Secretive Chinese Committee Draws Up List To Replace US Tech

China is accelerating plans to replace American and foreign technology, quietly empowering a secretive government-backed organization to vet and approve local suppliers in sensitive areas from cloud to semiconductors, Bloomberg reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter said. From a report: Formed in 2016 to advise the government, the Information Technology Application Innovation Working Committee has now been entrusted by Beijing to help set industry standards and train personnel to operate trusted software. The quasi-government body will devise and execute the so-called 'IT Application Innovation' plan, better known as Xinchuang in Chinese. It will choose from a basket of suppliers vetted under the plan to provide technology for sensitive sectors from banking to data centers storing government data, a market that could be worth $125 billion by 2025.

So far, 1,800 Chinese suppliers of PCs, chips, networking and software have been invited to join the committee, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private information. The organization has so far certified hundreds of local companies this year as committee members, the fastest pace in years, one of the people said. The existence of the Xinchuang white-list, whose members and over-arching goals haven't been previously reported, is likely to inflame tensions just as Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping wrapped up their first face-to-face virtual summit. It gives Beijing more leverage to replace foreign tech firms in sensitive sectors and quickens a push to help local champions achieve tech self-sufficiency and overcome sanctions first imposed by the Trump administration in fields like networking and chips.

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