Obama administration officials call out China for undermining an open internet, say US and China must work together to address cybersecurity
China's Undermining an Open Internet — We must work together on reliable cybersecurity. — Cyber threats are becoming more diverse, sophisticated and dangerous.
Context & Ripple Effects
In early February 2015, Obama administration officials paired a pointed accusation — that Beijing is undermining an open internet — with an appeal for US-China cooperation on increasingly diverse and sophisticated cyber threats. The dual message set the template for the year: weeks later Obama publicly attacked China's rules forcing US tech companies to provide backdoor access, and by August anonymous officials floated sanctions against Chinese companies and individuals benefiting from stolen trade secrets.
That pressure campaign produced results — the September US-China cyber theft deal — but also exposed its limits: by late 2018, US officials reported Chinese cyberespionage had been pared back after the pact only to pick up again in 2017 and accelerate since. The story matters because it marks the moment cyber policy moved from background friction to a named pillar of the bilateral relationship.
First-order effects
- US technology companies operating in China face a squeeze between Washington's open-internet advocacy and Beijing's data-access requirements, with Obama explicitly linking market access to policy change.
- Chinese companies and individuals profiting from trade-secret theft become potential targets of US financial sanctions, converting a diplomatic complaint into a concrete legal threat.
Second-order effects
- The sanctions threat raises the cost calculus for Beijing and creates leverage that carries directly into the September 2015 negotiations over cyber theft, where Obama concedes 'work is not yet done.'
- Xi Jinping's push to make China a self-reliant 'cyber-superpower' through domestic regulation and innovation gains urgency as US criticism hardens into economic measures rather than staying rhetorical.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — agreement in 2015, espionage resumption by 2017 — bilateral cyber pacts without verification mechanisms decay quickly, pushing the US toward unilateral tools like sanctions and export controls instead.
- Cyber governance consolidates as a standing axis of US-China strategic competition, with each side framing the other's internet model — openness versus sovereign control — as the root problem to be managed rather than solved.
The trend: Cybersecurity is hardening from a technical cooperation file into a central test of US-China relations, where episodic deals repeatedly give way to renewed espionage, sanctions threats, and dueling visions of internet control.