I am extremely concerned about this move. We use AWS extremely heavily at our company, and as much as we love AWS, I'm concerned that their having a data center in China would subject the data and information flowing through their pipes to China's draconian data interception and censorship laws.
They Chinese government won't have jurisdiction over anything unless the servers your company are using are physically located in China. As for the data flowing through the pipes, they can see that already (well as much as BGP routing allows) as can the NSA and countless other entities.
> Customers who wish to use the new Beijing Region are required to sign up for a separate set of account credentials unique to the China (Beijing) Region. Customers with existing AWS credentials will not be able to access resources in the new Region, and vice versa.
I'm guessing this is related to China's foreign ownership laws?
Also, I imagine the various regulation ISPs and hosting providers are obligated to inside the country - if customers can siphon off data that local officials disapprove of to another region easily, it puts Amazon in a difficult position.
Also it's bad for other sites. If China pulls of their google antics on Amazon and blocks sites hosted by them its a large proportion of what we all use blocked inside China as casualties.
I remember Microsoft wanting to open up Azure in China: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/4357-microsoft-azure-s-china...
but backtracked just two months later, likely for exactly those reasons: http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/11/azure-goes-to-c...