Obstacles to Cloud Computing in China – Part I, the “Chop”

We’re going to start this series out with a smaller issue and warm our way up over time to some of the larger issues that will hinder, but far from stop, cloud computing adoption in China. Today we’ll cover the company chop.

Although a small item, the company chop in China is of vast importance and carries with it a lot of power – if your organization could grow arms and write down its own signature on paper, this is what it would look like.

Losing your company chop can mean an inability to sign contracts and even conduct business. Dealing with the government without a chop will get hairy quickly.

So when the old-fashioned chop meets the cutting-edge cloud, there is a big collision with lots of sparks. In the end, you still can’t beat the Chinese Government when it wants its way, so document management in the cloud takes a serious hit.

For companies looking to save time and cost with their printing, faxing and general document sharing, they will find important functions like e-signing and e-faxing to be useful only when dealing with foreign companies that are free from the requirement of the chop on all official documents.

Any transactions (and there are a lot) between your suppliers and customers within China will still need to be printed, chopped and faxed.

If you want to then put a copy of these important documents on Box.net, for example, you would then need to:

• Print the documents
• Chop the documents
• SCAN the document with the chop
• Upload it on box.

Digital chops do not exist in China, and there is only one chop for one company, as far as I am aware.

This little red stamp is one of many mid-to-large obstacles you need to consider when moving your organization to “the cloud” in China~