Data security law: China orders state firms to migrate to government cloud services

Notice comes just days before a national legislation comes into effect, with penalties of up to 10 million yuan for violations

Market dominated by private players such as Alibaba, Huawei and Tencent

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China’s cloud computing market is dominated by private players. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 5:00pm, 28 Aug 2021Updated: 11:00pm, 28 Aug 2021

With just days to go until the national data security law comes into effect, China’s state assets watchdog has ordered its firms to accelerate data migration from cloud services by tech giants like Alibaba and Tencent to the government’s own infrastructure.

Data security is high on the government’s agenda and the move is expected to send turbulence through the country’s cloud service market, now dominated by private players.

In a notice posted online on Friday, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of Tianjin ordered state firms to not build new data centres, buy servers or purchase other storage hardware.

Firms owned by the municipal government were forbidden to renew or sign new leasing contracts with public cloud platforms owned by Huawei, Alibaba, Tencent, China Unicom, China Mobile and China Telecom, The Economic Observer reported, citing a document dated August 12.

Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

Data stored in these platforms must be moved to digital infrastructure controlled by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (Sasac) within two months of the expiration of existing leases, with the final deadline at the end of September next year.

“The data of state-owned enterprises are state assets and must be put under supervision,” the online notice said.