This crackdown on business secrets aims to protect the industrial assets developed by Chinese companies, in the face of strong competition from their American rivals.
(illustration) ( CN-STR / – )
This week, China tightened the rules governing business secrets, notably including data and algorithms for the first time, in a context of strong Sino-American rivalry in technologies. The Asian giant intends to establish itself as a world leader in the technology sector. Chinese companies have invested billions of euros in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) in recent years.
The Chinese market regulator launched a month-long campaign on June 1 aimed at “protecting business secrets and preserving industrial development”, the official Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday. This operation focuses on key sectors such as biomedicine, integrated circuits and AI, she stressed.
Employees called in at a pinch
One of the missions includes strengthening investigations against individuals who change jobs by taking business secrets with them and against “malicious poaching” from competing companies, according to the agency.
The campaign was launched on the same day as the entry into force of a new regulation on the protection of trade secrets.
This text includes for the first time “data” and “algorithms” in the field of trade secret protection,
stressed public television
CCTV
elements that have become essential to technology companies. The regulation also provides that employees leaving a company will have to
“declare, return, erase and destroy business secrets and their media to which they have had access”
indicates the new regulation.
Cutting-edge components for training and powering artificial intelligence systems are a crucial and highly sensitive issue in the technological rivalry between the United States and China.
The White House accused Chinese entities in April of carrying out “industrial-scale” campaigns to clandestinely copy American artificial intelligence models, which Beijing denies.
For their part, the Chinese authorities blocked the $2 billion offer from the American giant Meta to buy Manus, an AI agent created by a company founded in China and now based in Singapore. But after last month’s summit in Beijing between US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, the two countries confirmed they would continue to discuss AI.
