Boris letting in Huawei would be a mistake
Lenin once famously said: “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them”. Today China’s CCP seems to have improved on the maxim, discovering they can make profit by selling people enough rope to hang themselves with.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson is reportedly considering letting Huawei, a Chinese telecoms and consumer electronics giant with well documented ties to the CCP, build the UK’s new 5G network. Other leaders across Europe and the world seem similarly inclined. Nevertheless, Johnson is making a mistake. The deal would leave the UK vulnerable to Chinese intelligence operations and cyberwarfare, pave the way for growing Chinese influence over domestic politics and media, and might not even deliver effectively on the promised goods.
That China would use the Huawei deal as an opportunity to embed itself in UK telecoms for intelligence purposes is unquestionable. China itself is one of the global cyberwarfare superpowers and has faced multiciple accusations of using its capacities to bolster its political and commercial interests, or simply punish those that displease it.
Many American companies from Google to Dow Chemicals and Northrop Grumman have reported cyber-attacks attributed to Chinese groups. In 2015 the US government Office of Personnel Management reported a data breach affecting 2.15 million Americans, that anonymous government officials reported came from China.
This year the New York Times revealed the Chinese state-sponsored hackers were engaged in a sustained campaign to surveil and harass Tibetan and Uighur groups outside its borders.
Furthermore, as all major companies in China have close ties to the one party state, including official party bodies embedded within them, they are often used to bolster CCP interests. All Chinese companies are subject to Article’s 7 and 14 of China’s National Intelligence Law, that requires Chinese persons and companies to cooperate with the intelligence services and handover any requested data. Huawei itself is said to receive funds directly from the Chinese intelligence services and has been banned by the USA, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia from bidding on sensitive government contracts.
Indeed, China has a record of using infrastructure projects to extend its surveillance and cyberwarfare capacities. In the Philippines the State Grid Corporation of China has used its 40% stake in the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines in just such a manner. In 2018 it was revealed that the SGCC had laid undeclared fibre optic cables alongside the cables of the Philippine energy grid that it had been contracted to expand and improve. While the SGCC claimed it was simply building a smart grid the seemingly covert way this had been gone about, and the well documented vulnerability of energy grids to cyberattack, raise serious questions. Despite this no real action was taken and today the SGCC seems to have a disturbing grip over key NGCC infrastructure to the point that only Chinese engineers, and no Filipinos, understand and have full access to vital pieces of software.
While it seems unlikely that government would let things reach such a state its eagerness to quickly sign new trade deals post-Brexit will put it in a poor position to push back against Chinese pressure.
New Zealand illustrates all too clearly the perils of letting Chinese bodies become too influential domestically. Anne Marie-Brady, a New Zealand academic, has been key in detailing the vast scope of the Chinese influence campaign. Most striking was the revelation that one National Party MP, Jian Yang, had worked with the PLA and was linked to Chinese intelligence services. For her trouble she claims she has faced surveillance and harassment by the CCP operating in New Zealand, and her house has been repeatedly broken into. Little wonder New Zealand is now quickly reassessing its relationship with China, banning Huawei from upgrading its communications network despite previously making use of its services.
Even more innocuous seeming activities can have a political influence with Brady recently raising concerns about how Huawei’s sponsorship of New Zealand’s TV awards might influence decision of whether to give prizes to the few journalists who have been key in revealing China’s influence campaign. A large Chinese business presence in Britain represents a clear opportunity for a similar influence campaign. It seems likely they would find fertile ground given British political parties’ well documented willingness to accept donations from dubious sources such as Putin-tied oligarchs or arms dealers.
Finally, one must ask the fundamental question of whether Huawei would even effectively deliver on what it promised. China’s previous campaign to use infrastructure projects by Chinese companies backed by Chinese loans to spread its influence globally, the Belt and Road Initiative, has recently seen its reputation take a nosedive. Alongside accusations the projects end up saddling the countries that accept Chinese loans with vast amounts of unpayable debts there is the fact that Chinese companies have something of a track record of promising the world, before proving themselves not up to it. In Indonesia a Chinese bid to help build a high-speed rail link between Jakarta and Bandung won the contract in September 2015. However, the project is still barely off the ground, dogged by land disputes, the slow release of loans by the China Development Bank, and claims of managerial incompetence. Similar stories abound from Kazakhstan to Bangladesh.
If the UK is serious about national security and forging a bold innovative new path for itself post-Brexit it could do well to look to Vietnam’s example. Deeply concerned about China from a security perspective and keen to be on the cutting edge of global technology itself, the government there has launched a joint project to have the state telecommunications company Viettel work with Ericsson to development its own 5G capacities. Nokia is also working on launching its own 5G services. While neither company has as well-developed capacities as Huawei this may well offer an opportunity. The UK could offer to support companies and democratic countries developing their 5G capacities, and gain a national foothold in this vital new market.