WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama will confront Chinese President Xi Jinping at talks in Beijing next week over deep U.S. concerns about cyber spying by China’s government and military and will insist that it be stopped, senior U.S. officials said yesterday.
The officials, briefing reporters before Obama’s trip to Beijing for an Asia-Pacific summit and one-on-one meetings with Xi, said that while U.S. complaints had brought about a temporary reduction of Chinese cyber espionage, there had been no fundamental change in behavior.
Cybersecurity has been a significant irritant in ties. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation last month said hackers it believes to be backed by the Chinese government recently launched more attacks on U.S. companies, a charge China rejected as unfounded.
In May, the United States charged five Chinese military officers with hacking American firms, prompting China to shut down a bilateral working group on cybersecurity.
Obama’s message to Xi will be that China, the world’s second largest economy after the United States, cannot continue seeking competitive advantage over other countries using methods that violate international norms, one of the officials said. China has denied the accusations.
“We’ve been very clear about how strongly we object to any cyber-enabled theft of trade secrets and other sensitive information from our companies, whoever may be doing it,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said earlier on Tuesday in a speech at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.
