WASHINGTON - A two-day summit between President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, is being described as a meeting that reportedly produced broad agreement on handling North Korea and put the thorny issue of cybersecurity at the forefront.
Speaking late Saturday about the summit in Rancho Mirage, California, National Security Adviser Tom Donilon said that resolving the cybersecurity issue would be "key to the future" of the relationship.
According to Donilon, Obama told Xi that "if it's not addressed, if it continues to be this direct theft of United States property, that this was going to be very difficult problem in the economic relationship and was going to be an inhibitor to the relationship really reaching its full potential."
Diplomats said that Chinese officials, in their own recap of the meetings, said Xi expressed his opposition to all forms of cyberspying, but claimed no responsibility for the attacks on the US.
"Cybersecurity should not become the root cause of mutual suspicion and frictions between our two countries. Rather, it should be a new bright spot in our cooperation," said Yang Jiechi, Xi's senior foreign policy adviser.
Donilon said the two sides agreed that Pyongyang "has to denuclearise, that neither country will accept North Korea as a nuclear-armed state and that we would work together to deepen co-operation and dialogue to achieve denuclearisation.
The Wasll Street Journal said in a dispatch that the US and Chinese officials seemed delighted at the outcome of the working, informal "shirtsleeves summit," with one Chinese participant calling it a "constructive, strategic and historic" meeting between the two world powers. Overall, President Obama and his Chinese counterpart spent a total of eight hours together, including a 50-minute walk with only translators through a rambling estate in the scorching California desert.
The two governments agreed to work together to eliminate potent greenhouse gasses used in refrigerators and air conditioners and to press North Korea to return to nuclear disarmament talks.
Saturday's meeting focused on economic issues, one area that's given rise to numerous disagreements between the world's two biggest economies. The Obama administration has long pressed the Chinese to allow their currency to rise against the dollar, saying that they are gaining an unfair trade advantage by gaming their currency.
AFP adds: China agreed Saturday with the United States to scale back production of "super greenhouse gases" used in refrigerators and air conditioners in a joint bid to fight climate change.
The two nations made the pledge after a closely watched first summit between Presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping, who lead the world's top two emitters of greenhouse gases blamed for the planet's increasingly volatile climate.
In a statement, China and the United States "agreed to work together" through an international body to "phase down the production and consumption" of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), dubbed super greenhouse gases for their pollution.
The White House said that a global phasedown of HFCs could reduce carbon emissions by 90 gigatons by 2050 - equivalent to around two full years worth of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.
China - by far the largest producer of HFCs - had until recently resisted efforts by the United States and other wealthy nations to scale back the super greenhouse gases, arguing that alternatives in appliances were not fully ready.
But China agreed in April to end HFC production by 2030 as part of a $385 million assistance package by wealthy countries under the Montreal Protocol, which was set up to fight the depletion of the ozone layer.
China and other developing nations such as India had initially argued that the Montreal Protocol was not the best instrument to target HFCs and that the issue should instead by handled under the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.
Some critics accused China of holding off on ending HFC production as it wanted to keep the flow of money from European Union nations that can earn credits for carbon emissions by cleaning up dirty production overseas.
The US-China statement made clear that HFCs would remain within the scope of the Kyoto Protocol and the related UN Framework Convention on Climate Change "for accounting and reporting of emissions."
The statement said that China and the United States would work together at the Montreal Protocol.
The United States, Canada and Mexico - along with Micronesia, which greatly fears rising sea levels from climate change - have proposed a global end to HFCs through the Montreal Protocol.
The United States and China - which together account for more than 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions - have both faced international criticism for not doing more on climate change.
China has embraced solar and other green technologies, but has resisted binding commitments in talks on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, arguing that such requirements were unfair considering its stage of development.
But China has witnessed a growing debate on requiring curbs on emissions - not just a commitment to scale back the intensify of its own emissions, as per current policy - as concern rises over the country's pollution woes.
Obama took office in 2009 vowing to do more on climate change after the skepticism of his predecessor George W. Bush.
But efforts backed by Obama to require caps on carbon emissions died in the US Congress, where many lawmakers from the rival Republican Party question the cost of such action and question the science behind climate change.
Representative Henry Waxman, a member of Obama's Democratic Party who helped lead the ill-fated climate legislation, called the HFC agreement "a tremendous accomplishment."
"The United States and China working together to tackle climate change is a major breakthrough," he said.
The planet has charted a slew of record hot years and some scientists link recent catastrophes - such as superstorm Sandy in the United States, droughts in Russia and massive floods in Pakistan - to climate change.