Although it is hard to believe, the United States may have started to make progress in talks with China over its shameless hacking of government and private Web properties. American investigators believe that they have traced much of the hacking activity to one site in the People’s Republic, although officials there have denied it. However, the evidence appears incontrovertible.

According to China paper Xinhua:

China and the United States held a strategic security dialogue on Monday and Tuesday, discussing the thorny issue of cyber security.

The two sides held candid in-depth discussions on cyber security, including the mechanism of a bilateral cyber working group, international cyberspace rules, and measures to boost dialogue and cooperation on cyber security.

Both sides expressed the willingness to improve the mechanism of the cyber working group on the basis of mutual respect and equality so that it can play a positive role in enhancing mutual trust, reducing mutual suspicion, managing disputes and expanding cooperation.

The two sides agreed to hold an informal meeting at an appropriate time before the next strategic security dialogue.

The strategic security dialogue is within the framework of the fifth China-U.S. Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED) which kicks off on Wednesday. The S&ED covers a wide range of political, security, economic and financial topics as well as major regional and international issues of common concern.

Top on the agenda are discussions on the implementation of the consensus reached by Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Barack Obama at their summit in California last month on building a new type of major-country relationship based on mutual respect and win-win cooperation.

Since the Chinese version of “win-win” with the United States is almost always “win-lose,” the talks are likely to go badly eventually.

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