History’s Innovation Echo
February 24th, 2010
Foreign IT companies are feeling less welcome than ever in China as the national government feels the country’s own sector is muscular enough to go it alone. On May 1, 2010 foreign companies that want to tender for government contracts will have to release their source code and security keys to government agencies for scrutiny. Central government wants to make its own information infrastructure secure against foreign intrusion, possibly pilfer leading-edge technology, and lock up its own domestic market to the exclusion of foreign players.
John Neuffer, vice-president for global policy at the Information Technology Industry Council, a lobby group, said: “The looming choice for many of our companies is to create costly bifurcated product lines, one for China and one for the rest of the world, or to ponder less ambitious trade and investment choices in that market.”
As China continues its turn inward, it endangers its ability to share in the information exchanges that flow through countries boosting Innovation. Ming Dynasty emperors did very much the same thing in breaking up the great commercial fleet of Zheng He, the shipyards in which the ships were built, and restricting the flow of activity across the Silk Road. Six hundred years later we may be hearing history’s echo.
Further reading: FT
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