14 DAY TRIAL // A few days ago news surfaced that Indonesia is preparing the much-dreaded “Made in Indonesia” smartphone law which will prohibit from sale handsets and tablets that don’t have at least 40% of their parts produced locally.
The regulation might have a long-lasting impact on US companies like Apple who will be facing a major disadvantage in the country.
Well, it appears more Asian territories are pulling together and seemingly setting up a resistance front against Western technology giants.
A new report coming out of Reuters reveals that China has scrapped off products and services produced by foreign companies from its approved state-purchase lists. In turn, the resulting void will be filled by products produced within the country’s borders. We're feeling a strong deja-vu vibe.
The Chinese government against US tech giants
China’s Central Government Procurement Center or CGPC removed services coming from Apple, Intel, Cisco, McAfee and Citrix Systems, with Cisco being the biggest loser in this whole situation.
Between 2012 and 2014, the CGPC, in charge of commanding the central state ministries’ spending schemes, has authorized the purchase of more than 2,000 new products, but this increase was mostly due to local parties.
During the same period, the number of approved tech brands saw a decrease by a third. The reasons behind China’s change in policy?
According to an unnamed official in the CGPC, China believes that domestic security technological companies offer better product guarantees than the foreign competition.
Furthermore, the new regulations have been imposed in the aftermath of the revelations regarding US’s cyber surveillance activities under the National Security Agency rule, which were brought to the public’s attention by Edward Snowden.
Apple products viewed as security risk
Apple has been accused in the past of holding secret ties to the NSA, which culminated with China Central Television airing a report that referred to the iOS location tracking as “a national security concern.”
In order to get the whole thing settled, Apple had to move Chinese users’ iCloud data to domestic servers located within the country.
Apple declined to comment the Chinese sentence, while Intel revealed the company is engaged in various conversations within the US and Chinese governments. To what end? We currently don’t know.