China announced an initiative on Tuesday to establish global standards on data security, saying it wanted to promote multilateralism in the area at a time when "individual countries" were "bullying" others and "hunting" companies.
The announcement, by State Councillor Wang Yi, comes a month after the United States said it was purging "untrusted" Chinese apps under a program dubbed "Clean Network."
China's initiative calls for technology firms to prevent the creation of so-called backdoors in their products and services that could allow data to be obtained illegally, as well as for participants to respect the sovereignty, jurisdiction and data management rights of other countries.