Australia, China reach detente over cyber IP theft

The federal government has reached a detente with the Chinese government on the issue of cyber-enabled intellectual property theft.

At a meeting in Sydney last week, both governments agreed not to conduct or support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property or trade secrets for the purpose of obtaining a competitive advantage.

The meeting was attended by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Meng Jianzhu — secretary of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Commission for Political and Legal Affairs.

The agreement mirrors a similar deal between China and the US. The issue has been a repeated source of conflict between the two nations, with the US repeatedly accusing China of sponsoring hackers tasked with stealing such confidential business information.

During last week’s meeting, Australia and China also agreed to act in accordance with the norms of responsible state behaviour in cyberspace identified by the UN, and to establish “a mechanism to discuss cyber security and cyber crime issues with a view to preventing cyber incidents that could create problems between them”, Turnbull’s office said in a statement.

Meng Jianzhu was in Australia for the first meeting of the high-level security dialogue initiated between Turnbull and Chinese Premier Li Kequiang.

Image courtesy of Michael Lieu under CC

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook