribute it to any nation," Mr Morrison said.
The breach targeted the Liberal Party, the Labor Party and the National Party.
It follows a similar attack on Parliament House.
"We can say with some confidence that it's a state-based actor based on the types of infrastructure, the computer system they've used, where they've got them around the world and their tactics when inside systems," he told Today this morning.
"But no-one in government is saying it's China."
But when it comes to state-sponsored cyber-attacks in Australia, there's only one usual suspect, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's (ASPI) Danielle Cave.
Ms Cave is the Deputy Head of the ASPI's International Cyber Policy Centre.
Why China?
"Historically the Chinese state has been one of the most significant intelligence collectors in Australia," Ms Cave told nine.com.au.
"History teaches us they are a very likely culprit."
Other countries have the means to attempt a cyber-attack on Australian systems, but not the motivation.
"If you think about the other state actors that would have the cyber capabilities to pull breaches like this, like Russia, North Korea, Iran; those states are less interested in what's happening in Australia," she said.
"China is very, very interested."
Geography is the major motivating factor. As a Western country in the Eastern hemisphere, Australia is closely allied to countries China does not have strong connections with.
There's also a substantial diaspora of Chinese migrants in Australia, and we remain major trading partners.
What do they want?
Unlike the other major player in the cyber-hacking game, Russia, China is not seeking to sway any elections.
"The Chinese state takes a very different approach to Russia," Ms Cave said.
"I think it's unlikely they will attempt to run covert cyber-intelligence operations in Australia like Russia did in Europe or the US."
Instead the goal is intelligence-gathering.
"We don't know what was potentially taken, and we also don't know how that could be used," Ms Cave said.
"Those networks have been a goldmine in very useful intelligence."
It flies in the face of Russian actions in the 2016 US elections.
Russian hackers successfully infiltrated the Clinton campaign in 2016, and leaked embarrassing emails from campaign chairman John Podesta through Wikileaks.
Why isn't Australia accusing China?
Even if Australian security agencies are able to determine that China tried to hack into our political party systems, we are unlikely to see any accusations from Canberra.
"The Chinese government has been responsible for many attacks," Ms Cave said.
But Canberra has only publicly rebuked them once.
Making an accusation against China would be diplomatically tricky, especially if the attack is deemed to be "legitimate intelligence collection".
The new spycraft
The James Bond movies were never the most accurate depiction of espionage.
But now much of the work of foreign intelligence services is done by people behind a desk who never need a passport.
And the budget bottom line makes it particularly appealing.
"Cyberespionage is fairly inexpensive," Ms Cave told nine.com.au.
"It's not as risky as human intelligence collection from the field, so it's become pretty popular with all countries, because it's easy and cheap."
And while China may be our most likely adversary in cyber espionage, it's something almost every country does.
That likely includes Australia.
