We’re right to scrutinize Chinese technology

In a op-ed in The Globe and Mail last week, China’s Ambassador to Canada, Lu Shaye, argued that the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, CFO of Chinese telecom giant Huawei, had warranted a souring of Chinese views toward Canada. Despite Meng being held on allegations related to violating United States trade sanctions with Iran, the ambassador claimed that Huawei presents no real national security threat, and the Canadian government is working to advance U.S. interests at the expense of China. This week, the chairman of Huawei, Ken Hu, made the same claim, challenging accusations that his company was a security risk and insisting it was a victim of “ideology and geopolitics.”

Nothing could be further from the case. Not only was Meng’s arrest in line with Canadian extradition treaties with the United States, but the concerns raised over the actions of certain Chinese companies in Canada are entirely warranted in upholding liberal values.

The increase in the Chinese Communist Party’s influence over Chinese technology firms — and the authoritarian international priorities advanced by these relationships — is well documented, and extends to nearly all of China’s top 100 tech companies. Earlier this year, China Telecom, an international carrier with Communist Party ties, was discovered to have been misrouting U.S. internet traffic for over two years so that it passed through China. The possibility of powerful Chinese companies like Huawei affecting Canada’s next-generation 5G wireless-network infrastructure, should they play a key role, is thus warranted and concerning.

The ways in which the Communist Party and China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), exert international influence are often subtle and difficult to detect. PLA military scientists have developed academic relationships with international institutions throughout the countries of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance (including Canada) and throughout Europe, exerting influence over the direction of research in advanced technology. This, combined with widespread evidence of Chinese intellectual property theft, raises concerns over the degree to which such collaboration provides resources to the Chinese military. In 2015, Hu Xiaoxiang, a Pla-supported doctoral student researching wind power, was expelled from Norway after the government found that his research could aid in the development of hypersonic cruise missiles. Of course, the vast majority of Chinese students who come abroad

THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY’S INFLUENCE OVER TECHNOLOGY FIRMS IS WELL-DOCUMENTED.

come only to learn, and the majority of Chinese businesses are interested only in mutually beneficial trade. But when academic and business relationships deal with sensitive information, national security concerns have proven to be valid.

Canada’s leadership in technologies such as artificial intelligence, a field where the deployment of 5G wireless networks holds significant promise, raises clear concerns in terms of the potential to access Canadian intellectual property and with regard to “dual-use,” the repurposing of consumer technologies for military applications. The PLA’S strategy of “Military-civil Fusion,” in which academic research institutions and private companies are turned into arms of the military, is especially concerning for Canada.

Technologies such as 5G are so foundational as to present a clear national security threat if foreign providers are found to promote ideals contrary to those of the country they are operating in. This concern does not warrant blanket pre-emptive bans on companies, nor a closing of relations with China, but it does require some scrutiny of companies, depending on how close their ties are with foreign political agendas, and the level of control the company would attain by providing technology here. A consumer product is clearly less of a national security priority than is a telecommunications infrastructure. In the context of Huawei, that means that the company’s different products should be treated with different levels of scrutiny.

It must be clear that concerns over the influence of the Chinese Communist Party is no way an attack on Chinese values: The Chinese culture is thousands of years richer than the ambitions of its current rulers. ChineseCanadians represent a significant proportion of the senior positions in Canadian tech companies. They are assets to our economy and work to promote Canadian values. There are also countless Chinese nationals who advance visions of a free and open technological future without ties to their government’s agenda. It is the Communist Party and the PLA that seek to use emerging technologies for surveillance and military purposes to not only oppress their own citizens, but to expand their influence and power abroad. They are the reasons for concern.