Posted on 10/28/2019 11:37:51 AM PDT by AdmSmith
On Jan. 1, China’s cryptography law becomes effective.
These measures show Beijing’s ambition to seize all communications, data, and other information stored in electronic form that belong to foreign companies, according to author and China expert Gordon Chang.
“There will be no secrets,” he said. “Because [firms] have to turn over encryption keys, they can’t use VPNs [virtual private networks] to get around the rules. Everything they have in China on their networks will become available to the Ministry of State Security and the Communist Party.”
In addition, Chinese officials may share seized information with China’s state-owned enterprises to give them a competitive advantage against their foreign competitors.
The new cybersecurity rules may also result in foreign companies losing trade-secret protection around the world.
“If China actually enforces these rules to the maximum extent, they’ll be able to take over the Fortune 500,” Chang said. “So, obviously, we’ve got to do something about it.
Manufacturing information, negotiations with customers, prices etc and access to internal networks will be open to the Chinese Communist Party. Why should a Western company be operating in in China, if the result is that they steal the business?
National security concerns are prompting tighter investment screening as numerous countries introduce new regulatory frameworks that focus on foreign buyers, particularly Chinese state-backed firms.
Huawei launched an angry attack on The Wall Street Journal the day after it published an article laying out what it said was $75 billion in state support from China that helped fuel its growth.
$46 billion in loans, lines of credit, and other financing from state lenders
$25 billion in tax breaks for tech companies
$2 billion in discounts on land purchases
$1.6 billion in grants
While it did not deny receiving help from the Chinese state, Huawei said it got no “additional or special treatment” that other companies could not also have accessed.
Yes, and next stop is WTO.
https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/agrm8_e.htm
The United States, European Union, and Japan have begun a trilateral process to confront the Chinese economic model, including its use of industrial subsidies and deployment of state-owned enterprises. This paper seeks to identify the main areas of tension and to assess the legal-economic challenges to constructing new rules to address the underlying conflict.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3473890
The best way to address China’s unfair policies and practices Is through a big, bold, comprehensive case at the WTO filed by a broad coalition of countries that share the United States’ substantive concerns about China:
There is a misconception that the WTO Appellate Body’s narrow interpretation of what constitutes a “public body” under the WTO’s Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures has made it very difficult to regulate SOEs as public bodies. This is less significant now that China has started to assign key governmental functions to many SOEs. Along with the push by the Communist Party of China to install Party Committees in SOEs and to make them the key decision-makers, it becomes much easier to find the exercise of government authority by these SOEs and government control of these firms.
https://theglobalobservatory.org/2019/04/are-new-rules-needed-china-wto/
In the latest move, China’s government-funded “starlight chip project” announced on Monday that it plans to invest 10 billion yuan ($1.43 billion) in the next decade on chip technology research, standard-setting study, application development and large-scale industrialization.
Launched in 1999, the project has applied for more than 3,000 patents and formed several chip technological systems including digital media, intelligent security and artificial intelligence.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1175236.shtml
Expenditure for IC manufacturing equipment in China is expected to increase to $14.9 billion in 2020 from $12.9 billion in 2019; says SEMI. China accounts for nearly 25% of equipment spend expenditure in the sector making it the world’s second largest semiconductor equipment market.
For 2016-2020, the expenditure for semiconductor equipment in China is estimated to grow by 23% CAGR significantly higher than the industry average.
In addition to demand for capacity ramps by fabless companies and backend service companies, growing support from China’s National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund and tax incentives for imports of semiconductor equipment will drive investment.
Should we sell them the rope?
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/6825820-the-capitalists-will-sell-us-the-rope-with-which-we
27DEC2019
China pursuing CPU import substitution
China’s latest domestic chip boosting initiative – called 352 Project – intends to develop a PC CPU which will replace 30% of the CPUs used inside China-based PCs within a year.
https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/china-pursuing-domestic-cpu-substitution-2019-12/
30DEC2019
Initial U.S.-China trade deal has major hole: Beijing’s massive business subsidies
“The Chinese effort is dogged, long-term and very well-funded,” said John Neuffer, chief executive of the Semiconductor Industry Association. “That’s why the subsidy issue is such a big one for us.”
Under Chinese President Xi Jinping, who lacks his predecessors’ enthusiasm for the free market, the state spigot has gushed aid. China now devotes more than 3 percent of its annual output to direct and indirect business subsidies — a share of the economy that is roughly equivalent to what the United States spends on defense, according to economist Nicholas Lardy of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a nonpartisan research group.
In a 215-page report last year, which kicked off Trump’s trade war with China, Robert E. Lighthizer, the president’s chief trade negotiator, identified government financial support as a key element in China’s plan to overtake U.S. technology leadership. China is “grossly subsidizing and taking over our markets,” he complained this summer before the Senate Finance Committee.
Chinese central and provincial governments have earmarked about $100 billion for equity investments, credit lines and various grants over the next five years so China will become by 2030 the global leader in [the semiconductor] industry now dominated by U.S. firms.
Mitsubishi Electric discloses security breach, China is main suspect
In a short statement published today on its website, Mitsubishi Electric, one of the world’s largest electronics and electrical equipment manufacturing firms, disclosed a major security breach.
Although the breach occurred last year, on June 28, and an official internal investigation began in September, the Tokyo-based corporation disclosed the security incident today, only after two local newspapers, the Asahi Shimbun and Nikkei, published stories about the hack.
Both publications blamed the intrusion on a Chinese-linked cyber-espionage group named Tick (or Bronze Butler), known to the cyber-security industry for targeting Japan over the past few years
https://www.zdnet.com/article/mitsubishi-electric-discloses-security-breach-china-is-main-suspect/
Trade relations between China and the Netherlands would be damaged if Dutch semiconductor equipment supplier ASML is not allowed to ship its newest machines to China, Beijing’s ambassador to the Netherlands warned.
https://www.fudzilla.com/news/50131-china-warns-dutch-that-asml-ban-will-cause-serious-problems
BUMP
The Wuhan-based memory chipmaker is maintaining normal production and operations, and its raw material supplies and shipments are running smoothly, said the company spokesperson.
http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1177922.shtml
This shows the importance of the company.
“The YMTC spokesperson said the company always puts the safety of personnel first and both employee health, and production and operations are being safeguarded by effective, scientific preventive measures.”
That made me laugh.
US federal agents arrested a Chinese citizen attempting to obtain hundreds of radiation-hardened microchips typically used in satellites and ballistic missile systems as he tried to leave the United States last year, according to court documents obtained by Quartz.
The made-to-order chip is manufactured and sold in the United States by Cobham, a multinational defense contractor headquartered in Britain. They cost $2,500 each, and the company only makes about 1,000 of them a year. They are made to withstand extreme temperatures, severe vibrations, and radiation exposure. Known as “rad-hard chips,” they require a license from the Department of Commerce to export, and sending the chips to China—as well as a small handful of other countries, including Russia—is banned outright. A commercial version of the same chip, with the same memory capacity but without the ability to survive in the harsh conditions of outer space, goes for about $60.
Beijing’s attempts to acquire sensitive American technology target not just the US government and the defense industry, but major universities and research scientists as well.
Chinese hackers have already compromised dozens of critical US weapons systems. In 2018, Chinese hackers stole top-secret plans for a supersonic anti-ship missile the Navy was developing. Last fall, two Chinese diplomats living in the United States—one of whom authorities believe was in fact an undercover intelligence officer—were expelled from the country after attempting to get onto a secure Virginia military base. Authorities recently charged a Chinese-born tour guide in San Francisco with passing US secrets to China’s Ministry of State Security. And last month, two different Chinese nationals were caught surveilling the same Florida military base twice in two weeks.
https://qz.com/1794308/how-a-chinese-national-trying-to-smuggle-us-microchips-got-caught/
When Wei Sun, a 48-year-old engineer at Raytheon Missile Systems, left for an overseas trip last year, he told the company he planned to bring his company-issued HP EliteBook 840 laptop along.
Sun, a Chinese-born American citizen, had been working at Raytheon, the fourth-largest US defense contractor, for a decade. He held a secret-level security clearance and worked on highly sensitive missile programs used by the US military.
Since Sun’s computer contained large amounts of restricted data, Raytheon officials told him that taking it abroad would not only be a violation of company policy, but a serious violation of federal law, as well.
When Sun returned to the United States a week later, he told Raytheon security officials that he had only visited Singapore and the Philippines during his travels. But inconsistent stories about his itinerary led Sun to confess that he traveled to China with the laptop.
https://qz.com/1795127/raytheon-engineer-arrested-for-taking-us-missile-defense-secrets-to-china/
It’s like we’re under attack.
Raytheon engineer arrested for taking US missile defense secrets to China
https://qz.com/1795127/raytheon-engineer-arrested-for-taking-us-missile-defense-secrets-to-china/
sorry I hadn’t seen your post before I posted the link.
The TWiVerers continue their coverage of the new coronavirus outbreak in China, as the number of cases increase dramatically and the virus begins person-to-person transmission in other countries.
http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-585/
2h
wrong thread ;-)
Zhaoxin, a fabless chip maker based in Shanghai, has produced a homegrown x86 CPU line that’s apparently ready for the DIY scene. The Zhaoxin KaiXian KX-6000 series of processors were originally shown off in 2018, but since then we had heard little about them. Now it seems that the KX-U6780A will come to market this quarter, as listed on Chinese retail site Taobao with a March release date.
While Zhaoxin’s KX-6000 series remain way behind the likes of Intel and AMD’s current crop of processors, Zhaoxin has aggressive plans to bridge that gap by 2021. The upcoming KX-7000 series are set to be built on one of TSMC’s 7nm nodes and will bring support for DDR5, PCIe 4.0, as well as boasting a refined iGPU. Zhaoxin reportedly has its eyes set towards sub-7nm designs as well.
https://sortiwa.com/made-in-china-8-core-x86-cpu-arrives-to-market/
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