Beijing curtailed access by overseas firms to Chinese data sources in part due to a series of reports written by US research institutions that alarmed officials, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter.
Senior officials grew concerned about research by US think tanks based on public local data sources that focused on sensitive issues such as collaboration between the military and private organizations, the Journal reported.
Those reports came from sources such as the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University and the Center for a New American Security, which was cofounded by US National Security Council Indo-Pacific Coordinator Kurt Campbell, the newspaper said.
Photo: AFP
Beijing is moving to tighten its grip on sensitive data as tensions with Washington mount. Despite the administration’s push to encourage investment into China this year, investors continue to grapple with a lack of transparency and information across swaths of the world’s second-largest economy.
Think tanks, research houses and consultancies seeking information on China’s economy have long relied on domestic sources to dive deeper into specific issues and industries.
However, Chinese services such as Wind Information Co (萬得資訊) in recent months stopped providing detailed data on the nation’s companies to overseas clients.
That coincided with a clampdown on foreign firms that regularly gather information on businesses in the country. Consultancies in particular are under the microscope, with Beijing in recent weeks targeting the local offices of Bain & Co, Mintz Group and Capvision, media reported.
The government last month passed a counter-espionage law that expanded the list of activities that could be considered spying.
“By taking crucial data off the table, public discourse on China will drift further from the truth. It’s a reckless move by China to limit access to the data,” said Dakota Cary, a China-focused consultant at Krebs Stamos Group. “The US-China relationship will be made worse by this decision.”
The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), the country’s powerful Internet overseer, notified data providers in March to restrict overseas access to sensitive information such as patents and statistics, the Journal reported, citing people who have consulted with Chinese authorities.
Organizations received notices in March warning about upcoming restrictions on services including the popular academic database China National Knowledge Infrastructure, the University of California, Berkeley said in an online notice.
“Many content types that were previously viewed as mundane have now been flagged by the Chinese authorities to be subject to government review,” the university’s library said.
“The duration of such suspensions is not yet known, but we have been told that access will resume upon CAC determining that Chinese publishers have addressed their requirements for the review of the affected content types,” it said.
One report that caught Beijing’s eye was a policy brief published by the Center for Security and Emerging Technology in June last year, titled “Silicon Twist,” the Journal said.
That report focused on the military’s access to US-designed chips intended to train artificial intelligence models. The authors said they analyzed thousands of purchasing records to draw their conclusions, and described steps that the US government could take to cut off that access.
Another, from the same center, zeroed in on how Beijing employed programs to track and recruit talent from around the globe to boost its strategic goals, the Journal reported.
The think tank had relied on sources including China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Center for Security and Emerging Technology spokeswoman Lynne Weil said.
However, it had no insight into what might have triggered information curbs, she said.
Chinese data has gradually become less available, Grow Investment Group (思睿對沖基金) chief economist Hao Hong (洪灝) told Bloomberg Television yesterday.
“People learn to get around the issue by using different data sources, but at the end of the day it’s becoming harder to analyze what’s going on in China,” he said.
US PROBE: The Information reported that the US Department of Commerce is investigating whether the firm made advanced chips for China’s Huawei Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract maker of advanced chips, yesterday said it is a law-abiding company, and is committed to complying with all applicable laws and regulations including export controls. The Hsinchu-based chip giant issued the statement after US news Web site The Information ran a story saying that the US Department of Commerce has launched a probe into TSMC over whether it breached export rules by making smartphone or artificial intelligence (AI) chips for China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為). “We maintain a robust and comprehensive export system for monitoring and ensuring compliance,” the statement said. “If we
REGIONAL COMPETITION: Over the past few years the Philippines has lost ground to neighbors such as Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia, a Philippine official said The Philippines is trying to enlist Taiwanese chip giants to expand in semiconductors, a bid to catch up with its neighbors who are emerging as significant suppliers in the industry. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) are among companies the Philippines is reaching out to as it seeks equipment and expertise to build out chip fabrication operations, said Dan Lachica, head of the Southeast Asian country’s main electronics industry group, the Semiconductor and Electronics Industries in the Philippines Foundation Inc (SEIPI). The association is working with Philippine officials in Taiwan to talk with potential
DEMAND FOR AI CHIPS: Net income in the third quarter surged 31.2% quarter-on-quarter to NT$325.26 billion, the strongest quarterly return in the company’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, yesterday raised its revenue forecast to annual growth of 30 percent this year, thanks to strong and sustainable demand for artificial intelligence (AI) processors for servers. It was the second upward adjustment from 25 percent year-on-year growth estimated three months ago, despite recent concerns about whether the AI boom could be another technology bubble. “The demand is real. It’s real. And I believe it is just the beginning of this demand. Alright, so one of my key customers said the demand right now is ‘insane,’” TSMC chairman and chief executive C.C.
Starbucks Corp might have the more recognizable name, but 7-Eleven’s City Cafe remains the king of Taiwan’s fresh coffee market, helped by the convenience store chain’s extensive market presence and product diversification. President Chain Store Corp (PCSC, 統一超商), which runs both the 7-Eleven and Starbucks store chains in Taiwan, established the City Cafe brand in 2004. The brand took off when actress Gwei Lun-mei (桂綸鎂) became its spokesperson in 2007. City Cafe’s sales exceeded NT$10 billion (US$311.69 million) for the first time in 2015, surpassing the revenue of Starbucks Taiwan, and rose to more than NT$17 billion last year, exceeding the NT$14.98