Chinese embassy rebukes major US paper over cyberattacks

The Chinese Embassy in the United States on Friday rebuked the Washington Post for unfair accusations of China over alleged cyberattacks against the U.S., criticizing such moves as "counterproductive."

In several articles and editorials published recently, including the news report entitled "U.S. not naming China in data hack" on July 22 and the editorial entitled "The cyber defense crisis" on July 12, the Post "unfairly blamed the Chinese government for cyberattacks in the United States," the embassy's spokesman Zhu Haiquan wrote in a letter to the Post editors.

"The Chinese government firmly opposes and combats all forms of cyberattacks in accordance with our laws and regulations," Zhu said in the letter, noting that China is one of the world's major victims of cyberattacks, and many of them originate from the U.S.

According to China's National Computer Emergency Response Technical Team Coordination Center, from March 19, 2014, to May 18, 2014, for instance, 2,077 Trojan horse networks or botnet servers in the U.S. directly controlled 1.18 million host computers in China, and 135 host computers in the U.S. carrying 563 phishing pages targeted Chinese Web sites and led to 14,000 phishing operations, Zhu said.

"Cyberattacks across borders are very complex and hard to trace. Therefore, combating such activities requires closer international cooperation and formulating international rules and norms to govern behaviors in cyberspace," Zhu said, noting that this is where the interest of China and the United States aligns.

Rather than pointing fingers at each other on cyber issues, the two countries "can accomplish much more by working together," the spokesman said.

"Making unfounded accusations and resorting to megaphone diplomacy is counterproductive. And there is no place in this solution for double standards," Zhu added.

In the July 22 report, the Post claimed that its is "widely held conviction that Beijing was responsible" for a massive breach of the U.S. government personnel records and "China has so far escaped any major consequence for what U.S. officials have described as one of the most damaging cyberthefts in U.S. government history."

In the July 12 editorial, the Post called the breach of U.S. government personnel data as "a windfall for China," which could use it "to pressure U.S. officials and their friends abroad." It went a step further to criticize President Barack Obama for having been "way too passive about China," adding that "he should sound a klaxon to Beijing, and if that does not get the regime's attention, retaliate."