US consulting companies McKinsey, BCG, Bain & Company, and Strategy&, formerly Booz & Co., will all be snubbed by state-owned Chinese companies, the Financial Times reported, citing sources close to senior Chinese leaders.
“The top leadership has proposed setting up a team of Chinese domestic consultants who are particularly focused on information systems in order to seize back this power from the foreign companies,” a senior policy adviser to the Chinese leadership was quoted by the FT as saying.
“Right now the foreigners use their consulting companies to find out everything they want about our state companies,” the adviser said.
McKinsey is the largest global consulting group operating in China, and about one-third of clients are state-owned enterprises. McKinsey has 650 employees in China.
Last Thursday China announced that all foreign companies would have to undergo a new security test. Any company, product or service that fails will be banned from China. The inspection will be conducted across all sectors - communications, finance, and energy.
China has already banned Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system from government computers, according to Chinese state media agency Xinhua.
“Under President Xi Jinping, technology and implementation will look to be converging, so foreign tech firms should be very worried about their prospects,” Bill Bishop, an independent consultant based in Beijing, told the FT.
Chinese officials have said that government ministries, companies, universities, and telecoms networks are victims of US hacking, and will try to avoid using US technology in order to protect “public interest”.
Read more: China to ditch US consulting firms over suspected espionage — RT Business
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