In the face of increasingly stringent cybersecurity regulations in China, Apple has today announced its plans to construct its own state-of-the-art data center for the first time in the country. The facility will be set up in collaboration with Chinese data management firm Guizhou-Cloud Big Data Industry Co Ltd and is to be located in the southern province of Guizhou.
Following the enforcement of strict new cybersecurity bylaws on June 1 which mandate foreign firms to store localized user information within the country, Apple will become the first non-Chinese organization to amend its data storage arrangement for China in order to comply. The new laws also prohibit the transfer of any economic, scientific and technological data overseas.
Apple’s desire for governmental compliance is borne out of the company’s long term plan to invest USD 1 billion into the Guizhou province. A spokesman for the company, based in Shanghai, informed Reuters:
The addition of this data center will allow us to improve the speed and reliability of our products and services while also complying with newly passed regulations. These regulations require cloud services be operated by Chinese companies so we’re partnering with GCBD to offer iCloud.
A further statement released by Apple’s headquarters noted that the new Chinese data center would keep “strong data privacy and security protections in place” and that “no back doors would be created in its systems”.
The news coming from China follows Apple’s revelation last week that it was planning to open a second data center in Denmark, one which will be solely powered by renewable energy.