 |
In Hong Kong, Western tech giants have stopped handing data over to the authorities.
In the United States, the Trump administration has talked of shutting down Chinese-owned TikTok. And in the UK, it’s looking more likely that China’s Huawei will be banned from any involvement in 5G.
On this week’s Tech Tent, we explore whether this is the beginning of a great technology schism where companies and countries have to decide whether they are in the American or the Chinese camp.
- Listen to the latest Tech Tent podcast on BBC Sounds
- Listen live every Friday at 15:00 GMT on the BBC World Service
Our Asia Business Correspondent Karishma Vaswani tells the programme the new law makes Hong Kong a lot more like China in terms of companies being forced to hand over private data - or at least it might.
“Businesses, in particular tech firms, don't know whether or not they will fall foul of these new regulations, partly because they're so vague,” she says.
For years, companies like Google and Facebook - which want to be in China but cannot work with its restrictive laws - have seen Hong Kong as a useful place to wait, and see if things change.
“Hong Kong has been for so many years the gateway to China, but still kept intact its very unique identity of being a free trading port and a place for multinational businesses,” Vaswani says.
Now things have changed - and not in the direction hoped for by the Western tech giants. They may now have to beat a retreat from Hong Kong.
The dilemma for Chinese-owned TikTok has been even more acute.
On Friday, Hong Kong users woke up to find the hugely popular app had gone. Desperate to prove it really isn’t subject to Chinese influence, the company apparently decided this was the only way to prove it was serious about protecting its users’ data.
But with India having banned the short video app, and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo praising that move and talking of following suit, exiting Hong Kong may not be enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment