China has accused the US of being the world's biggest cyber snooper and summoned US diplomats to protest against its indictment against five Chinese military officers over so-called cyber espionage.

The Monday indictment announced by the US Justice Department said the officers worked with Unit 61398 of the People's Liberation Army, which had been "hired" by Chinese State-owned companies to provide information technology services including assembling a database of corporate intelligence, Reuters reported.

According to the indictment, the "hackers" targeted US companies in the nuclear power, metals and solar product industries to steal trade secrets.

Zheng Zeguang, China's assistant foreign minister, Monday night summoned US Ambassador to China Max Baucus to lodge a complaint with Washington.

Zheng told the US envoy that the indictment has breached China-US cooperation in cyber security and seriously hurt bilateral ties, adding the accusation is groundless and ill-intentioned.

The ministry earlier announced suspension of a US-China working group on cyber security, and warned of further action as the situation evolves.

"The US owes China and the world an explanation of its own behavior," Zheng said, referring to Edward Snowden's revelations of Washington's cyber thefts and monitoring. "The US behavior testifies to its autocratic manner and hypocrisy."

A spokesperson for China's State Internet Information Office Monday published the latest data of US cyber attacks, slamming the US as the biggest cyber snooper in the world and the biggest attacker of China's Internet.

The spokesperson said from March 19 to May 18, a total of 2,077 Trojan horse networks or botnet servers in the US directly controlled 1.18 million host computers in China.

In the same period, the center found 2,016 IP addresses in the US had implanted backdoors in 1,754 Chinese websites, involving 57,000 backdoor attacks.

The spokesperson further noted that US wiretapping activities target Chinese leaders, ordinary citizens and anyone with a mobile phone.

The row also drew protests from China's defense ministry, with the summoning of the acting defense attaché at the US Embassy in China.

While denying any link to cyber espionage by the military, Geng Yansheng, the defense ministry spokesperson, said the US side has adopted double standards on cyber security and the Chinese military is also a victim of cyber theft.

Geng said statistics show that the terminals of Chinese military access to the Internet have suffered from a great number of foreign cyber attacks in recent years, and a considerable number of such attacks originated from the US.

Tang Lan, an expert with the China Institutes of Contemporary International Studies, told the China News Service that Washington's move aimed to increase its leverage for the upcoming China-US Strategic Dialogue in July. "It may also help persuade the US Congress to increase the budget of the US military," Tang added.

Chen Kai, secretary-general of China Arms Control and Disarmament Association, told the Global Times that the indictment not only led to the suspension of dialogue on cyber security, but is also likely to have spillover effects to other areas of bilateral cooperation.

While the row over cyber security is widening between Beijing and Washington, China and Russia Tuesday voiced shared concern over the use of information technology that is detrimental to sovereignty and privacy.

In a joint statement signed by Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Shanghai, the two countries called on the international community to formulate a universal code of conduct.


Newspaper headline: US cyber snooping ‘targets Chinese leaders, citizens’