China makes a whitelist to free itself of U.S. tech
Business & Technology
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China is gearing up to develop homegrown technologies in its most critical sectors, from cloud computing to chips, in an effort to immunize itself from future U.S. technology bans.
- The Information Technology Application Innovation Working Committee will approve, set standards, and offer state support for local suppliers of key technologies via a whitelist.
- 1,800 Chinese suppliers of PCs, chips, and networking software have been asked to join the list with 1,160 members already certified as of July 2020.
Key question: What’s driving the government’s thinking? The quasi-government body, set up in 2016, is a direct reaction to U.S. export bans that knee-capped some of China’s largest tech companies such as Huawei last year.
- Companies on the list, which include Huawei, Alibaba’s cloud unit, and the network security firm Qi An Xin, will likely enjoy an expedited approval process for technology.
- Any company that is more than 25% foreign-owned is excluded from the list. Tech companies that are mostly foreign funded also have a high bar, though Alibaba and Tencent seem to be exempted.
The takeaway: The whitelist will be a major tool Beijing uses to select and prioritize local champions over foreign competitors in critical technology sectors like data security.
