Obama warned that he was prepared to impose sanctions on Beijing if cybertheft continued unabated. Or what do you still need to see?
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Despite the ceremonial honours, the Chinese Communist leader, coming to Washington on the heels of Pope Francis, can expect nothing like the wall-to-wall United States news coverage given the popular Pontiff, who drew adoring crowds wherever he went.
Mr. Obama made clear, however, that sanctions remained on the table. “Since yesterday evening, I have had three meetings with President Obama“.
President Xi will be laughing all the way home.
Our correspondent in Washington, Stefan Grobe, witnessed events:”Despite the red-carpet treatment for the Chinese leader, there seems to be little personal warmth between Obama and Xi Jinping – and even less trust”. China has repeatedly denied being engaged in cyber spying. That all I consider to be progress.
President Xi, beaming, said relations between China and the United States are “at a new starting point.”. “We will be watching carefully to make an assessment as to what progress has been made in this area”. “We honor the ties between our nations and our people”, he said.
He reiterated this warning during the joint briefing, noting that the USA would apply sanctions “and whatever other tools we have in our toolkit” to stop cybercriminals “either retrospectively or prospectively”. And they’re not unique to China. “There are a range of tools that are at the president’s disposal to respond to those concerns”.
He said he had learned on his visit to the United States that the American people have a lot of goodwill towards the Chinese people. I can’t guarantee the actions of every single American. “They will stay in close communication on respective and global major economic issues”, Xi said.
The two sides also said they would set up a high-level joint dialogue on cybercrime in which senior officials from both countries would be able to review allegations of cyber-intrusions.
Inside the room President Xi said he and President Obama had both “demonstrated a firm commitment” to a new model for their relationship. The guests included Mark Zuckerberg, who is try ing to persuade the Chinese government to lift a ban on Fa cebook, the company he foun ded, and Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple, which sells more iPhones in China than in any other country.
On Friday, Xi also pledged 3 billion dollars to the newly launched South-South Climate Cooperation Fund, Ban noted. Because cyberwar is cheaper, less unsafe, costs fewer lives (at least so far), and leaves fewer fingerprints, the United States, China, and many other countries are increasingly investing resources in it. We have more than 600 million of netizens.
In what was possibly the final summit between the pair in a two-way setting – US President Barack Obama leaves office in 2017 – China sought to emphasize cooperation amid concerns the next administration may take a tougher stance against it.
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“China strongly opposes and combats the theft of commercial secrets and other kinds of hacking attacks”, Xi said at the press conference.
