By Ankit Panda
For U.S. companies in China, there are two options: comply with draconian Chinese anti-terror laws or leave the market.
Earlier this year, I wrote about the troubling consequences China’s new anti-terror law (then under consideration by the country’s rubber-stamp legislation) would have on U.S. technology firms operating in the People’s Republic. Now, that issue has come back to the fore with reports that Beijing has reminded U.S. tech companies operating in China that their products and their servers in China need to be “secure and controllable,” a euphemistic turn of phrase that really means anything but what those two words imply (at least, for the firms in question).
Instead, what the Chinese authorities really mean is that these products must be “secure” to the extent that they can peer in, and “controllable” by the state. With days left before Xi’s arrival in the United States, amid murmurings that Washington will sponsor Chinese individuals and entities for cyber espionage, the Chinese government move emphasizes a careful game of tit-for-tat in the cyber realm.
Read the full story at The Diplomat