China used the World Internet Conference to promote its vision of Internet governance to an international audience and to defend the concept of cyber sovereignty. China will continue to push for multilateral internet governance, rather than multi-stakeholder internet governance, which can include private companies and other groups.

As big powers, China and the United States need to show restraint in cyberspace. The announcements by Apple Pay to partner with China UnionPay and by Microsoft to work with Chinese researchers to develop the Windows 10 operating system are but two instances of growing Sino-US cooperation in the cyber sphere.

Both countries should promise not to carry out attacks on financial institutions and entities that underpin the global economy, share information on third-party threats to the financial sector, encourage and incentivize the banking industry to make the strictest rules for ensuring information safety, and strengthen resilience against various forms of cyber attacks.

It may be too premature to argue that the China-U.S. cyber-agreement has failed. The vagueness of the agreement needs to be followed up with specific cooperation, like a cooperative agreement between both nations’ Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs), which are the first (and last line) of defense in protecting a country’s critical information infrastructure from cyberattacks.

On September 25, 2015, the White House and the Chinese government issued parallel statements explaining the various agreements Presidents Obama and Xi reached during Xi’s state visit. On the cyber and technology front, the agreements break no new policy ground, but do create a much-needed umbrella under which concrete, practical steps can be taken to reduce conflict in cyberspace and tensions in the bilateral relationship.

Although the Obama-Xi meeting left plenty to be desired on disputed issues such as cybersecurity and the South China Sea, it was a significant and pleasant surprise that Xi softened some of the most pessimistic sentiments and disarmed suspicions in such a short time, highlighting respect for the U.S. and its people, in appealing words to the American public.

In some ways, Xi’s state visit was really a summit on cyber security, as allegations of spying and theft of national security information and commercial intellectual property have threatened to derail attempts to expand cooperation between the world’s largest economies. The parallels with the nuclear age are obvious, and so is the mutual benefit of cyber detente.

President Xi Jinping pledged that China’s attempts to develop Internet economy and enhance online defense will not exclude Western technologies and best practices, which demonstrated China's sincerity for dialogue and cooperation.

A question from a member of the Pentagon’s newcyberwarfare unit the other day prompted President Obama to voice his frustration about America’s seeming inability to deter a growing wave of computer attacks, and to vow to confront the increasingly aggressive adversaries who are perpetrating them.

The Obama administration is proposing economic sanctions to punish Chinese companies benefiting from cyber espionage. As there are few clearly defined ways to account for cyber harm or universal norms in cyberspace, the call for sanctions can perhaps primarily be seen as a political signal aimed as much at domestic audiences as to China.