The Wall Street Journal reports that Big Blue has revealed its source code, intellectual property considered highly guarded trade secrets by tech companies, to officials of the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in a highly controlled environment where it is impossible for Chinese officials to take the code out of the room and inspect it without IBM’s supervision.
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The Wall Street Journal, in an exclusive report, cited two people briefed on the practice, as knowledgeable of IBM’s granting China permission to review a few product source code in a secure room.
In order to unlock the billion-dollar government procurement market, IBM Corp will allow the government access to its software codes, a senior executive said on Thursday.
The Chinese government won’t receive client data or “back doors” into the technology, worldwide Business Machines Corp. said Friday in a statement.
China is among those countries, a person familiar with the company’s policy there said.
IBM did not immediately respond to a request for comment. However, the WSJ sources did not identify which products IBM provided access or how long the Chinese officials reviewed the source code.
China is on full alert about information security threats since former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden unveiled massive surveillance schemes carried out by the U.S. government.
Cybersecurity has been a major source of friction in US-China ties, with both sides accusing the other of abuses.
US tech companies have been facing increased pressure from Chinese authorities to accept rigorous security checks before their products may be purchased by China’s sprawling, state-run financial institutions. Microsoft signed an agreement in 2003 allowing China controlled access to Windows source code, and has struck similar deals with Russian Federation and Britain.
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IBM said on Wednesday it would offer its cloud-computing platform Bluemix in China through a collaboration with Chinese data-center services company 21Vianet Group Inc.
