China's encryption rule could shut U.S. businesses out of big market

US businesses would be blocked from selling computers and other electronics to the Chinese government, unless they share their encryption technology with officials in Beijing by this weekend. Saturday marks the deadline by which certain tech firms must submit to China a series of details about their security tools. Failure to do so, according to officials, means those businesses will lose access to the multi-million dollar market for Chinese government contracts. The new rules do not apply to all tech products; rather only manufacturers of Internet firewalls and Web routers, among six total tech areas, must submit their encryption techniques. Still, only Chinese companies have so far submitted the necessary information, which experts fear China will only use to bolster its practice of rooting out online dissidents and blocking content on the Internet.