How China is exploiting Edward Snowden… or thinks it’s exploiting Edward Snowden
Reuters’ Paul Carsten had an exclusive Wednesday on China’s crafty steps to shut out Western technology companies. In essence, China is using the outrage over Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations to kick out Western firms and open up a secure market for indigenous Chinese tech firms:
China has dropped some of the world’s leading technology brands from its approved state purchase lists, while approving thousands more locally made products, in what some say is a response to revelations of widespread Western cybersurveillance.
Others put the shift down to a protectionist impulse to shield China’s domestic technology industry from competition.
Chief casualty is U.S. network equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc, which in 2012 counted 60 products on the Central Government Procurement Center’s (CGPC) list, but by late 2014 had none, a Reuters analysis of official data shows. Smartphone and PC maker Apple Inc has also been dropped over the period, along with Intel Corp’s security software firm McAfee and network and server software firm Citrix Systems.
The slow squeeze on technology firms has prompted complaints by European and American firms to their governments. As Quartz’s Adam Pasick notes, it’s part and parcel of a previous move to shut Western software firms out of the Chinese government market. And if you want to get all hot and bothered about the prospect of a trade war with China, you can link this move to China’s ejection of Western consulting firms last summer.
But before everyone panics about Chinese “indigenous innovation” policies, a few words of calm are necessary...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/02/26/how-china-is-exploiting-edward-snowden-or-thinks-its-exploiting-edward-snowden/
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