Chinese communist party members plan on presiding over Apple’s pending data center in the Guizhou province through an oversight committee, according to a Reuters report published Monday.
To start building its data center in China, the American tech conglomerate had to capitulate to the demands of the country’s government, which includes that companies operating in the country must store select data domestically. The mandate became official June 1, the day the China’s Cybersecurity Law went into effect.
Communist party members in Guizhou will chair the working committees to ensure that Apple abides by its new law, a measure the country alleges is to allow the state to fully protect customer data. Critics contest the statute, arguing it will be used to gather personal information on political dissidents or to steal proprietary trade secrets.
The board would be comprised of roughly 10 members, reports Reuters.
Tech companies in general are often forced to choose between cutting themselves off to the extremely large market in China or acquiescing to the government’s authoritarian requirements and receiving subsequent backlash. Apple is choosing the latter because a company’s innate, top priority is to make profit. Whether yielding to China will be good or bad for its bottom line is not yet clear.
Apple did not respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment by time of publication.
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