China’s sour Business leaves Adobe end of December

Adobe Systems Inc. a computer software maker will shut down its Chinese research and development arm, as United States technology firms face more and more hostile government in the world's second—biggest economy.

California—based company will maintain its China sales offices, but the research and development operations will cease end of December this year. Massive lay—offs already begun and will affect people.

Foreign companies, predominantly United States technology firms, come under increasing scrutiny in China as they pushes hard on the information security in the wake of previous cyber espionage revelations by the former United States National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

Government ramped investigations to foreign companies that were operating in China, wielding 2008 anti—monopoly law to probe numerous firms' local practices. The Western business lobbies labeled the tactic as protectionism.

"The overall climate in China against Western enterprises has been quite negative and that's one of the major reasons,"

The closure of the Adobe's China R&D arm were affected by the rampant software piracy of the country, as well as company's shift towards a cloud—based software—as—a—service business model and away from one—off boxed sales of software and licenses.