(Reuters) – China will restrict the export of drones and supercomputers from August. 15 to help protect national security out of fears such equipment could fall into the hands of militant groups, state news agency Xinhua said on Monday.
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In a posting on a ministry’s website, Chinese regulators said no more abut why the export controls were needed, other than to “maintain national security”.
The new regulations are targeted in particular at drones which can fly for more than one hour and at heights of more than 15,420 meters (50,000 feet).
According to the report, China has sold around 1,60,000 drones in the first five months only, recording an impressive growth of 70 per cent in comparison to what was recorded previous year. Officials did not specify the size and wingspans of the restricted military drones.
The companies will need to provide copies of export contracts and documents indicating the technical specifications of the products and who will use them, according to the announcement.
As Chinese drones’ technological… China based DJI is the world leader in manufacturing consumer drones, although the restrictions have only been inflicted on the military-scale aircraft and not the small drones.
The tightening of rules comes two weeks after an incident in disputed Kashmir when the Pakistani army claimed to have shot down an Indian “spy drone” reportedly made in China. In fact, earlier this year, U.S. authorities accused four Chinese supercomputing centers of deploying Intel-powered hardware to conduct nuclear weapons testing.
DJI announced after a review of the new regulation that none of its drones will be affected by the ban.
It also shows that drone and computer manufacture in China has reached a level of maturity with proprietary technology being developed. The BOM said that the new 4.3PB Cray XC-40 supercomputer is expected to be up and running mid-2016, replacing the ageing Sun Microsystems machine which was commissioned in 2013.
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China’s Tianhe-2 supercomputer now tops the list of the world’s biggest supercomputers and has a top processing speed of about 34 petaflops (33,862 teraflops).
