Geotech Wars : Huawei, Beijing

"This is a challenge to all free people and open economies of the world."

"This is not just about technology but about trade and economics. The biggest driver for economies in the future is technology."

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Hudson Institute conference

 

Huawei 5G upgrade infrastructure

Allowed:

Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, Brazil, Cambodia, China, Cyprus, Egypt, Estonia, Faroe Islands, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Iraq, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Latvia, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritius, Moldova, Monaco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Netherlands, Oman, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Russia, Samoa, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan

Banned:

Australia, Japan, New Zealand, United Kingdom, United States

Credit: Emily Feng, Amy Cheng and Thomas Wilburn / NPR

Chinese autonomous driving start-ups are looking for cost-efficient ways to achieve large-scale adoption of the technology. Chinese telecoms giant Huawei has formed a team to focus on developing low-cost multichannel lidar sensors with the goal of making the technology affordable enough for all smart vehicles.   Photo: Handout

Canada now remains the sole member of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance that includes Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States that has not yet announced a decision with respect to permitting Huawei the telecom giant that Beijing considers its leading telecommunications instrument to bind the world into a Chinese-connected interconnectivity web as it seeks to dominate world technology, effectively yanking it out from under the influence of the U.S. whose technology pioneered the Internet and everything that flowed from it.

Canadian public opinion is dead set against allowing Huawei access to Canada's 5G upgrade. Beijing's bullying tactics in threatening Chinese Canadians who are loyal to their adopted Canadian citizenship when they dare criticize the Chinese dictatorship, its crackdown on Hong Kong democratic freedoms, its 're-education' camps for a million Chinese Muslims in Xinjiang province, the abduction and imprisonment of two Canadians charged with espionage, its agricultural trade war with Canada, all reason enough.

 

But the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau remains mired in placatory overtures toward Beijing, unwilling to state unequivocally that along with the other four members of the Western intelligence alliance, Canada too will opt out of giving Huawei the green light it is waiting for. Huawei's Canada-based management went so far as to put together a guarantee, a "no-spying" agreement to put to rest concerns that Huawei's involvement in Canadian communications infrastructure will give it a spying portal.

Canada has had previous experience with the Chinese penchant for industrial espionage, when Chinese technicians hired by Canada's then-global communications giant Nortel, spirited classified data into China, and those former employees then helped to set up China's counterpart of Nortel based on technique acquired and purloined information on structure and research, giving birth to Huawei. Nortel died a painful death as a result of the competition based on its own R&D, and Huawei made its way into the world at large.

Mr.Chandraselchar, a tech entrepreneur, and member of India's Parliament, led India's Huawei ban along with banning hundreds of other Chinese software, spurred in no small part by China's aggression against India on their disputed Himalayan border. The military alliance including India, Japan, Australia and the United States occupy the agenda in concerns over Beijing's long-range plans of world conquest, part of which is its Belt and Road initiative, an investment of immense proportions effectively tying countries from Europe, Africa and Asia in bondage to China, unable to pay off Chinese investment.

The future is destined for hyper-automation linkage with trillions of internet-connected devices -- all of which Huawei intends to have a connection with and ultimately control using whatever methods work,  from subsidies to takeovers eliminating rivals, to rise unequalled in reach and power. And Huawei has succeeded to the extent that it now has a majority of global nations in the process of adopting some or part of Huawei's networking technologies.

 

In 2017, a report published in the United States concluded that "Chinese theft of American (intellectual property) currently costs between $225 billion and $600 billion annually". Leading Washington to ban any American technologies from being accessed by Chinese tech companies, leaving the abusive trade bully that Beijing has become to continue engaging in its global dominance war but denying access to critical U.S.-produced technologies and urging other countries to proceed with caution in business with China.

"Meanwhile, Huawei has a baked-in 5G advantage in Europe, where it already has helped build out extensive 4G networks. That means countries that opt for faster and cheaper 'non-standalone implementation' — building out the first wave of 5G on top of existing 4G infrastructure — have to incorporate at least some Huawei equipment or begin the expensive and complex task of extricating Huawei from their 4G networks, analysts say."

"'That's why 4G is quite important to 5G implementation. It's also why you see pushback from countries like the U.K.', says Nikhil Batra, a senior research manager at research firm IDC in Australia."

Emily Feng, Amy Cheng, NPR