Yes, it's more likely in China because it's more likely to happen in a blatant way, especially between companies directly.
But don't kid yourselves that the US intelligence would never pass on trade secrets or confidential information to benefit American competitors. Especially if you consider that they've actually sabotaged foreign companies because of business relations to countries the US doesn't like.
FWIW: I would never put confidential information on Chinese infra. But as a non-American I'm only slightly less worried about doing the same with American infra. It's not so much about whether someone will access your confidential information, it's more about who they are.
Are you kidding? Spying to see if they're violating trade embargoes == Systemic, blatant IP theft from westerners--aided at all levels of the Chinese government and industries?
Heh, you're using a throw away account just to go full whataboutism on this comment thread. So brave.
I might defend the wrong side here, but industrial espionage was a significant part of the NSA scandal. Of course the US agencies are going to give the data they get by siphoning the global internet traffic and by hacking foreign industries to their own domestic industries. And we know that Asia was highly targeted, especially Japan, but also China.
Sure, China might be more blatant about that and do it on a higher level, but the US lost all rights to be on the moral high ground with things like that. The US got zero protection for user data. They do read your personal mail and they listen and watch via your webcam silently into your home. Does not get much worse than that.
Can you give any example of where the US has been caught giving IP stolen from espionage, to a domestic business purely to give the business a better advantage? Where there the IP had no military or security value?
If they did this, which company benefited? Did all domestic companies in the same business get the same deal or only that one single lucky one?
Just look at their systemic counterfeit, ip theft problem. They can somehow keep a billion people in line and censored and behind a firewall and complacent, but stopping major counterfeit and up theft seems beyond their reach. (hint, it's not, they just don't care).
The US won't "protect Americans" if by that you mean "not violate their rights and abuse their data", but that's beside the point.
I'm neither Chinese nor American. While it's obvious why China is not trustworthy (i.e. rampant product piracy) the bar is not so high that it matters whether the Americans or the Chinese are abusing my customers' data as long as there's a third option. Granted, even when hosting locally it's known that American agencies might be able to access that data and it would be prudent to assume China (or Russia, seeing how they're the more trendy Big Bad these days) couldn't do the same. But at least I'm not wrapping everything up with a ribbon and leaving it at their doorstep.
I'm less concerned about Chinese knock-offs sold locally but Chinese companies have a deserved reputation for trying to sell illegal knock-offs internationally with little regard for the IP they're violating in those countries.
Also China has a reputation for not just having companies copy successful designs but actively going out and exfiltrating information to clone them (e.g. companies producing parts in China for Western companies turning around and producing knock-offs of those parts themselves, sometimes even branding them identically).
Regardless of the case by case legality, it's obvious why this behavior is likely undesirable for most Western companies seeking a cloud provider rather than specifically a Chinese cloud provider.
[0]: Obvious caveat: it's not strictly international, but most countries have agreed on cooperating under the terms of the Berne Convention and the UCC. So for most intents and purposes as long as you're only dealing with signatory states, copyright is as international as laws can be without the UN literally being able to come in and put you in UN jail (which isn't really a thing either).
I don’t really see how that is true. Censorship means getting your own citizens in trouble so that doesn’t really work out and you only need turn on the news to see how the U.S. can poorly protect their citizens.
The Chinese gov’t is a mafia. Let’s not pretend otherwise. It’s citizens are kick ass and intelligent, under the grip of the FBI or Chinese govt? The two evils are incomparable
My company will never trust any chinese company with anything especially our data.