Washington: US President Barack Obama has raised strong concerns with China’s cyber activities, as
the two days of bilateral talks between the two nations came to an end. White House sources said that he had asked China to act accordingly to reduce such tensions. Before, the US had accused China of being involved in hacking government and commercial computer systems. Earlier this month, the Chinese were blamed for a security breach involving the records of four million past and present US federal employees. Speaking in Washington at the end of the talks, US Secretary of State John Kerry said that the two countries would now work together to come up with a common code of cyber conduct. There was an honest discussion, without accusations, without any finger-pointing, about the problem of cyber theft and whether or not it was sanctioned by government or whether it was hackers and individuals that the government has the ability to prosecute. The US had made it crystal clear that this was not acceptable. Mr Kerry added that they needed to work through how all countries were going to behave, particularly how they were going to work this out in terms of the bilateral relationship. However, China has denied being behind the huge security breach at the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) three weeks ago. State Councilor Yang Jiechi said in Washington that the US must respect the facts behind this. He has also added that China was working to crack down on hacking and now they were ready to co-operate with the US on cyber security issues. Earlier this year, China had also denied accusations behind an attack that was stolen data from US health insurer Anthem. The White House said that President Obama had also expressed deep concerns over the growing Chinese presence in the South China Sea region. But the two sides were interested to take on areas of agreement, including ocean preservation, illegal fishing and climate change. Video on US concerns over China
