Obama, Xi Reach Agreement Over Chinese Data Thefts

The U.S. and China found com­mon ground on cy­ber­se­cur­ity on Fri­day, an agree­ment an­nounced in re­marks de­livered jointly by Chinese Pres­id­ent Xi Jin­ping and Pres­id­ent Obama from the South Lawn of the White House.

“The United States wel­comes the rise of a China that is peace­ful, stable, pros­per­ous, and a re­spons­ible play­er in glob­al af­fairs, and I’m com­mit­ted to ex­pand­ing our co­oper­a­tion even as we ad­dress dis­agree­ments can­didly and con­struct­ively. That’s what Pres­id­ent Xi and I have done on this vis­it,” Obama said.

“I raised once again our very ser­i­ous con­cerns about grow­ing cy­ber­threats to Amer­ic­an com­pan­ies and Amer­ic­an cit­izens. I in­dic­ated that it has to stop,” Obama said. “The United States gov­ern­ment does not en­gage in cy­ber eco­nom­ic es­pi­on­age for com­mer­cial gain, and today I can an­nounce that our two coun­tries have reached a com­mon un­der­stand­ing on the way for­ward. We have agreed that neither the U.S. nor the Chinese gov­ern­ment will con­duct or know­ingly sup­port cy­ber-en­abled theft of in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­erty, in­clud­ing trade secrets or oth­er con­fid­en­tial busi­ness in­form­a­tion for com­mer­cial ad­vant­age.”

Obama ad­ded that the United States and China would work to­geth­er with oth­er coun­tries world­wide to es­tab­lish stand­ards of “ap­pro­pri­ate con­duct in cy­ber­space.” Obama char­ac­ter­ized the moves as “pro­gress,” even as he noted there is more work to be done.

Pres­id­ents Xi and Obama also jointly an­nounced the cre­ation of a cap-and-trade pro­gram in China, a move de­signed to build mo­mentum for a strong agree­ment to con­front glob­al warm­ing when world lead­ers meet in Par­is later this year for United Na­tions cli­mate talks. It’s slated to launch in 2017.

China has long been seen as a lag­gard in tack­ling the threat of glob­al warm­ing, but the U.S. and China—two of the world’s largest con­trib­ut­ors to the green­house gases driv­ing glob­al warm­ing—now ap­pear ready to use their out­sized in­flu­ence to con­front cli­mate change world­wide. The White House has been work­ing hard to ex­tract cli­mate com­mit­ments from China. Last Novem­ber, China and the U.S. agreed to a his­tor­ic pledge to curb green­house-gas emis­sions driv­ing dan­ger­ous glob­al warm­ing.

Obama men­tioned China’s eco­nom­ic status dur­ing his re­marks Fri­day. He said that even though parts of China still re­quire de­vel­op­ment, it can no longer be treated “as if it’s still a very poor and de­vel­op­ing coun­try.” Rather, he said, it’s now a “power­house” that has “re­spons­ib­il­it­ies.”

Asked by a Chinese re­port­er if China’s growth ad­versely af­fects Amer­ica, Xi noted that the United States has “in­com­par­able ad­vant­ages and strengths.” But he said the world must move bey­ond view­ing glob­al eco­nom­ics as a “zero-sum game.” China’s de­vel­op­ment be­ne­fits the U.S. and the en­tire world, Xi said, as U.S. growth be­ne­fits China and oth­er na­tions.  

The two pres­id­ents’ press con­fer­ence comes just hours after news that House Speak­er John Boehner will resign from his po­s­i­tion ef­fect­ive Oct. 30. Obama said that the news took him by sur­prise and that he had called Boehner just be­fore the press con­fer­ence. The pres­id­ent praised the speak­er as “a good man” and “a pat­ri­ot.” Obama de­clined to “pre­judge who the next speak­er will be.” He said he hopes there is “a re­cog­ni­tion on the part of the next speak­er … that we can have sig­ni­fic­ant dif­fer­ences on is­sues but that doesn’t mean you shut down the gov­ern­ment.”

Obama and Boehner aren’t ex­actly buds: The speak­er de­fied the White House earli­er this year when he ar­ranged a vis­it from Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Net­an­yahu to ad­dress a joint meet­ing of Con­gress. He’s also routinely clashed with the ad­min­is­tra­tion on Obama­care and budget con­cerns, in­clud­ing with law­suits. But Boehner faced cri­ti­cism from mem­bers of his own caucus for en­ga­ging in talks with the pres­id­ent as they tried to ham­mer out a “Grand Bar­gain” on the na­tion’s debt back in 2011.  

“When you have di­vided gov­ern­ment, when you have a demo­cracy, com­prom­ise is ne­ces­sary,” Obama said Fri­day. “And I think Speak­er Boehner some­times had dif­fi­culty per­suad­ing mem­bers of his caucus [of] that.”

Speak­ing about the chal­lenges that Boehner faced, Obama said: “You don’t get what you want 100 per­cent of the time. Some­times you take half a loaf, some­times you take a quarter loaf. That’s cer­tainly something that I’ve learned here in this of­fice.”

Dur­ing Fri­day’s press con­fer­ence, Obama noted that cy­ber­se­cur­ity has been a mat­ter of “ser­i­ous dis­cus­sion” between him­self and Xi for more than two years, since their bi­lat­er­al meet­ing at Sunny­lands in Cali­for­nia. Though he be­lieves they’ve made “sig­ni­fic­ant pro­gress” in fig­ur­ing out how U.S. and Chinese law en­force­ment will work to­geth­er to fight cy­ber­crime, “the ques­tion now is, are words fol­lowed by ac­tions?” The pres­id­ent said his ad­min­is­tra­tion will be “watch­ing care­fully” to de­term­ine the an­swer to that query.

Obama said Xi told him he can­not “guar­an­tee” the good be­ha­vi­or of all of his cit­izens, just as Obama can’t prom­ise good be­ha­vi­or from all Amer­ic­ans.

“What I can guar­an­tee, though, and what I’m hop­ing Pres­id­ent Xi will show me,” Obama said, “is that we are not spon­sor­ing these acts and that when it comes to our at­ten­tion that non­gov­ern­ment­al en­tit­ies or in­di­vidu­als are en­gaged in this stuff, that we take this ser­i­ously and we’re co­oper­at­ing to en­force the law.”

Obama’s planned meet­ings with Xi have proved con­tro­ver­sial since the state vis­it was an­nounced months ago, and they’ve been a hot top­ic in the 2016 GOP field. Sen. Marco Ru­bio and Carly Fior­ina have cri­ti­cized the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion for ar­ran­ging a form­al state din­ner dur­ing Xi’s vis­it, planned for Fri­day night. Both think Xi’s trip should have been re­framed as a work­ing vis­it. Re­cent cam­paign dro­pout Scott Walk­er, on the oth­er hand, ad­voc­ated for the trip to be can­celed in its en­tirety. The can­did­ates have cited China’s role in cy­ber­at­tacks on the United States, its cur­rency ma­nip­u­la­tion, and its hu­man-rights re­cord as reas­ons to can­cel or shift gears.

Obama didn’t ig­nore hu­man-rights con­cerns dur­ing his re­marks Fri­day af­ter­noon. He shif­ted from an­noun­cing a part­ner­ship on glob­al de­vel­op­ment with China—fo­cus­ing on hu­man­it­ari­an as­sist­ance and glob­al health, among oth­er sub­jects—to that coun­try’s hu­man rights re­cord. Obama said he “af­firmed” Amer­ic­an sup­port for in­di­vidu­al rights, free press, and the free move­ment of civil-so­ci­ety groups in China in talks with Xi, and “we ex­pect that we’re go­ing to con­tin­ue to con­sult in these areas” in the fu­ture.

Xi ad­dressed an­oth­er ele­phant in the room: his coun­try’s ac­tions in the South China Sea. He as­ser­ted that the is­lands in the South China Sea are his na­tion’s “prop­erty” and he en­cour­aged “coun­tries dir­ectly in­volved” in dis­putes over ter­rit­ory to ad­dress their is­sues through mu­tu­al dia­logue.

This story has been up­dated.