President Xi Jinping pledged that China’s attempts to develop Internet economy and enhance online defense will not exclude Western technologies and best practices, which demonstrated China's sincerity for dialogue and cooperation.

The joint agreement by China and the U.S. may have created more diplomatic minefields than it sought to eliminate. The United States has been focusing much of its cyber diplomacy around criticism of China’s espionage. This U.S. policy effort might be called the “Fort Meade defense,” after the site of NSA headquarters in Maryland.

The joint agreement by China and the U.S. may have created more diplomatic minefields than it sought to eliminate. The United States has been focusing much of its cyber diplomacy around criticism of China’s espionage. This U.S. policy effort might be called the “Fort Meade defense,” after the site of NSA headquarters in Maryland.

A question from a member of the Pentagon’s newcyberwarfare unit the other day prompted President Obama to voice his frustration about America’s seeming inability to deter a growing wave of computer attacks, and to vow to confront the increasingly aggressive adversaries who are perpetrating them.

The Obama administration is proposing economic sanctions to punish Chinese companies benefiting from cyber espionage. As there are few clearly defined ways to account for cyber harm or universal norms in cyberspace, the call for sanctions can perhaps primarily be seen as a political signal aimed as much at domestic audiences as to China.

There is no denying that elements of competition exist in China-U.S. relations, but strengthening bilateral cooperation still forms the heart of the two countries’ policies towards each other.

Despite no public statements made by the U.S. government, China has been implicated in a recent hack of the U.S. Office for Personnel Management. It has spurred a debate on information security, differences between economic espionage and cold war espionage, and the overall bilateral relationship.

Is it government policy in China to pass on commercial secrets obtained via cyberespionage to civil sector firms?

Fear-mongering about efforts to improve Internet security ignores an important reality: The new rules may bring bigger and better opportunities for cooperation between Chinese and American technology firms.

China’s controversial new anti-terrorism law would require foreign companies to install “backdoors” to give authorities remote access to computers and networks, and has been placed under review due to Western concerns. Since China still has to rely on foreign technology in the immediate future, the law might have been used to tell the United States government not to engage in what Beijing called “reckless behavior,” or to further expose U.S. hypocrisy in its own cyber espionage practices.