China’s government will require certain cloud service providers to undergo safety inspections in a bid to better regulate the country’s rapidly digitizing administrative and commercial sectors.

Starting from September, companies that provide cloud services for Communist Party organizations, government departments, and “operators of key information infrastructure” — an as-yet-unspecified group — will have to go through assessments performed by government-appointed technology groups, according to a notice jointly published Monday by four high-level government departments. The notice did not specify whether the rules would extend to overseas cloud-service providers.

In addition to examining service providers’ hardware and data security, the assessments will also evaluate the personal backgrounds of staff members who can access potentially sensitive information, the notice said.

The government will reserve the right to perform random inspections to ensure the “continuous supervision” of platforms that pass the assessment, according to the notice.

According to a recent report from research firm IDC, China’s so-called infrastructure as a service (IaaS) public cloud market grew 86.1% year-on-year to $4.65 billion, making it the second-largest such market in the world, just behind the United States. Many of China’s local governments, as well as several high-level state departments, have adopted third-party cloud solutions.

Contact reporter Zhao Runhua (runhuazhao@caixin.com)

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