EU Tour – ICT Working Level Meeting
2016-01-26 | Beijing
MC: Positive developments: 5G Joint Declaration brought businesses opportunities; Central funding open to foreign vendors (though business still need to work with Chinese partners); Globalization of ICT standards body (CCSA under MIIT opened to Nokia and Ericsson; 4G and 5G expert groups in the process of opening up as well), opening to foreign players;
He also updated the establishment of Cyber-Security (CS) Sub-WG as well as main concerns in the area of CS including back-door requirements, localization of server, etc.
BF: Negative developments/issues lingering on:
Market Access: Telecom service license, i.e. no improvement for basic telecom service; limited licenses given to foreign players for value-added services. Some companies have to structure as VIE. Foreign companies are losing out opportunities in new services such as big data, cloud computing, etc.
Security related legislations: China is promoting the idea of “Internet Boarder” limiting data exchange. The idea of “secure and controllable” required companies to localize their data.
Catalogue: In the newly revised catalogue, Cloud computing was regulated as value added service which needs a license now.
The two sides then had an extensive discussion on TC260 and membership status of European companies.
FD updated the proposed Experts Group between EU and China on Cyber-Security and Digital Economy. For each group, EU and China have respectively 10 seats. He highly encourage the Chamber to submit nomination for experts from the EU side.
Action: MX to ask Xiaowen Ma to follow up.
FD also gave a list of questions for which he would like to get some industry inputs.
Action: MX to ask Xiaowen Ma to follow-up.
FS:On TC260, he encouraged the Chamber to stay close contact with Betty Xu of SESEC.
He also updated that there was no WTO/TBT meeting with China in the 1st half of 2016.