US officials have raised serious concerns with China over cybersecurity attacks on both government and commercial targets in the United States, but did not get firm commitments from their counterparts during final talks at the sixth bilateral Strategic and Economic Dialogue (SED) in Beijing.

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The two sides did not get to discuss news in Washington about a purportedly Chinese attempt to hack into a very sensitive federal personnel database.

The talks ended Thursday with some positive results on boosting military and counter-terrorism cooperation, and with China announcing that it will continue to protect its "territorial and maritime rights" in the South and East China Seas.

Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi said the Chinese side urged the US to abide by its position to stay neutral in the maritime disputes and play a "construction role" in safeguarding stability in the region.

Neither Yang nor US State Secretary John Kerry gave details on what other items about military cooperation and regional stability were discussed during the dialogue.

A large People's Liberation Army naval contingent is presently taking part, for the first time, in the Rim of the Pacific multilateral exercises near Hawaii, with four surface ships, two helicopters, and around 1,100 personnel.

The two sides signed a total of eight agreements within the last week, two of them related to increased cooperation in the area of climate change mitigation. 

On the issue of cybersecurity, Kerry said their discussions with the Chinese were heated, but did not include talk about the latest discovery of a hacking attack made in March on a federal government employees database, which officials in Washington said Thursday possibly pointed to a Chinese role.

Kerry said he again called for the reactivation of a bilateral working group that would focus on the problem of cyber-espionage.

The working group was disbanded last May after US prosecutors indicted five Chinese military officers for cyber-theft.

US officials consider the recently discovered hacking attack into the databases of the Washington-based Office of Personnel Management as serious, as it represents a deliberate attempt to steal US government secrets.

Previous criticisms of Chinese cyber-attack attempts were related to commercial and trade secrets that analysts believed could help China achieve an advantage during negotiations involving economic and commercial transactions. 

TagsJohn Kerry, cybersecurity, Yang Jiechi