China orders public offices to remove foreign tech

The Chinese government has ordered state offices and public institutions to remove foreign computer equipment and software within three years, the Financial Times reported.

The move is part of a broader effort to decrease China’s reliance on foreign technologies and boost its domestic industry. The goal is to substitute 30 per cent of the technology next year, 50 per cent in 2021 and 20 per cent in 2022, the newspaper reported, citing estimates from analysts at the brokerage China Securities.

The government under President Xi Jinping has been trying for years to replace technologies from abroad, and particularly from the US. Bloomberg News reported five years ago that Beijing was aiming to purge most foreign technology from its banks, the military, government agencies and state-owned enterprises by 2020.