{"id":9776,"date":"2012-04-21T00:06:44","date_gmt":"2012-04-20T22:06:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=9776"},"modified":"2012-04-23T10:40:41","modified_gmt":"2012-04-23T08:40:41","slug":"which-way-for-huawei","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/9776\/which-way-for-huawei\/","title":{"rendered":"Which way for Huawei?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australia is the latest country following the U.S. and India to ban Huawei<\/a> from bidding to supply equipment to networks considered to be a critical part of national infrastructure.<\/p>\n

The justification for these bans is that Huawei may introduce \u201ctrap doors\u201d or other software-based means into the equipment it installs that will facilitate the Chinese military or Chinese Government\u2019s ability to monitor communications in the country or to disrupt communications and information systems and other vital ICT-dependent facilities (e.g. the electric grid) whenever they decide it is in their interests to do so.<\/p>\n

The bans on Huawei in these countries for bidding on sensitive network projects (and in the U.S. as well for acquiring U.S. companies that supply equipment to the military and security agencies) highlight the growing concerns among Western governments over the increasingly frequent Chinese cyberattacks on their companies and governments’ IT infrastructure as well as the claims that China is not adhering to the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO)<\/a> of which it is a member.<\/p>\n

The treatment of Google<\/a> in China is one example of Chinese behavior which has received significant publicity. The obstacles Google has encountered represent in American eyes not only unreasonable censorship accompanied by the hounding and punishment of dissenters by Chinese authorities, but also discrimination against a U.S.-based company and theft of its source code.<\/p>\n

The protestations from Huawei about these bans have to contend with stories and evidence about computer hacking originating from China to collect commercial and military and intelligence information as well as concerns about the protection (or lack thereof) of intellectual property on the part of Chinese companies.<\/p>\n

However Huawei\u2019s attempts to allay the fears about its behaviour are also inhibited by its opaque ownership structure. Huawei was founded by a former member of the PLA\u2019s (People Liberation Army) research institute where he was credited with several technological achievements before entering the electronic sector.<\/p>\n

There are nevertheless several reasons which paint a more nuanced picture than this one-sided characterization of Huawei\u2019s role and activities.<\/p>\n

Firstly defenders of civil liberties in the countries that have introduced bans on Huawei may or arguably should be as worried about the activities of their own governments and locally-based companies as they are about threats from China.<\/p>\n

Secondly India presents an unusual and ironic twist to the debate about whether or not Huawei should be banned from bidding on sensitive contracts.<\/p>\n

India has perhaps a more obvious justification than Australia or the U.S. for being leery about the involvement of Chinese companies in its networks since it has a longstanding border dispute with China that triggered the 1962 Sino-Indian war in which India suffered a humiliating defeat.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless in an apparent paradox in mid-2011 India reportedly turned to Huawei for help in searching imported smartphones and communications devices for signs of malware and spyware.<\/p>\n

Thirdly other countries most notably the U.K. , and very recently also New Zealand have not found it necessary to ban Huawei from participation in supplying equipment to its major networks.<\/p>\n

Yet the U.K. presumably has comparable concerns as the U.S. and Australia about both the risks as well as the benefits of allowing Chinese companies to sell ICT equipment in their domestic market.<\/p>\n

The U.K. fixed line incumbent BT<\/a> has reiterated its confidence in Huawei, and said that it was able to examine source code for products to check for “back doors” or eavesdropping functions.<\/p>\n

Fourthly the risk of retaliation in the Chinese market against firms based in countries that impose bans on Huawei cannot be overlooked.<\/p>\n

Finally it should not be forgotten that Huawei is competing against other companies not countries, and is not the sole or necessarily preferred representative of Chinese telecommunications technology.<\/p>\n

In South Africa this competitive environment has been made obvious by the filing of a law suit by the local arm of the second Chinese telecommunications supplier ZTE<\/a> which alleges irregularities in the award of Telkom\u2019s<\/a> contract for a major network upgrade. In Telkom\u2019s tender process the bid from ZTE was rejected and Telkom awarded the business to Huawei and Alcatel-Lucent<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n

Huawei has already taken significant steps to attempt to allay and overcome fears about its motivations and behaviour such as establishing local manufacturing and development facilities, hiring local nationals with distinguished backgrounds and pedigrees to make its case and occupy executive positions in the target countries, and offering third parties (such as BT above) access to its software so that it can be certified as safe to use.<\/p>\n

However, these steps have manifestly not been sufficient in some countries, and the questions arises whether Huawei will be prepared to go further, which would have to include for example providing greater visibility into its ownership and decision-making structure, and playing an active role in in changing the Chinese Government\u2019s role with respect to the treatment of non-Chinese companies.<\/p>\n

As for the countries that impose these bans on Huawei, rational analysis would suggest that a more nuanced view of threats and risks should be developed.<\/p>\n

The price of security like that of liberty may be eternal vigilance, but the vigilance should be intelligent or properly targeted and proportionate. Some of the bans imposed on Huawei may be neither.<\/p>\n

Source: BMI-T<\/a><\/p>\n

Related article<\/strong><\/p>\n

Huawei ban won’t harm China\/Australia relations<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Huawei not done in Australia yet<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Huawei blocked from broadband project<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To ban or not to ban – the reasons why <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":9781,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,1635,705],"class_list":["post-9776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-headline","tag-huawei","tag-zte"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9776"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9826,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9776\/revisions\/9826"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}