WASHINGTON — The United States and China have agreed to hold regular, high-level talks on how to set standards of behavior for cybersecurity and commercial espionage, the first diplomatic effort to defuse the tensions over what the U.S. says is a daily barrage of computer break-ins and theft of corporate and government secrets.

The talks will begin in July. On Friday, President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping, who took office this spring, are scheduled to hold an unusual, informal summit meeting in Rancho Mirage, Calif., that could set the tone for their relationship and help them confront chronic tensions like the nuclear threat from North Korea.

But U.S. officials say they do not expect the process to immediately yield a significant reduction in the daily intrusions from China.

The head of the U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency, Gen. Keith Alexander, has said the attacks have resulted in the “greatest transfer of wealth in history.” Hackers have stolen a variety of secrets, including negotiating strategies and schematics for next-generation fighter jets and gas pipeline control systems.

Nonetheless, a senior U.S. official involved in the negotiations to hold regular meetings said in an interview Friday that “we need to get some norms and rules.”

“It is a serious issue that cannot simply be swatted away with talking points,” said the official, who noted that the meetings would focus primarily on the theft of intellectual property from American companies. “Our concerns are not limited to that, but that’s what needs urgent attention,” he added.

The Chinese government has insisted it is a victim of cyberattacks, not a perpetrator, and Chinese officials have vigorously denied the extensive evidence gathered by the Pentagon and private security experts that a unit of the People’s Liberation Army, Unit 61398, outside Shanghai, is behind many of the most sophisticated attacks on the United States.

On Saturday, after Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel spoke of a “growing threat of cyberintrusions” at a conference in Singapore, in comments directed at China, a Chinese general gave a tart response, saying she doubted the United States’ assurances that its growing military presence in Asia was not directed at China.

While cyberattacks will be a major subject of the talks in Rancho Mirage, the main effort will be to forge a rapport between Obama and Xi. U.S. officials hope the estate, known as Sunnylands, which has played host to U.S. presidents and foreign dignitaries dating to Richard Nixon, will put both men at ease.

U.S. officials said they have been surprised by the pace at which Xi, a longtime party functionary who consolidated his grip on power in March, has installed new faces in the Chinese leadership and moved to take greater control over the military, something his predecessor never mastered.

Cybersecurity issues loom large between the U.S. and China because they go to the heart of the economic relationship between the two countries, even more so now that previous sources of friction, like China’s foreign exchange policies, have eased in the last year.

In return, the Chinese will press the Americans on their use of cyberweapons: while there is no evidence they have been used against Chinese targets, the sophisticated cyberattacks on Iran’s nuclear program by the United States and Israel are often cited by the Chinese news media and military journals as evidence that Washington, too, uses cyberspace for strategic advantage.

Where the talks will lead, however, is unclear: after considerable debate within the Obama administration, officials have concluded that cyberconflict does not lend itself to the kind of arms control treaties that the U.S. and the Soviet Union began negotiating 50 years ago. Today, cyberweapons are held by private individuals as well as states, and figuring out where an attack began can be maddeningly difficult.