Security News > 2020 > February > Officials raise alarm about Chinese hacking

The officials gathered for the China Initiative Conference, an event that explored Chinese intellectual property transgressions.

China engages in a broad spectrum of trade theft activity, including not just hacking but also physical theft, inappropriate use of materials licensed from joint ventures, and information fed to it by insiders working at western companies, they said.

The Department of Justice announced the China Initiative on 1 November 2018, partly in response to a report from US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, which said that China had been sponsoring hacking into American businesses and commercial networks.

The China Initiative set out to identify priority Chinese trade theft cases and ensure that the US government devoted appropriate resources to them.

During the event, FBI director Chris Wray repeated an assertion that he made in July 2019 that there were 1,000 ongoing investigations into Chinese espionage in the US. At the time he also noted that China represented the biggest foreign threat to the US. Jeremie Waterman, president of the China Center and vice president for Greater China in the US Chamber of Commerce, said at the China Initiative Conference that the recent phase one trade agreement between the US and China, announced in January, could be a good opportunity for the US to address some past trade theft case.

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https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/02/11/officials-raise-alarm-about-chinese-hacking/