I'm not saying there are no hack attempts coming from Chinese IP-addresses, but the proof that this is "state operated hacking" is thin or non-existent. I wonder why all the headlines always talk about China. Is there no problem with cybercriminals from Russia, Ukraine, or even from the USA? Doesn't all economic espionage go both ways? This China bashing looks like a media campaign to create a new big bad cyber enemy to distract from actual problems (like lack of NOAA funding), to get new privacy-destroying legislation to "secure the homeland" passed, to get funding for NSA, to get good deals for government contractors. Maybe I'm just paranoid...
Meanwhile the US government spends billions of tax money to employ the smartest hackers they can find. If they all would be employed to create secure software, secure networks, find and fix leaks in existing software, there would be no hacking problem. But somehow this is not a priority. If only one NSA guy was employed at NOAA to make sure their web servers are patched and hardened, this would not have happened. There will always people trying to hack your systems, no matter how hard you scream it's unfair.