The White House has called on China to take “serious steps” to stop extensive hacking of US companies and to start negotiating international rules for behaviour in cyberspace.
Thomas Donilon, the White House national security adviser, said on Monday that incidents of hacking of US companies coming from China were reaching “an unprecedented scale” and that the issue was becoming a challenge to the economic relationship between the two countries.
Mr Donilon’s remarks in a speech in New York about US strategy in Asia were the latest effort by the Obama administration to increase the pressure on Beijing over hacking amid rising political anger in Washington.