According to The Wall Street Journal the deal between IBM and the Chinese government is a completely new practice, which was implemented recently.

It allows the Chinese government to take a closer look at the source code behind some of IBM’s software, but does not allow for the code to be copied or tampered with in any way. It does mean that if the US spooks have hidden any backdoors in IBM’s code it will be spotted.

It is not clear how much time ministry officials have to look at the code and it is expected that strict procedures are in place within these technology demonstration centres to ensure that no software source code is released, copied or altered.

Chinese authorities have been pressing US companies looking to expand into China to give them the source code for review, to prove there are no security risks. Obviously all code has security risks, but they are specifically looking for CIA backdoors.

The deal appears to coincide with IBM’s recent announcement that it struck a deal with 21Vianet Group – one of China’s data centre service providers.