China warns companies against reliance on foreign technology

BEIJING: China today warned manufacturers of industrial control systems against heavy reliance on foreign technology and asked them to increase localisation.

Vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) Wang Shengjun, while briefing lawmakers on cyberspace in an official report, said some key industrial control companies not only have their production control systems built by foreign companies.

They also allow related cyberspace security equipment to be foreign-produced and controlled. And worse, even Chinese staff have no permission for configuration and administration, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.


"The localisation rate of equipment and control systems in major industrial companies should increase," Wang said.

The localisation rate of production control systems in key industrial control enterprises falls even below 20 per cent in certain provinces, the official report said.

Wang proposed to intensify efforts in technology research and development to raise the localisation rate gradually in order to improve Chinese companies' control over these important equipment.

China aims to set up an independently controllable technology system to ensure cyberspace security by 2020.

The government initiated a major project to improve cyberspace security in its five-year R&D plan for 2016-2020 period, vowing to inject research funds of about 1.38 billion yuan (about USD 210 million).

Today's report was based on investigations between August and October to assess the Cybersecurity Law that took effect on June 1, and a decision on protection of online information, the Xinhua reported.