HONG KONG — The Chinese government has adopted new regulations requiring companies that sell computer equipment to Chinese banks to turn over secret source code, submit to invasive audits and build so-called back doors into hardware and software, according to a copy of the rules obtained by foreign technology companies that do billions of dollars’ worth of business in China.
The new rules, laid out in a 22-page document approved at the end of last year, are the first in a series of policies expected to be unveiled in the coming months that Beijing says are designed to strengthen cybersecurity in critical Chinese industries. As copies have spread in the past month, the regulations have heightened concern among foreign companies that the authorities are trying to force them out of one of the largest and fastest-growing markets in the world for technology products and services.
In a letter sent Wednesday to a top-level Communist Party committee on cybersecurity led by President Xi Jinping, foreign business groups that represent major Western technology companies objected to the new policies and complained that they amounted to protectionism.
The groups, which include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, called for “urgent discussion and dialogue” about what they said was a “growing trend” toward policies that cite cybersecurity in requiring companies to use only technology products and services developed and controlled by Chinese firms.
The letter is the latest salvo in an intensifying tit-for-tat between China and the United States, which have clashed over online security during the last two years in what has begun to resemble a technological Cold War. While the United States has accused Chinese military personnel of hacking and stealing from American companies, China has pointed to recent disclosures of United States snooping in foreign countries as a reason to get rid of American technology as quickly as possible.
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“For all enterprise hardware, local brands represented 21.3 percent revenue share in 2010 in PRC market and we expect in 2014 that number will reach 43.1 percent. That’s a huge jump,” he said.
Though Chinese companies stand to benefit, the letter from foreign business groups warned that China would hurt itself if it continued to follow its current policy trajectory.
“An overly broad, opaque, discriminatory approach to cybersecurity policy that restricts global Internet and I.C.T. products and services,” the letter said, referring to information and communications technology, “would ultimately isolate Chinese I.C.T. firms from the global marketplace and weaken cybersecurity, thereby harming China’s economic growth and development and restricting customer choice.”
A version of this article appears in print on January 29, 2015, in The International New York Times. Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe
