During Germany's CeBIT, a leading IT expo, a record number of Chinese companies such as online merchant Alibaba, PC maker Lenovo and network supplier Huawei showed off their latest software and hardware creations.
Chinese Vice Premier Ma Kai said in the opening ceremony that his country wants "to promote breakthroughs in technology in areas such as integrated circuits, the Internet of Things, cloud computing, Big Data and the fifth generation of mobile telephony," media reported.
China "is no longer the world's factory," said IDC analyst Kitty Fok. "China is a big enough market to allow a Chinese brand to become a global brand."
On the other hand the ex-NSA director Mike McConnell claimed that the Chinese government seeks to steal valuable secrets and has hacked into the computers at every major American company.
He said that the Chinese use malware to extract information whenever they want. McConnell also said that during the final years of the Bush administration, the Chinese government hired 100,000 hackers dedicated exclusively to breaking into computers. By comparison, he said the United States had that many spies in total.
