China launched new global online data security initiatives on Tuesday in an attempt to counter recent restrictions by the U.S. that targeted Chinese technology firms.

Announcing the initiatives during a Beijing seminar, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said some countries had acted unilaterally and cited security reasons for targeting leading technological firms from rival countries. Wang did not specifically name any nation, but his comments were seen as referring to Washington.

The initiatives opposed data theft and collecting personal data of people overseas or engaging in large-scale surveillance, in an apparent response to U.S. accusations that some Chinese firms had shared data collected in the U.S. with Beijing.

The guidelines also opposed forcing local businesses to store data collected overseas in their home countries. They proposed multilateralism and cooperation to solve issues relating to global digital data and suggested that all countries had the right to protect their own data security.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has introduced a series of restrictions in recent months targeting Chinese tech firms. It ordered a ban on ByteDance’s video-sharing app TikTok and Tencent’s messaging app WeChat. Trump also sanctioned Huawei, accusing it of sharing Americans’ data with China and posing a security risk to Washington.

India also banned 59 Chinese-developed apps including TikTok and WeChat in June, citing similar reasons.

The initiatives were aimed at gaining trust from the international community but were unlikely to have any effect, Hong Kong-based political commentator Johnny Lau said. China would only use the initiatives to prevent other countries from posing a threat to itself, but not the other way round, because it had double standards for itself other countries, he said.

The guidelines also failed to mention how China would regulate its own intrusions into the human rights of its citizens, Lau said.

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