CHINA:Climate change, human rights and economic ties were on the agenda as Chancellor Angela Merkel met Chinese leaders yesterday, but reports that hackers linked to China's military spread viruses in German government computers overshadowed the first day of her visit.
The Chinese leadership denied an unsourced report on Sunday in the news magazine Der Spiegel, which said German security agencies had found computers at Dr Merkel's own chancellery and three ministries that had been infected with so-called Trojans, or spy programmes, from China.
The report went on to say how Germany's domestic intelligence agency believed a group of hackers associated with China's military might be behind the hacking, which appeared aimed at stealing technology secrets.
During a meeting in the Great Hall of the People, the premier, Wen Jiabao, sought to reassure Dr Merkel of China's anti-hacker credentials and promised to co-operate closely with Germany to prevent such activity.
"The Chinese government attaches great importance to the hacker attack on the German government networks," Mr Wen said, adding that China would take "determined" and "forceful" measures to combat it.
Germany is the world's biggest exporter, although China could topple it from this position soon. These days a lot of computer hacking is aimed at finding out economic secrets, many of which find their way into the hands of companies that want to pirate goods.
Dr Merkel is travelling with a delegation of German business people keen to ensure China is doing everything it can to stop piracy and to ensure better protection for intellectual property rights.
Washington has complained to the World Trade Organisation about piracy in China.
Dr Merkel said she believes China has set up a sound legal base for intellectual property rights protection, but she called for more specific measures to fulfil the policies.
Mr Wen said China would do everything it could to fight product piracy. "IPR protection is not only an issue between countries, but also a requirement for China itself in its development."
The German leader met President Hu Jintao later in the day and was due to visit the former capital Nanjing before flying to Japan tomorrow.
While in Japan she is due to visit Kyoto, which gave its name to the current protocol restricting greenhouse gas emissions. The visit is intended to give a boost to her efforts to secure a new global agreement to combat climate change once that pact expires in 2012.
Dr Merkel urged China, which is tipped to become the world's biggest emitter of CO2 gases at some stage soon, to do more to halt climate change, but the Chinese responded by saying that the developed West has been polluting the skies for much longer than the newly developing Chinese.
"The Chinese wish, like all people, for blue skies, green hills and clear water . . . China has taken part of the responsibility for climate change for only 30 years while industrial countries have grown fast for the last 200 years," Mr Wen told a joint news conference.
He said the task of reducing emissions was tougher in China than in Germany because it had more people and had not yet reached the economic growth of industrialised countries in terms of GDP per capita. The Chinese also point out that per capita, China's global footprint is only a fraction of that in the West.
Dr Merkel went on to say that the ground rules for gathering resources should be the same worldwide, which some analysts see as an apparent criticism of China's relations with Sudan.
China has sizeable economic interests in Sudan and has been under pressure to take a more critical approach to Khartoum after accusations that aid from Beijing feeds violence in Darfur.