Consensus and cooperation between China and the U.S. are the best ways to deal with the online threat facing the nations, officials and analysts have said.

After a slew of recent cyberspace disputes, both countries should appreciate each other's strengths and strive to work together to solve the problems, Lu Wei, director of the Cyberspace Administration of China, has urged several times in international settings.

"We should take consensus and cooperation as our main approach," he said at the seventh China-U.S. Internet Industry Forum late last year. "Not only should we seek common ground in spite of differences, we should also make joint progress on the basis of the agreements we have reached.

"A war of words cannot solve the cybersecurity problem. It is precisely through the differences that we can complement each other and create all kinds of possibilities for cooperation and mutual benefit."

One of the latest disputes made headlines in August, when The New York Times reported that the U.S. government had planned to fight those suspected of stealing the personal information of about 20 million Americans, with China targeted as the prime suspect.

"Such accusations without evidence only serve to stir online disputes without helping to alleviate the problem," said Shen Yi, deputy director of Fudan University's Internet Governance Research Center in Shanghai.

Amid the negative reports, there have been encouraging signs of progress in dealing with cyberspace disputes.

At a media conference on Sept. 1, the U.S. government said it is willing to further cooperate with China on cybersecurity instead of taking measures. In April, a White House official at a Washington think tank also urged China and the U.S. to put aside differences and work together to combat global cyberthreats.

"Despite differences, cybersecurity is an area where the two countries have to figure out a way to join efforts," said Michael Daniel, a special assistant to the president and cybersecurity coordinator with the National Security Council.

Cooperation and communication between organizations from the two countries have in fact been working to help their governments reach more agreement, said Zuo Xiaodong, vice-president of the China Information Security Research Institute. "What we should do is to make use of communicative channels and solve the cybersecurity problem through talks on an equal footing," Zuo said.

To that effect, an Internet industry forum has been held seven times in the past few years, while talks between the two countries' national computer network emergency response technical team coordination centers have been developing, according to reports.

(China Daily USA 09/22/2015 page16)