Cyber espionage 'is threat to global economy'

America and China have spent the past few years in a stand-off over Chinese attitudes to intellectual property, and how the Chinese government goes about cyber-spying. Virtually all nations engage in cyber-spying to some degree, but experts suspect China of using the material to give Chinese companies an unfair advantage over their foreign rivals.

However, Chinese businesses insist they act independently of the government, and have accused America of having a protectionist agenda. Huawei said it has been frozen out of US contracts because of “jealousy”.

The US government has issued a number of reports claiming that Chinese companies posed a security risk. Senators on the cyber security council have also cautioned American businesses to blacklist Huawei and ZTE, another technology firm, unless they got the all-clear from a US government agency.

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