News

Huntsman: US needs to deal with China hacks

by Peter Schroeder - 08/02/15 7:00 AM ET

Jon Huntsman, former ambassador to China, on Sunday said the government has to face the fact that China was hacking the U.S.

“Yes, they do it. Yes, the state is behind it,” he told host John Catsimatidis on “The Cats Roundtable” on New York’s AM 970. “They’re very active. They’re picking up a lot of our technology.”

Huntsman, who also served as Utah’s governor and was a Republican presidential candidate in 2012, chided U.S. officials for failing to take action to crack down on the state-sponsored activity.

{mosads}“Shame on us for not doing anything about it,” he said.

The U.S. government has suffered a number of high-profile hacks of late. Most notably, the personnel records for millions of federal employees were compromised when hackers gained access to records held by the Office of Personnel Management.

That event, in which 22 million Americans were affected, led to the resignation of the director of the OPM.

Huntsman also offered his perspective on the recent economic disruptions in China. The Chinese stock market has suffered dramatic declines in the last several months, as its major index fell 14.3 percent in July.

Huntsman attributed the market swings to a broader set of growing pains in China’s economy.

“China is in the middle of a rather historic economic transition,” he said.

In previous years, China’s economy was primarily driven by a devalued currency, cheap labor and a reliance on foreign markets to buy up its exports.

But as the nation has grown and its population has developed a middle class, China is looking to shift its economic base to one where its population drives it via the consumption of goods.

“They’re transitioning to more of a consumption-based model,” he said. “Some of where we are right now is, in effect, a result of that journey that they’re making, from the old cheap export model to the new consumption model.”

Tags Jon Huntsman