It seems to me that the word "sophisticated" is being misused here. Rather, I would say "knowledgeable."<p>If you, even within your general field (say mathematics), talk to an expert, he will easily give you arguments that will seem sophisticated to you, and simple to him. He's spent more time learning, getting familiar with, and thinking about those arguments, and that's the simple reason.<p>Here, the Chinese government is through a nationalistic sentiment endorsing hacking and education about the same. It is a large country, and many of the people conducting the attacks were not amateurs, using already established techniques. They were professionals, I wager, learning, getting familiar with, and thinking about how to attain their hacking-goals.<p>An educated person, in any subject, will seem infinitely more sophisticated than a non-educated one. And I argue that China, more than anybody else, invests into young men doing just that.