Last week’s agreement between President Barack Obama and visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping to curb commercial cyber espionage is a step forward from earlier stances of denial and counterattacks. Yet many remain skeptical about the effectiveness of the agreement, including U.S. security agencies. Continuing cyber espionage by non-state actors remains likely, and the Chinese central government has limited control over provincial governments in any case, say experts from Wharton and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. At a minimum, however, the agreement reduces tensions between the two countries over cyber espionage. One of the first major causes of the cyber espionage conflict was the so-called Operation Aurora in 2009, when malware traced to a Beijing company with ties to China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) affected 30 major U.S. companies including Google, Adobe and Northrop Grumman. Last year, the U.S.…