Affichage des articles dont le libellé est Intel. Afficher tous les articles
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mercredi 26 juin 2019

American Quislings

U.S. Tech Companies Sidestep a Trump Ban, to Keep Selling to Huawei
By Paul Mozur and Cecilia Kang
A Huawei billboard in Shanghai. The deals with United States companies will help Huawei continue to sell its smartphones and other products.

SHANGHAI — United States chip makers are still selling millions of dollars of products to Huawei despite a Trump administration ban on the sale of American technology to the Chinese telecommunications giant.
Industry leaders including Intel and Micron have found ways to avoid labeling goods as American-made, said the people, who spoke on the condition they not be named because they were not authorized to disclose the sales.
Goods produced by American companies overseas are not always considered American-made. 
The components began to flow to Huawei about three weeks ago, the people said.
The sales will help Huawei continue to sell products such as smartphones and servers, and underscore how difficult it is for the Trump administration to clamp down on companies that it considers a national security threat, like Huawei. 
They also hint at the possible unintended consequences from altering the web of trade relationships that ties together the world’s electronics industry and global commerce.
The Commerce Department’s move to block sales to Huawei, by putting it on a so-called entity list, set off confusion within the Chinese company and its many American suppliers, the people said. Many executives lacked deep experience with American trade controls, leading to initial suspensions in shipments to Huawei until lawyers could puzzle out which products could be sent. 
Decisions about what can and cannot be shipped were also often run by the Commerce Department.

American companies like Intel sell technology supporting current Huawei products until mid-August.

American companies may sell technology supporting current Huawei products until mid-August. 
But a ban on components for future Huawei products is already in place. 
It’s not clear what percentage of the current sales were for future products. 
The sales have most likely already totaled hundreds of millions of dollars, the people estimated.
While the Trump administration has been aware of the sales, officials are split about how to respond, the people said. 
Some officials feel that the sales violate the spirit of the law and undermine government efforts to pressure Huawei, while others are more supportive because it lightens the blow of the ban for American corporations. 
Huawei has said it buys around $11 billion in technology from United States companies each year.
Intel and Micron declined to comment.
“As we have discussed with the U.S. government, it is now clear some items may be supplied to Huawei consistent with the entity list and applicable regulations,” John Neuffer, the president of the Semiconductor Industry Association, wrote in a statement on Friday.
“Each company is impacted differently based on their specific products and supply chains, and each company must evaluate how best to conduct its business and remain in compliance.”
In an earnings call Tuesday afternoon, Micron’s chief executive, Sanjay Mehrotra, said the company stopped shipments to Huawei after the Commerce Department’s action last month. 
But it resumed sales about two weeks ago after Micron reviewed the entity list rules and “determined that we could lawfully resume” shipping a subset of products, Mr. Mehrotra said. 
“However, there is considerable ongoing uncertainty around the Huawei situation,” he added.
A spokesman for the Commerce Department, in response to questions about the sales to Huawei, referred to a section of the official notice about the company being added to the entity list, including that the purpose was to “prevent activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.”
The Idaho-based Micron competes with South Korean companies like Samsung to supply memory chips that go into Huawei’s smartphones.

A senior administration official said that after the Commerce Department put Huawei on the entity list, the Semiconductor Industry Association sent a letter to the White House asking for waivers for some companies to allow them to continue selling components to Huawei. 
But the administration did not grant the waivers, he said, and the companies then found what they assert is a legal basis for continuing their sales.
Administration officials would like to address this issue, he said, but they do not plan to do so before the G-20 summit in Japan at the end of this week. 
Mr. Trump’s top priority is to discuss the general trade dispute with Xi Jinping and get the two sides to resume trade talks that have dragged on since early 2018, the official said.
The fate of Huawei, a crown jewel of Chinese innovation and technological prowess, has become a symbol of the economic and security standoff between the United States and China. 
Chinese companies like Huawei, which makes telecom networking equipment, could intercept and secretly divert information to China. 
Xi Jinping and President Trump are expected to have an “extended” talk this week during the Group of 20 meetings in Japan, a sign that the two countries are again seeking a compromise after trade discussions broke down in May. 
After the talks stalled, the Trump administration announced new restrictions on Chinese technology companies.
Along with Huawei, the administration blocked a Chinese supercomputer maker from buying American tech, and it is considering adding the surveillance technology company Hikvision to the list.
Kevin Wolf, a former Commerce Department official and partner at the law firm Akin Gump, has advised several American technology companies that supply Huawei. 
He said he told executives that Huawei’s addition to the list did not prevent American suppliers from continuing sales, as long as the goods and services weren’t made in the United States.

The SK Hynix plant in Icheon, South Korea. American companies are worried about losing market share to foreign rivals.

A chip, for example, can still be supplied to Huawei if it is manufactured outside the United States and doesn’t contain technology that can pose national security risks. 
But there are limits on sales from American companies. 
If the chip maker provides services from the United States for troubleshooting or instruction on how to use the product, for example, the company would not be able to sell to Huawei even if the physical chip were made overseas, Wolf said.
“This is not a loophole or an interpretation because there is no ambiguity,” he said. 
“It’s just esoteric.”
After this article was published online on Tuesday, Garrett Marquis, the White House National Security Council spokesman, criticized the companies’ workarounds. 
He said, “If true, it’s disturbing that a former Senate-confirmed Commerce Department official, who was previously responsible for enforcement of U.S. export control laws including through entity list restrictions, may be assisting listed entities to circumvent those very enforcement mechanisms.”
Wolf said he does not represent Chinese companies or firms on the entity list, and he added that Commerce Department officials had provided him with identical information on the scope of the list in recent weeks.
In some cases, American companies aren’t the only source of important technology, but they want to avoid losing Huawei’s valuable business to a foreign rival. 
For instance, the Idaho-based Micron competes with South Korean companies like Samsung and SK Hynix to supply memory chips that go into Huawei’s smartphones. 
If Micron is unable to sell to Huawei, orders could easily be shifted to those rivals.
Beijing has also pressured American companies. 
This month, the Chinese government said it would create an “unreliable entities list” to punish companies and individuals it perceived as damaging Chinese interests. 
The following week, China’s chief economic planning agency summoned foreign executives, including representatives from Microsoft, Dell and Apple. 
It warned them that cutting off sales to Chinese companies could lead to punishment and hinted that the companies should lobby the United States government to stop the bans. 
The stakes are high for some of the American companies, like Apple, which relies on China for many sales and for much of its production.

A FedEx warehouse in Kernersville, N.C. “FedEx is a transportation company, not a law enforcement agency,” the company said in a complaint against the government.

Wolf said several companies had scrambled to figure out how to continue sales to Huawei, with some businesses considering a total shift of manufacturing and services of some products overseas. 
The escalating trade battle between the United States and China is “causing companies to fundamentally rethink their supply chains,” he added.
That could mean that American companies shift their know-how, on top of production, outside the United States, where it would be less easy for the government to control, said Martin Chorzempa, a research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
“American companies can move some things out of China if that’s problematic for their supply chain, but they can also move the tech development out of the U.S. if that becomes problematic,” he said. 
“And China remains a large market.”
“Some of the big winners might be other countries,” Mr. Chorzempa said.
Some American companies have complained that complying with the tight restrictions is difficult or impossible, and will take a toll on their business.
On Monday, FedEx filed a lawsuit against the federal government, claiming that the Commerce Department’s rules placed an “impossible burden” on a company like FedEx to know the origin and technological makeup of all the shipments it handles.
FedEx’s complaint didn’t name Huawei specifically. 
But it said that the agency’s rules that have prohibited exporting American technology to Chinese companies placed “an unreasonable burden on FedEx to police the millions of shipments that transit our network every day.”
“FedEx is a transportation company, not a law enforcement agency,” the company said.
A Commerce Department spokesman said it had not yet reviewed FedEx’s complaint but would defend the agency’s role in protecting national security.

mardi 14 mai 2019

Retribution: Investors are fleeing companies with China business

  • The Dow is down about 1,200 points since President Donald Trump announced tariff hikes last week, with heavier losses in companies with business in China.
  • Intel, Apple and Caterpillar have all dropped more than 10% in the six trading days since the president’s tweet on May 5.
  • Intel in particular is vulnerable to a deterioration in U.S.-China trade relations, which about 25% on its sales coming from China.
By Thomas Franck

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping and members of Chinese delegation attend a working dinner with U.S. President Donald Trump after the G20 leaders summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina December 1, 2018.
Losses amid the nation’s blue-chip Dow stocks are starting to show Wall Street’s concerns for companies with significant exposure to the Chinese market.
While the Dow Jones industrial average is down 1,180 points — more than 4% — since President Donald Trump announced last week an increase to tariffs on Chinese goods, the decline has been concentrated among a select few equities.
Intel and Apple have both dropped more than 10% in the six trading days since the president’s tweet on May 5, when he said that levies on $200 billion of imported goods from China would climb to 25% from 10%. 
Caterpillar is down more than 8% since.
Beijing responded in kind on Monday, saying it would hike taxes on $60 billion worth of U.S. imports, starting on June 1.

Intel in particular may be vulnerable to a deterioration in U.S.-China trade relations, with about 25% of its sales coming from China, according to FactSet data. 
China represents about 18% of revenues for Apple and 5% for equipment and machinery giant Caterpillar.
Intel fell 3.1% Monday, while Apple dropped 5.8% and Caterpillar lost 4.6%.
Since May 3, Apple’s value has sunk $119.77 billion, Intel is down $31.29 billion and Caterpillar has lost $7.87 billion for a summed loss about the same size as the McDonald’s fast-food empire.
Global aircraft manufacturer and U.S. industrial gem Boeing also slid to start the week, down 4.8% on Monday. 
The equity is underperforming the Dow in 2019 thanks to concerns over two fatal crashes involving its 737 Max plane. 
It also generates about 13% of its total sales from China.
Other Dow-component laggards in recent days include United Technologies, Cisco Systems, 3M and Goldman Sachs, one of the largest investment banking companies in the world.
Boeing, Caterpillar, 3M, Goldman Sachs and Apple fell into bear market territory Monday, joining Intel and Walgreens Boots Alliance with more than 20% declines from recent highs.
Meanwhile the insurer UnitedHealth Group, a largely domestic business not beholden to the global economy, is still in the green.

samedi 5 août 2017

U.S. Tech Quislings

How Qualcomm Is Backing China’s Tech Ambitions
By DAVID BARBOZA

As the Chinese government develops drones, the American technology giant Qualcomm is helping. The same goes for artificial intelligence, mobile technology and supercomputers. 
Qualcomm is also working to help Chinese companies like Huawei break into overseas markets in support of China’s “go global” campaign to develop big multinational brands.
Qualcomm is providing money, expertise and engineering for Beijing’s master plan to create its own technology superpowers.
Big American companies fiercely protect their intellectual property and trade secrets, fearful of giving an edge to rivals. 
But they have little choice in China — and Washington is looking on with alarm.
To gain access to the Chinese market, American companies are being forced to transfer technology, create joint ventures, lower prices and aid homegrown players. 
Those efforts form the backbone of Xi Jinping’s ambitious plan to ensure that China’s companies, military and government dominate core areas of technology like artificial intelligence and semiconductors.
As concerns mount about Beijing’s industrial policy, the Trump administration is preparing a broad investigation into potential violations of American intellectual property, according to people with knowledge of the matter. 
Congress is also considering ways to restrict China’s ability to acquire advanced technology by toughening rules to prevent the purchase of American assets and limit technology transfers.
In this arena, America’s economic interests are aligned with its national security needs. 
The worry is that by teaming up with China, American companies could be sowing the seeds of their own destruction, as well as handing over critical technology that the United States relies on for its military, space and defense programs.
Advanced Micro Devices and Hewlett Packard Enterprise are working with Chinese companies to develop server chips, creating rivals to their own product. 
Intel is working with the Chinese to build high-end mobile chips, in competition with Qualcomm. IBM has agreed to transfer valuable technology that could enable China to break into the lucrative mainframe banking business.
“There’s a great deal of unease in Washington,” said James Lewis, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank. 
“The defense, intelligence agencies and others are concerned that advanced chip-making capabilities are going to China.”
Qualcomm declined to comment, as did Intel.
Qualcomm is caught in the middle.
The world’s dominant mobile phone chip maker, Qualcomm ran afoul of the Chinese government, getting hit in 2015 with a record $975 million fine for anticompetitive behavior. 
To get back in Beijing’s good graces, the company agreed to lower its prices in China, promised to shift more of its high-end manufacturing to partners in China, and pledged to upgrade the country’s technology capabilities.
The extent of Qualcomm’s involvement with the Chinese government — and the complications for American tech giants — is seen in a low-slung office building in the southwest part of the country. There, a team of engineers is developing leading-edge microchips to compete with the finest made by Intel. 
The chips will help power a huge data and cloud center with the potential to strengthen the country’s computing capabilities. 
No longer content to rely on buying the chips that go into cellphones, computers and cars, China now wants to design and build the brains that drive much of the digital world.
The government is providing land and financing to the start-up formed with Qualcomm, called Huaxintong Semiconductor
Qualcomm has provided the technology and about $140 million in initial funding.
“Qualcomm has a balancing act,” said Willy Shih, who teaches at Harvard Business School. 
“Most of the world’s PCs are made in China, and most of the world’s smartphones too, so they have to play along. It’s a fact of life.”
Qualcomm was early to break into China.
In the mid-1990s, as China’s economy began to boom, Bill Clinton pressed the country’s leaders to open to American technology companies.
Members of the Clinton administration, including Charlene Barshefsky, the United States trade representative, and William M. Daley, the secretary of commerce, were dispatched to Beijing to hammer out the details. 
They pushed for one company by name: Qualcomm.
“At the time, they were the only U.S. show in town,” Ms. Barshefsky said.
“Bill Daley and I pushed the Chinese hard on accepting the U.S. standard for wireless technology,” she added, “and that was Qualcomm.”
Mobile phone adoption was taking off globally, largely backed by a European wireless standard called G.S.M., or global system for mobile communications. 
Qualcomm had a competing American standard called C.D.M.A., or Code Division Multiple Access.
Irwin M. Jacobs, a founder of Qualcomm, spearheaded an aggressive lobbying campaign in Washington and Beijing, promoting the technology’s potential to transform wireless communication markets.
“We knew China would be important, and they didn’t have their own system,” said Perry LaForge, a former Qualcomm executive. 
“We also told them this system would give them an opportunity to manufacture their own handsets, and not rely on buying them from other countries.”
When Qualcomm first entered China in the late 1990s, it was slow to gain traction. 
The company struggled to find Chinese partners to produce mobile phones that worked with its network. 
China also tried to develop its own wireless standard.
Qualcomm eventually won out, helping write the standards for next-generation mobile technology, 3G and 4G service. 
The standard championed by European telecom providers faded rapidly. 
And China’s homegrown technology struggled.
By 2013, virtually every wireless device around the world was reliant on either Qualcomm’s chips or its patents — enough to provide some of the technology industry’s fattest profit margins.
With its dominance rising, global brands like Apple and Samsung began complaining to regulators around the world, citing “discriminatory” pricing practices and high royalty fees. 
In China, a trade group made up of the country’s major handset makers complained about patent holders levying “exorbitant licensing fees.”
“These days a smartphone is covered by about 250,000 patents,” said Dieter Ernst, a senior fellow at the East-West Center, a research and educational center based in Honolulu. 
“A Chinese smartphone maker needs to negotiate license agreements with companies like Qualcomm that own the essential patents.”
“The Chinese government was worried about this,” he added. 
“That all these costs could constrain Chinese companies.”
The raids began at dawn, in late November 2013. 
Investigators descended upon Qualcomm’s offices in Beijing and Shanghai, questioning the staff and hauling away laptops and documents.
At the time of the raids, the San Diego-based company’s senior managers were at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in New York, attending an investor conference. 
The executives were planning to talk about the company’s strategy. 
Instead, they began fielding frantic phone calls from China.
The China business, which accounted for more than half of its global revenue, was in trouble.
A week later, one of the country’s most powerful regulatory agencies, the National Development and Reform Commission (N.D.R.C.), announced that it was looking into whether Qualcomm had abused its power in the sale of mobile phone chips. 
“Qualcomm came to control so much of the chip market in China,” said Louie Ming, a former Qualcomm executive in China. 
“It was clear they were eventually going to run into antitrust problems.”
While Qualcomm agreed to fully cooperate with the investigation, some senior executives appealed to the Obama administration, pressing the White House to raise the issue with China’s senior leaders, according to a former administration official.
Qualcomm’s troubles went beyond China. 
The company was also under scrutiny by antitrust regulators in the European Union and South Korea, as well as by the United States Federal Trade Commission.
China didn’t back down. 
The head of the N.D.R.C. branded Qualcomm a monopoly.
In February 2015, after a 15-month-long investigation, Qualcomm settled allegations in China that it had charged unfairly high prices for its chips and patents. 
The company agreed to pay the $975 million fine — about 8 percent of its annual revenue in China — and to lower the prices for chips sold in the country.
“We are pleased that the resolution has removed the uncertainty surrounding our business in China, and we will now focus our full attention and resources on supporting our customers and partners in China,” said Steve Mollenkopf, the company’s chief executive, said at the time.
Qualcomm then went into business with the Chinese government.
There was a $150 million investment fund to help Chinese start-ups; new research and design facilities set up with Chinese companies such as Huawei and Tencent; and a partnership with a Beijing-based company called Thundersoft to develop drones, virtual reality goggles and internet-connected devices.
Qualcomm is also helping the Chinese government develop supercomputers, a technology the United States government has discouraged American companies from supporting overseas. 
In May, Qualcomm agreed to form a joint venture with other state-backed firms to design and sell mass-market smartphone chips. 
And to help make Chinese chip manufacturing more competitive, Qualcomm has pledged to shift more of its high-end production — long done by outside contractors in Taiwan and South Korea — to China.Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story


The Price of Access to a Big Market

Beijing is pressing American technology giants to form joint ventures or partnerships with Chinese companies and transfer advanced technology. The enterprises, in which American companies usually take a minority stake, are backed by the government.
Company
Partner
Date
Product
Investment
AMD
Tianjin Haiguang Advanced Technology Investment Company
2016
Server chips
$293 million
Qualcomm
Guizhou government
2016
High-end server chips
$280 million
Brocade
Guizhou government
2016
Data center networking solutions
unknown
VMWare
Sugon Information
2016
Cloud computing and virtualization software
$50 million
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Tsinghua Holdings Unisplendour Group
2016
Networking servers and storage systems
$4.5 billion
Microsoft
C.E.T.C. Group
2015
Software
$40 million
Western Digital
Tsinghua Holdings Unisplendour Group
2016
Data center storage systems
$300 million
Cisco Systems
Inspur Group
2016
Networking systems
$100 million
Intel
Spreadtrum/ RDA Microelectronics
2014
Mobile phone chips
$1.5 billion
The investment figure is either the initial investment in the venture or the U.S. company's investment in it. | By THE NEW YORK TIMES

“This is what China does better than anyone else,” said Robert D. Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a think tank focused on technology policy that has conducted studies detailing the Chinese government’s pressure on technology companies.
“They have a large carrot and a large stick,” he said. 
“And they have a market no C.E.O. can walk away from.”
Qualcomm’s biggest new venture is taking shape in southwest China’s Guizhou Province. Determined to leap into advanced technology, China has designated a large parcel of land in the provincial capital of Guiyang as the home of a new industrial park for supercomputing, data centers and cloud computing. 
The country’s large state-run telecom operators and its internet behemoths, including Alibaba and Tencent, are moving in, to build massive server farms. 
The region offers lower energy costs and abundant supplies of water, necessary to cool server farms.
A year ago, Qualcomm set up a joint venture with the Guizhou government and pledged to invest about $140 million for a minority stake in the business, situated in a development zone that has also attracted the interest of Microsoft and Dell. 
Qualcomm says it received American government approval for the deal.
The new Qualcomm joint venture, Huaxintong Semiconductor, broke ground on the site in 2016, and now operates in a 46,000-square-foot design and engineering center. 
A major test of the partnership will come when the joint venture’s first server chips are released — helping Qualcomm and the Chinese government stake out new ground. 
The Chinese government will control the chips and reap most of the profits.
In late March, Qualcomm’s president, Derek K. Aberle, flew to Guizhou to meet a powerful local government leader, Chen Min'er, a confidant of the Chinese president. 
Seated in a government hall, before an enormous landscape painting, Mr. Aberle pledged to “continually cooperate” with the Chinese government.

vendredi 2 décembre 2016

Microsoft, Intel, IBM Push Back on China Cybersecurity Rules

Beijing wants foreign tech companies to hand over their source code.By EVA DOU


Visitors used a laptop behind a security guard at the Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing in April 2015. The Chinese government plans to implement new cybersecurity rules by next summer.

BEIJING—Tough new Chinese cybersecurity rules are providing a rare, behind-the-scenes look at a regulatory skirmish between U.S. technology companies and Beijing.
China is moving to require software companies, network-equipment makers and other technology suppliers to disclose their proprietary source code, the core intellectual property running their software, to prove their products can’t be compromised by hackers.
Tech companies are loath to offer up their source code, saying this will heighten the risk of their code falling into the hands of rivals or malefactors—and may not guarantee it is hack-proof.
Microsoft Corp., Intel Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. are among those filing objections.
“Sharing source code in itself can’t prove the capability to be secure and controllable,” Microsoft wrote in comments released by a government cybersecurity committee in November.
“It only proves there is source code.”
Intel said a rule forcing chip makers to disclose the details of their products “would hurt technological innovation and decrease the security level of products.”
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BEIJING’S ONLINE RULES
Some features of China’s new regulations to ensure information technology products are ‘secure and controllable.’

  • IT suppliers must provide the software source code running the products, and design details, so authorities can check for security flaws or back doors.
  • Product security will be graded on whether the system’s technology is transparent to authorities, how data is stored and processed, and the stability of the supply chain, to economic and political changes.
  • IT buyers in China will be ranked into five security classifications that require different levels of IT equipment security.

-------------
The comments were made in a discussion log made public by Technical Committee 260, the national cybersecurity standards maker, as it released technical parameters of its omnibus cybersecurity law adopted Nov. 7.
The committee is rolling out standards for operating systems, microprocessors, office software and other products to comply with the regulations when they go into force in June 2017.
Chinese authorities have said these measures are necessary to guard against foreign espionage tools being embedded in software used here.
They frequently cite claims by former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that such back doors were routinely built into U.S. technology products sold overseas.
Microsoft, Intel and IBM were the largest U.S. firms to respond to the draft regulations, joining dozens of Chinese companies, government agencies and security experts.
The three U.S. tech giants declined to comment beyond their written statements.
All three have multiple China ventures with local partners and are typically reluctant to publicly challenge Chinese policy.
As such, their written comments, made in Chinese, offer a rare glimpse into how they parry over regulations with Beijing authorities.
Among other things, tech companies are bristling at the level of detail they would be forced to disclose to have their proprietary technologies rated “secure and controllable.”
Microsoft wrote that it believed allowing visitors to view code at its new “Transparency Center” in Beijing should suffice, rather than having to “share source code.”
Technical Committee 260 staffers disagreed, maintaining the original wording and marking the comment “not accepted.”
Microsoft and Intel also raised questions over one security standard that gives a higher ranking to products whose development and delivery can’t be disrupted by “politics,” with Intel requesting clarification.
That complaint was marked “partially accepted,” although political consideration is still in the most recent draft.
IBM said that distinctions should be made between computing services for commercial use, versus services for government applications.
“Computing rooms used purely for commercial cloud computing purposes shouldn’t have to be located within China’s borders,” wrote IBM.
In a written response, Technical Committee 260 staffers said that many sectors touch upon social stability and the public interest.
“It’s not only a pure commercial question.”
Jeremie Waterman, senior director for Greater China at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, said there is “deep concern about the IP disclosure requirements.”
But it isn’t clear what recourse U.S. tech companies might have.
Despite any objections, U.S. firms are unlikely to leave China over the cybersecurity requirements because of the importance of the mammoth Chinese market, said James Gong, a senior associate at law firm Herbert Smith Freehills LLP who works with western clients in navigating Chinese law.
“I don’t think they will pull out,” said Mr. Gong.
“I haven’t heard of any company that has decided to leave.”
China has long had cybersecurity standards that weren’t vigorously enforced—but that is likely to change when the nationwide cybersecurity law goes into effect next summer, he said.
Beijing maintains that its security rules apply to domestic and foreign companies equally.
When China passed the cybersecurity law last month, a spokesman for the internet regulator said foreigners who thought the law would favor domestic firms had a “misunderstanding, a biased view.”
But in Technical Committee 260’s discussions, certain government officials argued for the standards to be drafted to favor domestic companies.
“The big trend is called shifting to domestic production,” wrote Guo Qiquan, chief engineer at the China Ministry of Public Security’s Network Security Bureau, in a suggestion that the committee marked “approved.”
“But it can’t be written that way, so one calls it independent and controllable.”