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In some of his strongest public remarks yet about the cyberattacks on American companies and government agencies that are believed to have been sponsored by China, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said Sunday that the situation was "as bad as I've ever seen it and exponentially getting worse."

The committee chairman, Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, confirmed recent reports of ambitious efforts by Chinese hacking groups – traced by one American computer security firm to a Chinese military unit in Shanghai – to penetrate American, European and Asian businesses and siphon off blueprints and corporate secrets.

Obama administration officials have said the attacks have become so intense that they threaten the fundamental relationship between the United States and China. Beijing has denied any role in computer hacking, saying the activity is illegal.

Asked on the ABC News program "This Week" whether he believed that the Chinese government and military were behind the economic espionage, Mr. Rogers replied, "Beyond a shadow of a doubt."

He said the attacks were illegal and unprecedented in scope, and that the United States was not currently able to protect American companies from them.

"We're not ready yet," he said. "We are completely vulnerable to this."

Mr. Rogers suggested that the United States use not just economic sanctions on those responsible but also to take tough action against specific Chinese individuals.

"I argue you need to start indicting bad actors," he said. "You need to start impacting individuals' ability who are participating in this activity in China to get visas, their families to get visas."

"It's that serious," he said.

Representative Eliot L. Engel of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said on the same program that he had confronted top Chinese officials with the accusations during a recent visit to Beijing. "They just let it roll off their back," he said. "They pooh-poohed it." He said Washington should make it clear to the Chinese that "there's a price to pay."

While some reports have suggested that the United States and Israel were likely behind cyberattacks against Iran's nuclear program, Mr. Rogers made two points: First, he said, that people should be "very cautious about ascribing authorship" for those attacks and, second, that such defensive attacks were different from the sort of economic espionage that China is suspected to be involved in.

That, he said, was why he would "send a message to China that you cannot – if you want to be an international player, you can't act like a thief in the night."