US' allegations that Chinese telecom companies are a threat to national security do not hold water

According to a recent US House Intelligence Committee report, Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE should be barred from any mergers and acquisitions in the United States and denied access to the US market because they pose a national security risk. Almost at the same time, the Japanese cellphone company Softbank announced it will buy 70 percent of US carrier Sprint Nextel without a murmur from Congress.

President Barack Obama issued an order on Sept 30, blocking a company affiliated with China's largest machinery manufacturer, Sany Group, from building a wind farm in Oregon, claiming the site was a national security risk as it was too close to a US Navy base. However, the navy had already given a green light to the final site, and there are wind turbines built by German and Danish companies in the area.

Why is it just China that is being singled out?

Clearly the US government has a profound strategic distrust of China. From the US perspective, Japan, Germany and Denmark are its allies, while China is its potential strategic rival.

No evidence was presented to show that Huawei and ZTE threaten US national security and that they are involved in cyber espionage. Given its accusations, it is the House Intelligence Committee, not Huawei and ZTE, that should provide sufficient or specific information to demonstrate its allegations are justified. Yet the only "proof" the House Intelligence Committee could offer to back up its allegations that the two companies are a security risk to the US was that neither of the two companies provided sufficient evidence to ameliorate the "committee's concerns" or provided "specific information" about their relationship with the Chinese government and military. The report made it crystal clear that the committee had already decided that there were "concerns" before the investigation started.

At each Sino-US Strategic and Economic Dialogue, the main discussion platform for the world's two largest economies, the US government has reiterated the "advancement of strategic reassurance", yet the intelligence committee report has shown how worthless such pledges are.

If Huawei is really such a threat to national security, then why has it been welcomed in 150 countries and regions, including in the US, where it already operates. The committee's report on Huawei and ZTE simply proves once again how strong the US' strategic distrust of China actually is.

Yet telecom equipment and software technology are global products. A large part of the telecom equipment supplied by Apple, Cisco, Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, Samsung are made in China, does that make their products a threat to national security? And Huawei's products, as is true of other leading telecom companies, are manufactured using input and parts from around the world. Huawei's products contain US elements and Cisco's products contain Chinese elements.

Perhaps China should follow the US' lead. In which case, Cisco and Microsoft will have to leave China, because neither of these companies has proved its routers do not represent a security threat to China. Selected US investment projects should also be blocked because of the ifs, buts and maybes surrounding them.

In 1998, COSCO's attempt to run a container terminal in Long Beach, California, was rejected by the US government on the grounds the Chinese shipping company represented a threat to national security, as it was a State-owned company. Time passes, and COSCO has now created more than 600 jobs in the US.

The US is not Huawei's leading market, it accounted for only 4 percent of its revenues in 2011, and the unreasonable block on Huawei in the US will not stop its growth. It will probably become the world's largest telecom equipment and solution provider, and thus prevail over US companies in the global market. Preventing its investment in the US will ultimately hurt the US economy.

Instead of blocking Huawei as a whole, the US government should take a more constructive approach and inspect Huawei's products. For its part, Huawei should go public to make itself thoroughly transparent.

As to fighting cyber espionage, the effective way is a joint effort by Sino-US governments.

The author is co-director of the China-US/EU Study Center, China Association of International Trade.

(China Daily 11/05/2012 page8)