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China has been the target of serious cyberattacks from the United States, but Beijing has neverblamed Washington or the Pentagon because such accusations would be "technicallyirresponsible", Chinese Internet insiders said.

The cyberattacks from the US have been as grave as the ones the US claims China hasconducted, they said on Tuesday.

China's Internet emergency response agencyhas tried its best to handle all the UScomplaints made this year, they said.

However, the US never mentioned thealleged Chinese hacking theft of the designsof more than 20 kinds of top US weapons, butinstead gave the unverified informationdirectly to the media.

"We have mountains of data, if we wanted toaccuse the US, but it's not helpful in solvingthe problem," said Huang Chengqing,director of the National Computer NetworkEmergency Response TechnicalTeam/Coordination Center of China, alsoknown as CNCERT.

"The importance of handling Internet securitycases keeps rising, but the issue can only besettled through communication, notconfrontation."

Huang's remarks came after a slew of reportsaccusing China of hacking were released inthe US this year. High-ranking officials inWashington also pressed Beijing on the issuein recent weeks.

According to CNCERT, in the first five monthsof this year, 13,408 overseas trojan horsesor bot control servers — two popular hackingtools — hijacked around 5.63 millionmainframes in China. Of those, 4,062 US-based control servers hijacked 2.91 millionmainframes in China.

The US ranked first in both the number ofcontrol servers and the number of mainframes controlled in China.

In the same period, websites of 249 important Chinese organizations including governmentdepartments, key information systems and research institutions were implanted with backdoorprograms. Among them, 54 websites were hijacked by US-based IP addresses for stealinginformation.

"However, it's hard to judge whether the US government supported or got involved in thehacking. Besides, hackers can easily hide their real location and identities," Huang said.

"So technically it is irresponsible and unfounded for some people to talk about alleged hackingsupported by the Chinese authorities."

As for the Washington Post report in late May about Chinese hacking on US weapons, Huangsaid design information of top-class weapons are usually listed as top national secrets. "Evenfollowing the general principle of secret-keeping, it should not have been linked to the Internet."

Huang said his agency has been fighting with hackers. Except for daily work of Internet securitymonitoring, prewarning and emergency response, CNCERT cut hackers’ remote control on39.37 million infected mainframes in 2012.

The agency has set up Internet security cooperative relations with 91 organizations in 51countries and regions.

Huang said a case in March explains the importance of such cooperation. At that time, SouthKorea suspected that Chinese hackers paralyzed the network of some local media and banksand required assistance from CNCERT. Through joint efforts, it was discovered that the IPaddress connected to the hacking was in the range of Chinese IP addresses but was actuallyused by a South Korean bank.

As for cooperation with the US, Huang said in the first four months of this year CNCERTreceived 32 Internet security cases from the US, among the 227 complaints from abroad.

They handled the US cases in time, except for attempted IP address attacks, which lackedsufficient proof. And they sent feedback to the US on all the cases.

"But they did not mention these efforts, instead they advocated cases that they never let usknow about. Some cases can be addressed if they had talked to us, why not let us know? It isnot a constructive train of thought to solve problems," Huang said.

"Besides, we have smooth communication at the civil level. I don't understand why all levels ofthe US government are accusing China of cybersecurity recently. I felt it is driven by somepolitical intentions, though I don't know what the intentions are."

Huang said he noticed the US has kept beefing up its cyberwar forces as it hyped hackingthreats from China.

After Mandiant, a Washington-based cybersecurity group, said in a report in February that thePeople's Liberation Army sponsors hacking, US Cyber Command and National Security Agencychief General Keith Alexander told Congress in March that of the 40 new Cyber Commandteams being assembled, 13 would be focused on offensive operations.

Gao Xinmin, vice-chairman of Internet Society of China, said: "The US is much more dependenton the Internet than developing nations, so it is fully understandable that they attach greatimportance to the issue."

"However, because of the lack of mutual trust, it is easy for some countries to blame hacking onother governments. And driven by some political needs, the dirty water is often poured ontoChina," Gao said.

The White House has announced that cybersecurity will be high on the agenda of President XiJinping's meeting with US President Barack Obama this week in California.

CNCERT's Huang said it is necessary to have multi-level talks, but the most effective way is to"start from the basic level" and beef up communication between frontline agencies, such asemergency response organizations, from relevant countries.