China and the United States are to set up a working group on cyber security.
Secretary of State John Kerry, who has been visiting China, said the United States has agreed on the need to speed up action on cyber security - an area Washington says is its top national security concern.
Beijing and Washington have traded accusations in recent months of massive cyber intrusions.
"All of us, every nation, has an interest in protecting its people, protecting its rights, protecting its infrastructure," Mr Kerry said in Beijing on Saturday.
"Cybersecurity affects everybody," he said. "It affects airplanes in the sky, trains on their tracks, it affects the flow of water through dams, it affects transportation networks, power plants, it affects the financial sector, banks, financial transactions.
"So we are going to work immediately on an accelerated basis on cyber."
Earlier, the Xinhua news agency quoted Foreign Minister Wang Yi as telling Mr Kerry that China and the United States should make joint efforts to safeguard cyberspace.
Cyberspace should be an area where the two countries can increase mutual trust and cooperation, he said.
A US computer security firm issued a report in February saying a secret Chinese military unit is believed to be behind a wave of hacking attacks against the United States.
China claims it is the victim of large-scale cyber attacks from the United States, though it has given few details.
