Seeking to warm bilateral ties and project a sunny climate for U.S. business, Chinese President Xi Jinping vowed on Wednesday (September 23) to cut restrictions on foreign investment, while his chief Internet regulator appeared to lay the groundwork for a basic agreement later this week on cyber warfare.
At Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington, just outside of Seattle, China’s top Internet regulator told U.S. tech executives that both countries must work together on cyber security issues, including crime and espionage, addressing one of their most pressing concerns.
Lu used a story about two men on a boat facing a storm from two thousand five hundred years ago to call for better cooperation between the two countries in cyberspace.
“We are on the same boat,” said Lu Wei, at the eighth annual meeting of the U.S.-China Internet Industry Forum. “The only choice we have is to cooperate.”
In a closed-door session afterwards, Lu gave the impression that China and the United States were set to reach some kind of agreement on cyber warfare, banning attacks on infrastructure in peacetime, according to one person present, who asked not to be named given the privacy of the meeting.
Xi’s busy stop on the West Coast is the first leg of a week-long trip to the United States and offers him a chance to highlight China’s cooperation with U.S. companies before he heads to Washington, where he will contend with the full spectrum of irritants in relations, from tension in the South China Sea to human rights. (Reuters)