Against a backdrop of grand pageantry, President Barack Obama said Friday he and Chinese President Xi Jinping had agreed not to conduct or support cybertheft of business secrets, with the US president delivering a blunt message to his Chinese counterpart that such espionage “has to stop”.
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“We agreed to new channels of communication to reduce the risk of miscalculations between our militaries”, Obama said. President Xi said confrontation on the issue is not the right choice.
Citing concerns over national security, the Obama Administration has decided that they will not publicly blame China for the hack, even though conventional wisdom (and a fair amount of now-public evidence) suggests that they were responsible.
“Islands in the South China Sea since ancient times are Chinese territory”, Xi said.
“The Secretary-General also welcomes the United States’ reaffirmation of its commitment to significant emissions reductions and its pledge to the Green Climate Fund”, the statement continued.
Xi responded by warning against “politicising” the threat from computer hacking and argued that, with the world’s largest number of internet users and less developed offensive capabilities, China had more to lose from cybercrime. He said that while they did not discuss specific cases of alleged Chinese cybertheft, he mentioned the executive order he signed in April that authorized the imposition of economic sanctions for malicious cyber-acts.
“We did have candid discussions on the East and South China Seas, and I reiterated the right of all countries to freedom of navigation and overflight and to unimpeded commerce”, Obama said.
But, Obama said in a joint news conference with Xi on Friday, “the question now is: Are words followed by actions?” The USA and China will also create a body of experts to look into computer network defenses. “We have the right to uphold our own territorial sovereignty and lawful legitimate maritime rights and interests”.
In conjunction with the state visit, Xi announced a blueprint for a nationwide cap-and-trade system beginning in 2017 that would cover highly polluting sectors ranging from power generation to papermaking.
Since the establishment of diplomatic ties 36 years ago, China-U.S. relations have forged ahead and achieved historic developments despite ups and downs.
The Chinese were nice enough to allow the President to talk tough for a little while to save face, but the bottom line is precisely what was expected: a “common understanding” with China that cyber-espionage is just very bad, and it shouldn’t happen any more, which will allow China to sustain its preferred narrative about how it hates hackers more than anyone.
“And I encouraged a resolution between claimants in this area”.
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“This is the beginning of establishing trust, and that’s a good thing, but I think we’ll now have to see how it goes”, Danny Weitzner, director of the MIT Cybersecurity and Internet Policy Research Initiative, told the Herald.
