China's cyber move in the right direction

The new cyber space vetting policy targeted at IT products and services, which was announced on Thursday, is a belated move rightly taken by China, one of the world's largest victims of cyber theft.

Major IT products and services will be subject to government cyber security vetting if they concern national security and public interest, according to the State Internet Information Office.

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The vetting is aimed to prevent a supplier from taking advantage of its products and services to illegally control, disturb or shut down the computer systems of its clients, as well as gather, store, process or use its clients' information, according to an official statement.

China has become one of the largest victims of global cyber theft. In 2011, it suffered from cyber attacks from 47,000 foreign IP addresses, most of them from the US and its allies, according to National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team Coordination Center. The situation has failed to improve since then, making it highly necessary for China to take countermeasures to protect its Internet security.

A large number of those attacks on China have targeted the country's big companies, such as Huawei, and government departments and agencies, meaning China's national security and business interests are at stake.

It is, therefore, legitimate for China to learn from leading Internet powers to devise its own Internet equipment and service vetting standards to protect national interests.

In 2012, the US House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence conducted security investigations on Chinese IT firms. And it also asked federal agencies to choose cloud computing services from service providers that passed its security vetting.