BEIJING (Reuters) - Apple
Incproducts such as laptops and tablets are not banned
from Chinese government procurement lists, according to
the country's chief procurement center, refuting a
report claiming Apple was blacklisted on national
security concerns.
According to a Bloomberg News report published on Wednesday, 10
Apple products, including MacBook laptops and iPad tablets, were
taken off a government list of approved hardware due to security
concerns.
The Central Government Procurement Centre, as well as the finance
ministry and Apple, said the company never applied to be on the list
in the first place.
The list that created the confusion this week involves energy-saving
products, and is just one of a multitude of government procurement
lists in China. Apple has never been on that list, the company said
in emailed comments on Friday, declining to give more details.
"Even though Apple has the certification for energy-saving
products... it has never provided the necessary verification
material and agreements according to the regulations," said a
Finance Ministry fax sent to Reuters on Thursday evening, a
statement closely mirrored by the Central Government Procurement
Centre in their own announcement on Friday.
The government can still purchase Apple products, even if they are
not on the energy-saving list, according to the Central Government
Procurement Centre website.
This week, many of the products mentioned were available for
purchase on the website, except for a brief period late Thursday
when sales were temporarily halted for a monthly price adjustment.
Multiple suppliers, who declined to be identified because they did
not want to damage their business with the government, told Reuters
that the price adjustments were routine. They said they did not
believe the stoppages were due to national security concerns based
on their conversations with the central procurement agency.
"They didn't say once that it had anything to do with national
security," said an employee at a Beijing-based government supplier.
The government website resumed selling Apple products including
laptops as of Friday afternoon. The most popular model was bought 23
times between Thursday and Friday.
"Every month we have one price adjustment to make sure the prices
are aligned with market prices," said a person familiar with the
procurement process, who attributed the confusion to a
misunderstanding. "We'll stop purchases and then restart after
they're aligned."
The uncertainty and speculation surrounding Apple's procurement
status reflects the heightened anxiety among foreign technology
firms in China amid what they perceive as a multi-pronged, official
campaign to curb their business.
Chinese regulators recently launched an anti-monopoly probe into
Microsoft Corp. That came after China said in May it would ban
Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system citing security concerns.
The central procurement agency also recently delisted foreign
anti-virus software vendors Symantec Corp <SYMC.O> and Kaspersky Lab
due to security concerns, according to the state-run Xinhua news
agency.
Mutual suspicions between China and the United States over hacking
have escalated over the past year following revelations by Edward
Snowden that U.S. intelligence planted "backdoor" surveillance tools
on U.S.-made hardware. The U.S. Justice Department, meanwhile,
indicted five Chinese military officers in May on counts of
extensive industrial espionage.
(Reporting by Gerry Shih, Paul Carsten and Beijing Newsroom; Editing
by Ryan Woo)
