Chinese walls

Representative Carlos Gimenez, a Florida Republican, questioned Microsoft’s operations in China, which Smith testified accounted for less than 1.5% of Microsoft’s sales. China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law obliges all organisations including foreign companies to cooperate with China’s intelligence agencies in matters of national security.

Smith, an attorney and Microsoft’s general counsel for more than a decade, said it does not comply with this law. “There are countries that enact certain laws but don’t apply them,” Smith said, adding that this was the case with China’s national security law.

He earlier said that Microsoft’s operations in China supported multinational customers operating in the country, and that Microsoft routinely turned down Chinese government requests to hand over source code or other sensitive data.