Conceding that cybersecurity will put “significant strain” on bilateral ties with China if not resolved, US President Barack Obama has said his administration was prepared to take countervailing actions in order to get the Chinese attention.
The US President’s statement comes about 10 days before he is scheduled to host his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at the White House for a state dinner. His remarks on cybersecurity threat from China shows the tensed relationship between the two countries ahead of the important visit.
“We are preparing a number of measures that will indicate to the Chinese that this is not just a matter of us being mildly upset, but is something that will put significant strains on the bilateral relationship if not resolved, and that we are prepared to take some countervailing actions in order to get their attention,” Obama said in response to a question at the Business Roundtable headquarters in Washington DC.
Obama said cybersecurity will probably be one of the biggest topics that he would discuss with Xi next week.
“We have repeatedly said to the Chinese government that we understand traditional intelligence-gathering functions that all states, including us, engage in. And we will do everything we can to stop you from getting state secrets or transcripts of a meeting that I have had, but we understand you’re going to be trying to do that,” he said.
“That is fundamentally different from your government or its proxies engaging directly in industrial espionage and stealing trade secrets, stealing proprietary information from companies. That we consider an act of aggression that has to stop,” Obama said.
Hoping to get the issue resolved, Obama said ultimately the goal should be to have some basic international framework that won’t be perfect because there’s still going to be a lot of non-state actors and hackers who are very good. “And we are still going to have good defence and still have to be able to find the fingerprints of those and apprehend them, and stop networks that are engaged in cybercrime,” he said.
Meanwhile, Obama emphasised that “among states, there has to be a framework that is analogous to what we have done with nuclear power because nobody stands to gain and, frankly, although the Chinese and Russians are close, we are still the best at this and if we wanted to go on offence, a whole bunch of countries would have some significant problems.”
“And we don’t want to see the Internet weaponised in that way. That requires, I think, some tough negotiations. That won’t be a one-year process, but we’d like to see if we can — if we and the Chinese are able to coalesce around a process for negotiations, then I think we can bring a lot of other countries along,” he said.
In response to another question, Obama credited America for the success of China in the past three decades. “They were essentially riding on our backs for the last 30 years because we were underwriting peace, security, the free flow of commerce, international rules in the financial sector,” he said.
“You can’t simply pursue an export-driven strategy, because you are too big. You are not going to be able to grow your economy at the same pace over the next 20 years that you did in the last 20 years,” he said.
“You have got to be concerned about environmental issues, because you can’t breathe in Beijing and that spills over for all of us. As a large country with a powerful military, you can’t go around pushing your little neighbours just because you are bigger, but you have to start abiding by a basic code of conduct and a set of rules, because ultimately, you will be advantaged by everybody following the rules,” he noted.
“I think in other areas, they still see themselves as the poor country that shouldn’t have any obligations internationally. In some cases, they still feel that when we call them on issues like their behaviour in the South China Sea, or on intellectual property theft, that we are trying to contain them as opposed to us just wanting them to abide by the same rules that helped create an environment in which they can rise,” Obama said.
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