The Obama administration will try to use a high-profile US-China summit this week to renew pressure on Beijing over the cyber theft of American trade secrets despite recent revelations of its own electronic surveillance activities.
The series of meetings will provide the first test of whether documents leaked by Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor, have derailed Washington’s diplomatic effort to limit China’s alleged hacking of US companies.
While Mr Snowden remains stranded at a Moscow airport trying to persuade governments to offer him asylum, the effects of the leaked documents about US monitoring of telephone and email traffic continue to reverberate politically round the world.