Will China Deliver on Its Promise to Stop Hacking American Businesses?

After weeks of threats that the United States was on the verge of imposing sanctions on China for its alleged theft of American trade secrets, President Barack Obama stood next to Chinese leader Xi Jinping in the Rose Garden Friday and declared that the two countries have reached a “common understanding” on ending the plunder of intellectual property in cyberspace. 

China has consistently denied that it carried out such actions, but Friday’s statement by the two leaders is the first sign of progress on an issue that threatened to torpedo the highly anticipated meeting between the two leaders. A White House fact sheet said that “the United States and China agree that neither country’s government will conduct or knowingly support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, including trade secrets or other confidential business information, with the intent of providing competitive advantages to companies or commercial sectors.”

The White House also said that China and the United States agreed to cooperate more fully in the investigation of cybercrimes, would work together to establish a set of agreed norms for state conduct in cyberspace, and agreed to set up a ministerial-level meeting to discuss cybersecurity issues that would meet twice a year.

Read the full article at Foreign Policy.