US Ambassador summoned over cyber espionage Accusations

China's foreign ministry summoned the US ambassador to China,  Max Baucus, after the United States accused five Chinese military officers of hacking into American companies to steal trade secrets.

Zheng Zeguang, Assistant Foreign Minister, met with Max Baucus, to condemn US cyber-crime indictments against five Chinese military officers.

State news agency Xinhua reported that Zheng told Baucus the accusations had seriously harmed Sino-US relations and that China would "take further action on the so-called charges".

"The Chinese government and military and its associated personnel have never conducted or participated in the theft of trade secrets over the Internet," Xinhua is quoted as saying during the meeting. He also reportedly characterised US policies on Internet security as "overbearing and hypocritical".

"The accusations that the United States has made against these Chinese officials are purely fictitious and extremely absurd," the Chinese Ambassador to the US, Cui Tiankai, was quoted as saying.

In recent years Chinese and US officials have repeatedly clashed on the issue of cyber espionage, in a series of accusations and counter-claims. Several US lawmakers have taken exception to the US firms doing business with Chinese technology companies such as Huawei and ZTE.

Recently three were reports that US National Security Agency tried to obtain data from Huawei's China-based servers.