US and Chinese negotiators are discussing adding a concession on cloud computing to their trade agreement that would give foreign companies greater access to the US$12 billion Chinese market, people familiar with the talks said.
Chinese officials called a meeting this week with representatives of companies including Microsoft Corp, Apple Inc and Amazon.com Inc to talk about the proposal in detail, one of the people said.
The discussions include possibly scrapping a requirement that providers of remote computing services form joint ventures with local companies, another person said.
Both asked not to be named as they were discussing private negotiations.
China in 2017 introduced sweeping cybersecurity laws to bolster control over the collection and movement of Chinese users’ data, and potentially grant the government more access to foreign companies’ technology.
Foreign cloud companies are required to license their technology to local partners in order to operate in China and have been forced to store some information within the country.
The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology did not reply to a fax requesting comment.
Amazon, Microsoft and Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
US National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow has said that the two sides are nearing a trade deal and officials would talk over the telephone following high-level meetings in Beijing and Washington.
The text of an agreement being worked on covers technology transfers, intellectual property protections, non-tariff measures, services, agriculture, trade balance and enforcement, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency said.
The Wall Street Journal last month reported that Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (李克強) floated the idea of allowing foreign firms to own data centers in China’s free-trade zones and have better access to its cloud-computing market.
In 2017, Apple agreed to shift storage of data for Chinese users of Apple’s iCloud services to server farms operated by Guizhou Cloud Big Data (雲上貴州), a company with local government ties.
Amazon also agreed to sell some of its Chinese cloud assets to its local partner to comply with government regulations.
Drafts of the broader trade agreement now under discussion would give Beijing until 2025 to meet commitments, such as allowing US companies to wholly own enterprises in China, people familiar with the talks said earlier.
Those would be binding pledges that could trigger US retaliation if unfulfilled, the people said.
The nine-month trade dispute between the world’s largest economies has disrupted supply chains, whipsawed markets and weighed on the world economy.
The IMF has cut its outlook for global growth to the lowest since the financial crisis, while including a breakdown in US-China talks among possible risks.
Negotiators are still working out details and discussing when US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) could sit down to sign the agreement.
Despite touting the idea of a “signing summit” at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida a month ago, Trump last week said that there are no guarantees the two would meet.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by