By Franz-Stefan Gady
The draft counter-terrorism law is a sort of insurance card for CCP leadership vis-à-vis the US.
The People’s Republic of China is postponing the third reading of a controversial draft of a new counter-terrorism law which, among other things, would have required Western technology firms to hand over encryption keys, source code, and install “backdoors” (bypassing normal authentication) giving Chinese authorities remote access to computers and networks.
Recent reports by U.S. authorities that the law has been put on hold for good have turned out to be premature. The law will likely be somewhat revised to address some Western concerns, since Beijing is still technologically dependent on foreign companies, despite a push to eliminate foreign technology in key sectors by 2020. “Currently, the deliberation on this law is ongoing,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said on March 16.
What to make of this development? In short, China is trying to accomplish two things. First, the law fits into Xi Jinping’s broader plans to clear banks, the military, state-owned enterprises and key government agencies from its dependency on foreign technology (e.g., Microsoft’s Windows operating system and core servers) by 2020. The already existing trend in Beijing towards technological nationalism was merely amplified by the NSA spying revelations.
Xi, who is personally presiding over a newly founded government body called the “Central Internet Security and Informatization Leading Group,” noted during the group’s first meeting in March 2014 that developing domestic technologies and ensuring cyber-security are “two wings of a bird and two wheels of an engine.” According to Bloomberg Business, China invested $182 billion in its tech sector 2013, a jump of 8.1 percent from the previous year.
Read the full story at The Diplomat