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.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, booked its first-ever profit from its Arizona subsidiary in the first half of this year, four years after operations began, a company financial statement showed. Wholly owned by TSMC, the Arizona unit contributed NT$4.52 billion (US$150.1 million) in net profit, compared with a loss of NT$4.34 billion a year earlier, the statement showed. The company attributed the turnaround to strong market demand and high factory utilization. The Arizona unit counts Apple Inc, Nvidia Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc among its major customers. The firm’s first fab in Arizona began high-volume production
VOTE OF CONFIDENCE: The Japanese company is adding Intel to an investment portfolio that includes artificial intelligence linchpins Nvidia Corp and TSMC Softbank Group Corp agreed to buy US$2 billion of Intel Corp stock, a surprise deal to shore up a struggling US name while boosting its own chip ambitions. The Japanese company, which is adding Intel to an investment portfolio that includes artificial intelligence (AI) linchpins Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), is to pay US$23 a share — a small discount to Intel’s last close. Shares of the US chipmaker, which would issue new stock to Softbank, surged more than 5 percent in after-hours trading. Softbank’s stock fell as much as 5.4 percent on Tuesday in Tokyo, its
COLLABORATION: Softbank would supply manufacturing gear to the factory, and a joint venture would make AI data center equipment, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) would operate a US factory owned by Softbank Group Corp, setting up what is in the running to be the first manufacturing site in the Japanese company’s US$500 billion Stargate venture with OpenAI and Oracle Corp. Softbank is acquiring Hon Hai’s electric-vehicle plant in Ohio, but the Taiwanese company would continue to run the complex after turning it into an artificial intelligence (AI) server production plant, Hon Hai chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) said yesterday. Softbank would supply manufacturing gear to the factory, and a joint venture between the two companies would make AI data
The Taiwan Automation Intelligence and Robot Show, which is to be held from Wednesday to Saturday at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center, would showcase the latest in artificial intelligence (AI)-driven robotics and automation technologies, the organizer said yesterday. The event would highlight applications in smart manufacturing, as well as information and communications technology, the Taiwan Automation Intelligence and Robotics Association said. More than 1,000 companies are to display innovations in semiconductors, electromechanics, industrial automation and intelligent manufacturing, it said in a news release. Visitors can explore automated guided vehicles, 3D machine vision systems and AI-powered applications at the show, along