Beijing - China's leaders on Monday promised visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel that they would take action against Chinese hackers and strengthen their engagement on climate change. After the German news magazine Der Spiegel reported Saturday, a day before Merkel's departure, that Chinese hackers had infiltrated German government computers with spy programs, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao vowed that his government would take measures to eliminate hacker attacks.
The article said intelligence services suspected hackers in the Chinese army were behind the online attack, but Wen did not address that charge when appearing before reporters with Merkel in Beijing.
After her later meeting with President and Communist Party chief Hu Jintao, Merkel said she campaigned for the observance of human rights and protection of intellectual property rights, saying both issues are important for China's image and reminding the leaders that the world's eyes would be even more focused on China next year when it hosts the Summer Olympics.
On the topic of climate change, which is the focus for Merkel on her trip to China and later to Japan, the chancellor said she saw movement from China and welcomed what she saw as the country's leaders making the topic "a top priority."
Officials in the German delegation added than Wen had proposed a dialogue involving top officials on climate change, product piracy and food safety.
Wen promised that China would undertake greater efforts to prevent global warming in its next environmental five-year plan that would begin in 2011 - on top of the 20-per-cent reductions it aims to achieve in energy use from 2005 to 2010 and the 10-per-cent cut it expects to see in emissions of pollutants in those years.
China has failed to meet its environmental targets in the past, however, and, in the first year of its current plan, actually saw emission rise.
Wen stressed that China has a different responsibility as far as carbon-dioxide emissions than longtime industrialized nations.
China has long argued that such nations, like Germany, have released far more of the emissions that cause global warming than China, which has just begun its development and should be allowed to proceed without emissions caps to allow its longtime impoverished population to increase its living standard.
Merkel said every country has the right to development but "certain rules" must apply. Industrialized country must make new technology available, and China must also develop sustainable technology, she said. If China, as expected, continues to experience 10-per-cent annual economic growth and does not make its technology more efficient, then the world's raw materials would soon be used up, the chancellor argued.
The environment and business were at the top of the agenda during Merkel's three-day trip, her second to China as chancellor. Two business deals and a pact on environmental cooperation were inked.
Merkel was also expected to meet cultural and civil rights groups, and the two countries were to mark 35 years of diplomatic relations during the chancellor's visit.
Merkel said Germany holds by its "one-China" policy in which it recognizes Beijing as the sole government of China, and advised China and Taiwan to use diplomacy to peacefully settle their dispute, in which Taiwan is asserting its autonomy while China considers it a breakaway province and has threatened to use force if it declares independence.
Also on the agenda for the German chancellor, who was accompanied by a 25-member business delegation, is the importance to German industry of China's rapid economic change as well as product piracy and the safety of Chinese-made toys and other exports.
Wen tried to soothe fears of China's economic rise, saying that although China's economy would soon be as large as Germany's, it lagged far behind the Germans in science, technology and per-capita income.
"China's development poses no threat to other countries," he asserted.
Merkel demanded better practical application of legal fundamentals in the fight against product piracy while the head of China's government, as he had said during earlier diplomatic visits, assured her that the protection of intellectual property rights was also important for China's own development.
Germany wants to further enhance its already close ties with China and German business intends to "do all it can" to see that the cooperation is expanded, Merkel said before meeting with Wen at the Great Hall of the People.
However, her visit did not bring a flood of business deals as in other diplomatic trips. This time, there were two: ThyssenKrupp AG, the German industrial giant that makes steel and auto parts, signed a 200-million-dollar agreement for the manufacture of crank shafts near Nanjing, and the German airplane leasing firm Air Windrose inked a cooperation deal with charter flight operator Deer Jet, a subsidiary of China's Hainan Airlines, in which both firms agreed to represent the other in their home markets.
An expected agreement by MAN AG, the German truckmaker, on a joint venture with the Weichai Group was not signed. Officials in the German delegation said the reason it was not locked up was because the provincial government had yet to OK the project.
On the computer hacking issue, Wen spoke of a mutual problem in the age of the internet. Merkel did not touch on the hacking issue specifically but called for "collective rules and mutual respect."
In its report on computer hacking, Der Spiegel said the programs, called Trojans, which install software that allows unauthorized remote access to a victim's system, were discovered when experts examined computers Merkel's office complex and several government ministries.
The first Trojans were found several months ago, but attempts are still being made to sneak such programs into government computers via the internet, Der Spiegel said, adding that the information came from an investigation by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany's domestic intelligence agency, and the Federal Office for Information Security but without saying how it obtained the information.
A spokesman for the Interior Ministry declined to confirm the report but said preventive measures had been introduced in government offices to guard against Trojan programs. So far no damage had occurred, he added.
In addition to the Federal Chancellery, Trojans were also found in computers at the Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Economics and the Research and Development Ministry, the report said.
