
Following the fate of blacklisted Chinese tech firms Huawei and HikVision, Beijing has begun to worry that U.S. sanctions could bleed into other industries like cloud services.
The concern may be justified. In late June, China’s largest server-maker, Inspur, had its supply of chips from American giant Intel Corp. cut off for two days after the U.S. Department of Defense alleged it had military links.
Beijing is now scrambling to protect against such risks.
Enter China Electronics Corp. (CEC), the country’s largest centrally-controlled state-owned IT company, which announced this week it is wading into the cloud services arena — with government support.
On Wednesday, the firm unveiled its “China Electronics Cloud” services with the goal of “guaranteeing the safety of government and companies’ digital transformation.”
The cloud services will exclusively use domestic technologies, and CEC is hoped to be able to offer an alternative to the current Chinese cloud services market, which mostly utilizes Intel’s X86 architecture.
It will also compete with big private cloud providers Alibaba and Tencent.
Read the full story: As Washington Restricts Tech, State-Owned Giant Gets Into Cloud Computing
Contact reporter Lu Yutong (yutonglu@caixin.com) and editor Flynn Murphy (flynnmurphy@caixin.com)