U.S. confirms state visit for China’s Xi

The White House has repeatedly denied the NSA engages in trade espionage, despite reports, based upon documents leaked by Snowden, that the agency spied on foreign companies such as Brazil’s biggest oil company, Petrobras.

“My hope is that it gets resolved short of that”, he added.

Chinese language President Xi Jinping is looking US tech leaders to Seattle for a collection of conferences as a part of the primary cease on his USA go to in two weeks.

China has continually denied that it has engaged in cyber espionage against the U.S.

“Washington state and China have a 35-year history of mutually beneficial partnerships, including robust trade, scientific research, worldwide education and sustainable development”, Kristi Heim, Executive Director of the Washington State China Relations Council, said in a statement.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest later said Obama was “intentionally non-specific” in the comments and said the US government is “hopeful” that it will not need to use sanctions or other measures against China for cyber attacks on USA commercial targets.

The White House confirmed last month that sanctions against China were being prepared at the highest levels, but a timeline for their imposition wasn’t certain.

As part of his visit, China’s president will make a stop at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond. This seems to leave the proverbial door open to a wide range of topics that may be discussed by the two presidents. “We have repeatedly said to the Chinese government that we understand traditional intelligence-gathering functions that all states, including us, engage in….”

“That we consider an act of aggression that has to stop”, Obama told the Business Roundtable, a lobbying group.

“Obviously we have a lot of differences with China, but we also have a lot of areas of commonality”, he said.

Obama insisted it was not constructive to suggest the U.S. was losing its battle against Asian competitors, but used some choice language of his own and called on China “to start abiding by a basic code of conduct” over military and economic behaviour. At the same time, he said the United States is equipped to strike back. “America, alongside its allies and partners in the regional architecture, will not be deterred from exercising these rights”.

The remarks are Obama’s bluntest yet on the threat from commercialcyber-attacks, which he claimed are distinct from state espionage of the sort the U.S. has been shown to engage in through leaks from National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.