China's cyber spies are stealing more than secrets

• BY:JOHN LEE 
• From:The Australian 
• February 21, 2013 12:00AM

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IN his February 12 State of the Union speech to congress, President Barack Obama declared that American cyber "enemies" were not just stealing identities and hacking into personal and corporate email but also acquiring the ability to hack into the country's civilian systems such as power grids, financial institutions and air traffic control infrastructure.

Then earlier this week, US cyber-security firm Mandiant released an explosive report accusing the Chinese People's Liberation Army of funding and orchestrating an extensive program of cyber-espionage against American firms. Chinese state-backed news outlets immediately labelled the report groundless, but the growing weight of evidence means that Beijing's blunt strategy of denial is becoming less plausible. And Chinese industrial cyber-espionage will soon replace barbs over currency policy as the major economic bug-bear between the two economic giants.