“China suspended bank-technology rules that drew protests from the U.S. government and business groups, according to an official notice, in a move that could help ease cybersecurity tensions between Washington and Beijing,” Gillian Wong reports for The Wall Street Journal. “‘To promote the steady and reasonable work on banking-industry information safety, the guidelines will be revised and perfected, after which they will be reissued for implementation,’ said the notice, which was dated Monday and jointly issued by the China Banking Regulatory Commission and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.”
“An executive at one of China’s largest state-owned banks said the suspension showed that ‘the regulators realized that banks can’t just replace these foreign servers overnight,'” Wong reports. “Beijing pushed the rules amid rising mistrust between the U.S. and China over cybersecurity issues. China has revved up efforts to rely more on homegrown technology after former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden said U.S. intelligence agencies used U.S. technology in their espionage efforts.”
“Business groups worried that the bank-technology rules were part of a broader effort to ensure the security of information networks in a range of industries in ways that would compel Western companies to transfer critical technologies to Chinese authorities,” Wong reports. “Last month, a senior U.S. Treasury official said China had agreed to suspend some of the rules, though the scope of the move wasn’t clear. On Monday, foreign trade groups sent a letter to China’s top cyberspace authority asking Chinese officials to issue a public notice about suspending the rules.”
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MacDailyNews Take: AppleInsider‘s Roger Fingas writes, “Apple is believed to be working on bringing Apple Pay to China, but might balk if it were asked to turn over code and encryption keys. In general the company has refused to expose critical areas to third parties, one exception being its participation in the National Security Agency’s bulk data surveillance programs.” Read more here.