Hardening his position against China especially with regard to cyber-hacking, US President Barack Obama today said Beijing has understood his "blunt" message that his administration would not tolerate this kind of behavior.
"We had a very blunt conversation about cyber security," Obama, told the popular "Charlie Rose" show in an interview, referring to his recent meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in California early this month.
"Every country in the world, large and small, engages in intelligence gathering. And that is an occasional source of tension, but it's generally practiced within bounds.
There is a big difference between China wanting to figure out how can they find out what my talking points are when I'm meeting with the Japanese, which is standard fare, and we try to prevent them from penetrating that, and they try to get that information," he said.
"There's a big difference between that and a hacker directly connected with the Chinese government or the Chinese military breaking into Apple's software systems to see if they can obtain the designs for the latest Apple product. That's theft. And we can't tolerate that. And so we've had very blunt conversations about this," Obama said.
"They understand, I think, that this can adversely affect the fundamentals of the US-China relationship. We don't consider this a side note in our conversations. We think this is central in part because our economic relationship is going to be continued to be premised on the fact that the US is the world's innovator," he said.
"We have the greatest R&D. We have the greatest entrepreneurial culture. Our value added is at the top of the value chain. And if countries like China are stealing that, that affects our long term prosperity in a serious way," said the US President.
Obama said there is need to get this relationship right and China does need to be a stakeholder.
"I think that they recognise that. But, look, they have achieved such rapid growth and they have grown so fast, almost on steroids. There's a part of them that still thinks of themselves as this poor country, that's got all these problems. The United States is the big cheese out there, trying to dictate things, perhaps trying to contain our rise," he said.
"So I think what you're seeing inside of Chinese leadership is the desire to maybe continue not to be responsible, not to be a full stakeholder, work the international system on something like trade or intellectual property rights, get as much as they can and be free-riders and let the United States worry about the big hassles and the big problems," he said.
"At the same time, a growing nationalist pride where they say yeah, we're big too and we should be seen as equals on the world stage. What we're saying to them is, you can't pick and choose. You know, you can't have all the rights of a major world power but none of the responsibilities. And if you accept both, then I think you will have a strong partner in the United States," Obama said.
"So I'm optimistic about the future. But what I've found working with the Chinese government is candour, being clear about American values, pushing back when the Chinese are trying to take advantage of us," said the US President.
