Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas is meeting with Chinese leaders in Beijing in advance of the first U.S.-China ministerial meeting next month.
Mayorkas will visit Beijing Nov. 12-13, the DHS said on Monday. In addition to a recent agreement on cyberespionage, topics will include counterterrorism, transnational crime and Coast Guard conduct at sea.
The U.S. reached a bilateral agreement with China on Sept. 25 that neither country would hack private companies for the purpose of commercial espionage. As part of the agreement, the countries are to conduct regular ministerial meetings, the first of which will be held Dec. 1-2 in Washington, D.C., Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson will represent the U.S. at that meeting.
Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said last month that Chinese hackers appeared to continue hacking U.S. companies for commercial espionage even after the September agreement. A second firm, FireEye, made a similar assessment with regard to hacking, but said it was too soon to characterize intent.
If officials eventually determine that China is not following the terms of the agreement, the U.S. may impose sanctions on Chinese companies that have benefited from commercial hacking under an executive order issued by President Obama in April.
However, Johnson said last week that the first meeting was not a hard deadline. “I would not characterize our first ministerial as any sort of deadline, and I think we will assess compliance with the written commitments as we go,” he said at the Council on Foreign Relations. “But I do think that assessing compliance and assessing actions in accordance with agreements is fundamental to the agreement itself.”
