From: The New York Times

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

China has opened what appear to be politically motivated antitrust investigations into American technology companies like Microsoft and Qualcomm. Foreign companies operating in the Communist country could be in for more intense harassment than ever before.

It is always hard to tell what the government is up to because it is incredibly secretive and different agencies often have competing interests and agendas. But recent moves by Chinese officials come on the heels of rising tensions between the United States and China about spying and hacking. The investigations also follow statements by President Xi Jinping that the country needs to reduce its reliance on foreign technology suppliers and bolster its domestic industry.

Earlier this week, officials from the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, which enforces antitrust and other laws, visited four Microsoft offices in China. And last week Chinese news media reported that another agency was investigating Qualcomm, which makes chips used in wireless devices, for possible antitrust violations. Four years earlier, Google moved its China-based Internet search business to Hong Kong after government officials demanded that the company censor its search results. (The Chinese government has been blocking The New York Times’s English and Chinese-language websites since October 2012 after it reported on the wealth amassed by the family of the prime minister at the time, Wen Jiabao.)

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