Continued cybertheft would damage relations: Obama tells Xi

Obama told the Chinese delegation that the US has no doubt that the intrusions are coming from within China

President Barack Obama confronted China's new President Xi Jinping with detailed evidence of Chinese entities engaged in theft of intellectual property from American firms and warned that continued cybertheft could be an "inhibitor" in bilateral ties, a top US official said.

Spread over two days - Friday and Saturday - at a picturesque desert resort in Southern California, Obama, 51, and Xi, 59, had several rounds of meetings and a candle-lit dinner spread over nearly eight hours on a range of bilateral, regional and global issues.

The summit, held just four months after Xi took office, was meant to launch a "new model" of close relationship with a new Chinese leader.

Obama had very good discussions in an informal atmosphere, uniquely informal atmosphere, with President Xi over the last two days," the President's National Security Advisor Tom Donilon told reporters.

"The discussions were positive and constructive, wide-ranging and quite successful in achieving the goals that we set forth for this meeting," he said, noting that the two leaders of the world's two biggest powers discussed human rights and military ties among other topics.

Obama, presenting detailed examples of cybertheft, told the Chinese delegation that the US has no doubt that the intrusions are coming from within China, Donilon said.

"The president went through this in some detail," Donilon said, adding that Obama told Xi that "if there continues to be this direct theft of US property that this was going to be a very difficult problem in the economic relationship and was going to be an inhibitor to the relationship reaching its full potential."

Cyber theft, Donilon said, "really now is at the center of the relationship. It is not an adjunct issue."

The US has accused China of stealing billions of dollars of technical, financial, military and other data and intellectual property through cyber attacks. China denies the charge, insisting it is the victim of digital looting.

"We've undertaken, as you know, a systematic effort with respect to this issue. We have had conversations with the Chinese about it over the course of the last year or so. We've raised it publicly," Donilon added.

The "unprecedented" theft of American intellectual property is costing the nation a whopping USD 300 billion annually and the main culprit is China, according to a recent study.