China: No evidence Huawei a nat’l security threat

BEIJING (AP) — China says the US and other countries have not presented any conclusive evidence that Chinese telecoms gear maker Huawei threatens their national security.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said yesterday that critics of Huawei Technologies were fabricating threats and misusing state power to “suppress the legitimate development rights and interests of Chinese enterprises” and are “using political means to intervene in the economy.”

”There is no evidence indicating that our equipment posed a security threat, no matter in Thailand or globally,” Hua said. “Cybersecurity has been made into a political and maybe ideological issue which is not fair for a technology company,” Huawei added in its statement.

Hua’s comments at a daily briefing were some of the sharpest yet in a feud over Washington’s drive to convince other nations to shut Huawei out of their markets due to national security concerns.

The company insists that it is independent and poses no threat to the security of others.

Meanwhile, Thailand launched a Huawei Technologies 5G test bed.

The 5G test bed in Thailand, the United States’ oldest ally in Asia, will be Huawei’s first in Southeast Asia.

Huawei, which gets nearly half of its revenue from outside China, says it has secured more than 30 commercial 5G contracts globally. But it has not yet signed a 5G contract in Thailand.

Huawei is in talks with telecoms operators, such as Advanced Info Service Pcl and TRUE, to secure local partnerships ahead of a national rollout scheduled for December 2020, industry sources with knowledge of the matter said.

Huawei has previously set up a cloud data center worth $22.5 million in Thailand’s EEC, a centerpiece of the government’s policy to boost growth in the country that has struggled to attract foreign investors besides the Chinese.

Alibaba, Tencent, Kingsoft and JD.com have also pledged to invest in the EEC.

This stands in stark contrast to the intense scrutiny being faced by Chinese investment in other parts of the world amid a crippling Sino-US trade war.