China’s New Cybersecurity Program: NO Place to Hide | China Law Blog

This system will apply to foreign owned companies in China on the same basis as to all Chinese persons, entities or individuals. No information contained on any server located within China will be exempted from this full coverage program. No communication from or to China will be exempted. There will be no secrets. No VPNs. No private or encrypted messages. No anonymous online accounts. No trade secrets. No confidential data. Any and all data will be available and open to the Chinese government. Since the Chinese government is the shareholder in all SOEs and is now exercising de facto control over China’s major private companies as well, all of this information will then be available to those SOEs and Chinese companies. … All this information will be available to the Chinese military and military research institutes. The Chinese are being very clear that this is their plan.

Source: China’s New Cybersecurity Program: NO Place to Hide | China Law Blog

It will be very interesting to watch how Cummins’ new “cybersecurity” initiative deals with the fact that one cannot keep proprietary secrets from the Chinese government, if one wants to sell products in their country.

It will also be very interesting to watch how other Fortune 500 companies deal with this, just in terms of email, chat, and file-and-print services. American companies have been collectively brainwashed into overly-restrictive IT practices for decades now, based on second-hand interpretations of SOX and related laws, by huge consulting firms, and “peer pressure” from other companies also implementing unfounded restrictions. Now, none of those policies will be allowed in China. How does a global company go about setting up a system, say, for instance, where I’m not even allowed to see my chat history, for fear of legal repercussions, yet the Chinese government has full access to all logs, including the CEO’s, if he chats in China, or someone chats at him from China?