US soft drinks giant Coca-Cola is "cooperating fully" with Chinese authorities on allegations that it illegally mapped part of a southwestern province as part of its distribution operations, it said Wednesday. Coca-Cola was found to have "illegally collected classified information with handheld GPS equipment", yunnan.cn, a news portal run by party officials in Yunnan province, said last month, citing a provincial mapping bureau. The report did not provide further details on the case. Coca-Cola said that its local bottling plants in China have used electronic mapping and other techniques as part of their logistics activities, but added that all the systems they used were freely available. "Over the last several years, some of our local bottling plants in China have adopted logistics solutions to improve our customer service levels and fuel efficiency," a Coca-Cola spokesperson in China told AFP in a statement. "These include e-map and location-based customer logistics systems that are commercially available in China through authorised local suppliers." The plants had cooperated with local authorities "to ensure that our customer logistics systems are in full compliance with current regulations", said the spokesperson. An official with the Yunnan Geographical Information Bureau of Surveying and Mapping, who declined to be named, told AFP that provincial authorities were not allowed to comment on the matter because it "involved state secrets". But he acknowledged that representatives of Coca-Cola's Yunnan plant were in contact with the bureau. The mapping allegations come as China and the United States are embroiled in a row over cyber attacks. US National Security Advisor Tom Donilon on Monday urged China to probe and halt cybercrime, after lawmakers called for stiffer action against Beijing for cyber-spying and the massive theft of US industrial secrets, allegedly by the Chinese military. China has called such charges "groundless," and state media have accused Washington of making a scapegoat of Beijing to deflect attention from US economic woes.
GMT 22:53 2018 Thursday ,13 December
Indian Minister of Trade meets with UAE Ambassador, Chairman of Emaar PropertiesGMT 13:41 2018 Thursday ,06 December
Tyre maker Continental opens lab to extract rubber from dandelionsGMT 15:22 2018 Friday ,30 November
Paper industry around famous Chinese lake to be shut down by 2019GMT 11:13 2018 Sunday ,18 November
Electricx 2018 kicks off with participation of over 20 countriesGMT 14:17 2018 Thursday ,25 October
BP eyes entering several new Rosneft projectsGMT 12:08 2018 Saturday ,20 October
OPEC participants performed Vienna Agreement by 111%GMT 16:14 2018 Saturday ,06 October
Saudi Aramco IPO to go ahead by early 2021GMT 19:01 2018 Thursday ,04 October
LEAD S. Korean firms offer aid for quake-hit IndonesiaMaintained and developed by Arabs Today Group SAL.
All rights reserved to Arab Today Media Group 2021 ©
Maintained and developed by Arabs Today Group SAL.
All rights reserved to Arab Today Media Group 2021 ©
Send your comments
Your comment as a visitor