Graeme Maxton
Most reports on this suggest that the issue under discussion is market access, that it concerns China restricting US companies and denying them a business opportunity.
As with Huawei, though, the fight is really about security, economic power and sovereignty. With Huawei, the US fears that with the shift to 5G communications technology, China will control large parts of the networks across which the world’s data flows. It is not just about who provides the equipment. It is a question of who controls access to the internet’s plumbing.
For America’s hi-tech firms, China is different from almost every other market. They have failed to completely dominate the tech and information industry as they have almost everywhere else, largely because China is one of the few countries to have successfully established competitive rivals – firms like Weibo, Alibaba, JD.com, Baidu, Tencent and Lenovo. As a result, US firms have very little access to Chinese data.
Other US tech firms have been similarly frustrated in China, with access to Facebook, Bing, WhatsApp and Twitter frequently blocked as well. Windows and MS Office are almost non-existent, other than in pirated form. Amazon recently
While Apple has had more success, a “boycott Apple” movement has recently been launched on Weibo with some Chinese companies reportedly threatening to fire employees who own one of the US firm’s phones.
When it comes to cloud computing, foreign firms are currently required to work with a local firm and give their partners a licence to their technology.
They are also forced to store some information in the country. Under pressure from US trade negotiators to open this market further, China has said that US firms can set up their own cloud operations – but only in a pilot free-trade zone, a sort of walled garden.
What these US firms really want, though, is to get behind the Great Firewall. They seek the ability to hoover up data, just as they do elsewhere.
If they own the storage, they get easy access to the information that is stored – personal and corporate emails, company reports and plans, conversations, online transactions, passwords and, through all that, the ability to understand what people are thinking and saying.
free speech and supporting improved human rights, they can then use this information to help “broaden the horizons” of Chinese internet users and nudge the country towards what America would call “greater openness”.
Control of the cloud offers a new step on the pathway to influence news, promote alternative models of political progress and tweak opinions.
For China, the risks here are immense, which is why it has balked at allowing unfettered access to the cloud and declared the topic a line in the sand.
China knows that these US firms are like foxes wanting access to a chicken coop, especially as many of them are closely linked to the US military and a legal judgment has even classified some of the connections between Google and the National Security Agency as secret.
What is at stake here is not just business access. It is about the chance to influence Chinese thinking and so the country’s long-term political development. It is, at its core, a battle for hearts and minds.
- Will American capitalism win the day or can China’s version of communism continue? Will the Chinese people continue to accept centralised control or will they demand greater democracy? Will they want free speech or continue to accept censorship?
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