For some Americans, it shouldn’t be a free-for-all. Self-restraint and protocol can be, and should be, observed because it is to the long-term benefit of both sides that the exchange of electrons, and the vital economic juice that digitized information has come to represent, not get short-circuited.

As in any neighborly dispute, boundaries have to be established, but as the grandeur of the Great Wall attests to, maintaining big boundaries exacts a price in resource allocation.

Many an early cyber enthusiast envisioned a splendor-in-the-grass world where the electron flow would be open and unguarded, but today the known vulnerabilities of an inter-wired world call for a certain amount of fencing.

Weak links notwithstanding, there is a danger in an overzealous response. A “get-off-my-lawn!” attitude pushes both sides to put up impassable walls.

Good fences may make good neighbors, but good neighbors don’t rim their fences with glass shards and barbed wire.

Bolstered by a recognition that there is no stakeholder above the law, or exempt from the norms that guide the commons, China and the US can cooperate to promote their own best interests by keeping fencing to a bare minimum, aware of how such things can escalate, while endeavoring to maintain a mutually beneficial free flow of people, goods and information.

The author is a media researcher covering Asian politics.