China plans to toss foreign-made PCs from government agencies 'in two years'
- Reference: 1651924631
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/05/07/china_foreign_pcs/
- Source link:
According to Bloomberg, "people familiar with the plan" recounted how government staff were told upon returning from China's Labor Day holiday, which ran from April 30th through May 4th, they will have to toss foreign PCs.
Bloomberg's [1]report claims that the yet-to-be-officially-published mandate could lead to the replacement of as many as 50 million PCs by the central government.
[2]
The leading PC maker in the APAC region last year, [3]according to research firm IDC , was China-based Lenovo, with about 30 percent of the market. HP came in second, with 14.3 percent market share, followed closely by Dell with 14.1 percent market share.
[4]
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Figures specific to the Chinese market from Canalys, [6]covering Q2 2021 , show Lenovo with a 40 percent market share.
Lenovo stock, coincidentally, was up about 4 percent on Friday, following the publication of the report from Bloomberg. The NASDAQ Composite during that period fell 1.4 percent.
[7]
The Register asked HP and Dell to comment but we've not heard back. We also asked Apple to comment because a predictably uncommunicative communications department is always good for a laugh.
We reached out to the Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC, which did not respond. The Commerce Department didn't immediately respond to a query either. A US State Department spokesperson did get back to us to say the agency has nothing to say on the subject.
Singing an old tune
This is not the first time reports of this sort have circulated. In December 2019, The Financial Times ran [8]a similar story , "Beijing orders state offices to replace foreign PCs and software." At the time – amid the Trump administration's friction with China and [9]ban on Huawei's telecom gear – the transition was to take three years, which is about where we are now.
Then there was the time in 2014 when, [10]according to China's Xinhua news agency , China banned Windows 8 on government computers. That was a month after Microsoft ended support for Windows 8 and Chinese officials were said to concerns about the operating system's safety.
China has long wanted to wean itself from dependence on foreign technology providers. As far back as 1999, government officials hoped the homegrown [11]Red Flag Linux would replace Windows. The software however proved unpopular and the project shut down in 2014.
[12]China's road to homegrown chip glory looks to be going for a RISC-V future
[13]SEC adds Tencent, JD.com, China Mobile to group facing potential delisting
[14]European tech businesses cool on China due to coronavirus lockdowns
[15]China finished 2021 with 4% global semiconductor market share
More or less since Edward Snowden leaked classified information in 2013 about the scope of global surveillance programs run by the US National Security Agency, talk of disentangling global supply chains for the sake of national security has picked up. During the Trump administration, trade conflict with China increased and sanctions against Chinese firms like Huawei complicated global tech transitions like the adoption of 5G networking technology.
Relations with China have not improved much under the Biden administration, which has enacted its own considerable set of trade restrictions, as [16]documented by China Briefing.
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And thanks to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing sanctions imposed by the US, EU countries, and the UK, among others, Russia too has been forced to [18]mandate locally made technology.
Even so, Scott Kennedy, senior advisor on Chinese business and economics at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, does not appear to find the report particularly troubling.
"This is at least the fourth or fifth time Beijing has 'ordered' replacement of foreign office equipment, only to later back down," he said [19]via Twitter . "Unsure why this time will be different. Even if they swap in domestic brands, there'll still be lots of US & Western tech inside." ®
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[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-06/china-orders-government-state-firms-to-dump-foreign-pcs
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YnaXqNidwOPt-UXcuqK0SwAAAE4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/25/apac_pc_market_data/
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YnaXqNidwOPt-UXcuqK0SwAAAE4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YnaXqNidwOPt-UXcuqK0SwAAAE4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/china-PC-shipments-Q2-2021
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YnaXqNidwOPt-UXcuqK0SwAAAE4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://www.ft.com/content/b55fc6ee-1787-11ea-8d73-6303645ac406
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2019/08/19/us_government_huawei_extension/
[10] https://web.archive.org/web/20140524021328/http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-05/20/c_133347210.htm
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Red_Flag_Linux&oldid=1082294162
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/09/china_homegrown_chips/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/05/sec_delisting_china/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/06/european_chamber_commerce_china_survey/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/06/2021_national_semiconductor_market_share/
[16] https://www.china-briefing.com/news/us-china-relations-in-the-biden-era-a-timeline/
[17] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YnaXqNidwOPt-UXcuqK0SwAAAE4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[18] https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/01/russia_bans_foreign_software/
[19] https://twitter.com/KennedyCSIS/status/1522516212458336256?s=20&t=NOSABB60NccePsolBZmm5Q
[20] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Seems pointless getting rid of foreign hardware. The software is far more obvious a route for spying.
If it was possible to fully disable or replace the encrypted software, that has full access to the network, RAM and all hardware, then that would make total sense.
https://libreboot.org/faq.html#intel and https://libreboot.org/faq.html#amd
But currently you can not, so I can see the logic in removing foreign hardware. In fact considering the scope of spying even on allies (e.g. greek watergate; "spying between friends just isn't on" - Angela Merkel, 2013), I would have expected more to either more join the "fourteen eyes" if they can (like Germany did three years after dropping the the Merkel case) or for governments without that option to restrict foreign hardware to non-essential functions. But that is getting harder and harder, when even a single laptop could potentially contain 10+ independent MPU's/MCU's scattered around the board (GCHq publicly destroying the laptops containing Snowden leaks, was a great example of where spyware is installed on modern hardware - https://www.theregister.com/2015/04/02/guardians_destroyed_hard_drives_to_become_va_art/ ). Or a worse option would be to go back to simpler times and use 20+ year old hardware were all the software can be replaced.
You could look at this as the destruction of everywhere that software was installed on that particular make and model of laptop. There is far more software that most people think and not all of it can be replaced without having access to signing keys with the the required development and testing environment. And most is encrypted as well as being signed. If your replacement code is not signed with the correct key you can not install new software, the hardware will reject it.
There are images in this video of where angle grinders and drimels were used in the guardian basement on the laptop that contained the Snowden leaks under the direction and supervision of "Ian" and "Chris" from GCQH https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/jan/31/snowden-files-computer-destroyed-guardian-gchq-basement-video
Be assured that all forms of access are considered by spy orgs. Hardware, software, firmware, middleware, operating system, Tempest, ethernet, Wifi, Bluetooth, the electrical grid and the user are all targets.
Your as well by the way.
Depends what they mean by "foreign owned" companies.
After all, most of the hardware is assembled in China from China made components by companies which are either 100% Chinese or *partially* foreign companies, ie foreign companies with a presence in China need a 51% Chinese owned share to be allowed to operate.
Depending on how they enforce this ruling, it may simply be a drive toward more locally built components, cutting out imports from fabs in Philippines, India etc.
... Even if they swap in domestic brands, there'll still be lots of US & Western tech inside.
But here is the trick... The "still be" will become gradually a smaller part each time China put its national foot down. It may not be today, but China is becoming less dependent on western technology. That is the strategy. It may take another 10 or 20 years to become self sufficient, but then you have to deal with a power that cannot be held down by "simple" trade sanctions.