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China to Beef up "Firewall" by Localizing IT Gear in Government Organizations

2014/12/25 | By Ken Liu

According to news reports, Chinese President Xi Jinping is moving to "strengthen firewall" in the nation's computer gear, having ordered government organizations, the military, banks and state-run businesses in China to replace all foreign-made networking gear, computers and software in use with locally-made products by 2020.

Such order comes in the heels of reaction to the accusations by the former U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee Edward Snowden that the U.S government had hacked into the computers of Tsinghua University in China.

Taiwan's IT manufacturers with operations in China have also confirmed such actions by Chinese authorities to prevent infiltration of information technology equipment and networks in the nation.

While the move will impact international brands like Intel, Cisco, HP, and IBM, they believe  Taiwanese brands as Asustek, Acer and HTC won't be seriously hit for being excluded as foreign suppliers due to the nominally-unsettled China-Taiwan relationship.

But such policy would undermine Taiwanese contract manufacturers whose technologically-unsophisticated products are easily localized, but with such fate to spare suppliers like metal-casing makers Catcher Technology Co., Ltd. and Casetek Holdings Ltd.

According to Bloomberg news,  China will adopt IT technologies and products by local makers or demand foreign IT manufacturers have their products examined by Chinese authorities.

According to media reports, Chinese authorities are more aggressively pushing for the replacements after local IT products have proven successful in government organizations in Siping City in Jilin Province, where locally-developed Neo Kylin OS has replaced Windows OS and Inspur servers have replaced foreign made products. (KL)