The Chinese government wanted its backdoors and censorship, but the US companies didn't want to look like they would enable that in China while promoting privacy and security in the US.

So the Chinese government offered them a "compromise" - let our Chinese companies be the "front" for your products, in which we can include all the backdoors and censorship we want, while you get to tell everyone else how much you care about your users' privacy.

When anyone asks why the Chinese version of Windows 10 or Skype or Cisco routers or Cloudflare services come built-in with backdoors and censorship, just say "it's not us, you see, it's our Chinese partners doing all of that! We care deeply about our users' privacy and security."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/24/us-cisco-systems-c...