In an unusually direct appeal, the Obama administration on Monday called on China to halt its persistent theft of trade secrets from corporate computers and engage in a dialogue to establish norms of behavior in cyberspace.
The demands mark the administration's first public effort to hold China to account for what officials have described as an extensive, years-long campaign of commercial cyber-espionage.
"Increasingly, U.S. businesses are speaking out about their serious concerns about sophisticated, targeted theft of confidential business information and proprietary technologies through cyber-intrusions on an unprecedented scale," President Barack Obama's national security adviser, Thomas Donilon, said in a speech to the Asia Society in New York.