China: Declares War on American Multinationals!

The blockade was put by China on computers in government offices and public institutions in the country.

ΑIt was decided that within the next three years the computers that were not made in the country would have to be replaced.

This is the first publicly known government mandate with a specific focus on government procurement to turn to domestic suppliers. The new policy is part of China's broader strategy of increasingly detaching itself from foreign technologies.

The decision, says the APE-MPE, citing the Financial Times, will probably hit the American multinationals technology companies such as HP, Dell and Microsoft, which have made large exports to China. The decision comes in response to a US effort to limit the use of Chinese technology, as the trade war between the two major countries has gradually acquired the characteristics of a "cold war" in the field of technology and know-how.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration banned US companies from doing business with Chinese company Huawei, citing national security reasons. (pioneer in fifth generation 5G networks) and already the American Google, Intel and Qualcomm have announced that they are freezing their cooperation with Huawei.

The US government is pressuring European governments to exclude the Chinese company from new or future 5G network installation projects.

China Securities analysts estimate that 20 to 30 million foreign computers and other hardware will have to be replaced following the new government policy, which was announced following a previous order from the Communist Party headquarters, which will be put in place en masse in line with the new year. The new policy has already been christened "3-5-2", because 30% of the necessary replacements are expected to be made in 2020, 50% in 2021 and the remaining 20% ​​in 2022.

The country's Security Act, passed in 2017, required public services and critical infrastructure to use "safe and controlled technology". The recent duties of USA at the expense of China gave urgency to the new policy of self-sufficiency and support of domestic technologies.

Analyst Jefferies estimates that US tech companies have so far generated about $ 150 billion a year in revenue from China, although much of it comes from Chinese private companies.

Analysts also say that replacing the software with Chinese will be a more difficult task than computers, especially because the US operating systems Microsoft Windows and Aplle macOS are widely used in China. Public utilities will now have to rely entirely on Chinese-made operating systems (such as Kylin OS) and corresponding domestic applications.

But also at the hardware level, difficulties arise in the age of globalization. For example, the Chinese Lenovo, which assembles many of its products in China, procures its processors from the American Intel and its storage media (drives) from the South Korean Samsung.

It remains to be seen whether the new public sector technology policy will affect China's private companies.

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