World China News | Yahoo Singapore NewsToday, 21:05
(Reuters) - International Business Machines Corp has agreed to let China review some product source code in a secure room, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing two people briefed on the practice.
It was not clear which products IBM was allowing reviews of or how much time officials of China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology can spend looking at the code, the WSJ report said.
U.S. tech companies have been facing increased pressure from Chinese authorities to accept rigorous security checks before their products may be purchased by China's sprawling, state-run financial institutions.
U.S. business lobbies had called for "urgent discussions" with the Chinese government earlier this year over the cyber security regulations that would force technology vendors to Chinese banks to hand over secret source code and adopt Chinese encryption algorithms.
Beijing has considered its reliance on foreign technology a national security weakness, especially after former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden's revelations that U.S. spy agencies planted code in American-made software to snoop on overseas targets.
IBM has been willing to strike closer partnerships with China's government than many of its fellow U.S. tech companies, WSJ said on Friday, citing people familiar with the company’s strategy.
IBM did not immediately respond to a request for comment. China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology could not immediately be reached for comment.
IBM said on Wednesday it would offer its cloud-computing platform Bluemix in China through a collaboration with Chinese data-center services company 21Vianet Group Inc.
(Reporting by Devika Krishna Kumar in Bengaluru)
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/ibm-allows-chinese-government-review-source-code-wsj-113052261--finance.html
