Cloud computing services displayed at a recent exhibition in Beijing. China will soon evaluate cloud computing companies' trustworthiness level in the government procurement segment, a move that could shut out overseas providers.

China will soon start rating the trustworthiness of cloud computing service providers, especially for government procurement contracts, a move that could potentially shut the doors to foreign companies, a leading expert involved in drafting the policy told China Daily on Friday. 

Only companies that get full security clearance from the government will be allowed to join Smart City and various other government-funded projects, said Zuo Xiaodong, vice-president of the China Information Security Research Institute, an industry think-tank. 

"The basic idea of the security rating mechanism is to find trustworthy hardware, software and service providers to ensure that the government has total control of the entire ecosystem," Zuo said. 

He said the country is building a cloud security assessment, authorization and monitoring system similar to the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program adopted by the United States two years ago. 

Zuo is one of the key officials involved in drafting one of the two fundamental national standards designed to avoid security loopholes in for-government-use cloud products. The standards will be implemented from April.