It is no secret that the Chinese government is very wary about any potential influence the West might have on its citizens, so much so that they have banned several Western products and services, like Google, Facebook, YouTube, and so on. Now it seems that in a bid to further prevent any possible surveillance by Western governments, the country is said to be planning its own secure smartphone.
This is according to a report from The Wall Street Journal who reports that ZTE will be the company tasked to create such a device. Now we know that iPhones are popular in China and at one point, China’s first lady was criticized for using the phone, only to swap it out to a ZTE Nubia Z5 later.
However it was pointed out that the phone despite it being made by a Chinese company, featured technology from Western companies such as its Android operating system which is made by Google, and its chipset which is made by Qualcomm. However ZTE’s plan includes creating a phone in which all of its components and its software will be Chinese-made, thus preventing any possible backdoors that could be installed to spy on them.
The operating system is said to be by Alibaba who has joined forces with the country’s Ministry of Public Security to help develop a more secure operating system that could be used by the country’s police officers. It’s an interesting move but might it come across a bit paranoid? Possibly, but then again for a country that’s pretty strict with its censorship and has no problems policing the internet and scrubbing it of content it deems inappropriate, we can hardly say we’re surprised.