By Zachary Keck
America and China’s dispute over economic cyber-espionage is rooted in different conceptions of the state.
Earlier this week, my colleague Shannon reported that the U.S. took the unprecedented step of indicting five members of China’s People Liberation Army (PLA) for cyber-espionage against private U.S. firms, which was conducted on behalf of their competitors in China. My other colleague Ankit followed up with some analysis on why the U.S. had decided to take this step.
China has, not surprisingly, reacted furiously to the indictments. In a first step, it suspended the U.S.-China Cyber Working Group, which according to U.S. officials hadn’t made much progress anyways. Later, China’s Assistant Foreign Minister, Zheng Zeguang, summoned U.S. Ambassador to China, Max Baucus, to lodge a formal complaint against the U.S. Zheng also reportedly threatened that China would “take further action on the so-called charges,” suggesting that it may single out specific individuals in the U.S. for cyber-espionage activities against China.
More generally, China has accused the U.S. of hypocrisy on the issue in light of the Edward Snowden revelations about the National Security Agency’s global cyber-espionage operations (some astute readers may recall that Snowden’s revelations conveniently began appearing in newspapers just days before the Obama-Xi Sunnylands Summit last June, which U.S. officials up to that point had said Obama would use to focus on China’s cyber-espionage.)
For example, in an appearance on CNN on Tuesday, Cui Tiankai, China’s ambassador to the U.S., argued: “It’s really amazing to see that some people still believe they have moral high ground and credibility to accuse others, if we consider the Snowden revelations… It’s a bit incredible.”
Read the full story at The Diplomat