Take a stand against China’s global tech war.
The Canadian government continues to pussyfoot around China, failing to join its allies that are taking action to halt Beijing’s manipulation of the international trading system and its failure to abide by the rule of law. More important, Canada’s political leaders seem unaware of the global tech war that’s underway.
Canada is the only member of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance that hasn’t banned Huawei, China’s telecom giant, from building 5G infrastructure. By failing to take action, the government is ignoring public opinion: four out of five Canadians want Huawei barred and other concrete measures taken against China.
A report this week claimed that Huawei had drawn up a “no- spying” agreement to comfort its Canadian customers, but this is about as trustworthy as Beijing’s deal with the United Kingdom to retain democracy in Hong Kong until 2047.
It’s embarrassing that Huawei hasn’t been banned outright already, given its involvement in the global tech war, and the fact that Canada was one of its first casualties.
“This is a challenge to all free people and open economies of the world,” said Rajeev Chandrasekhar at a recent Hudson Institute conference on the “geo- tech wars.” “This is not just about technology but about trade and economics. The biggest driver for economies in the future is technology.”
Chandrasekhar is a tech entrepreneur and a member of India’s Parliament who led that country’s ban on Huawei and hundreds of Chinese software products, which has escalated since its military confrontation with China. He said that China’s misdeeds are also at the top of the agenda of the Quad, a military alliance that includes India, Japan, Australia and the United States.
Huawei has positioned itself as a global leader in fifth-generation cellular networking equipment, which promises to provide the backbone for a hyper-automated future that will be filled with trillions of internet-connected devices. For the past two decades, Huawei — through unfair subsidies, takeovers and guile — has eliminated all but two of its rivals in this space. As a result, a majority of countries around the world are in the process of adopting some or all of Huawei’s networking technologies.
The Quad and the European Union are concerned that Huawei’s infrastructure will be used to spy on, and exert control over, Western governments, businesses and societies — especially given that it is being implemented alongside China’s massive Belt and Road Initiative, which is designed to control essential physical infrastructure, and governance, in strategically important countries.
Canada’s failure to take action against Huawei, or work with its allies to counter the Chinese threat, is inexcusable considering that Nortel, the Canadian company that was a pioneer of cellular technologies, was Huawei’s first target. As a Bloomberg investigative piece — headlined, Did a Chinese Hack Kill Canada’s Greatest Tech Company? — documented in July, there is now a large body of evidence that Huawei stole intellectual property from the once- mighty Canadian telecom giant, and drove it out of business.
Fortunately, the United States pushed back after a 2017 report that concluded: “Chinese theft of American ( intellectual property) currently costs between $ 225 billion and $ 600 billion annually.”
Besides impeding Huawei and imposing tariffs to stop price cheating, Washington has banned the Chinese from procuring any American technologies and has forced the sale of Tiktok and other apps. It has also removed Hong Kong’s special status, following the Chinese government’s abuses there.
Canada, on the other hand, stands idly by, despite China’s incarceration of two Canadian businessmen for two years because Huawei’s chief financial officer is being held in Canada on a U. S. extradition request. China has also ripped up billions of dollars worth of agricultural export contracts with Canada.
It’s obvious that Canadians realize what their government does not: the Chinese government is a trade bully, it’s abusive and it’s engaged in a global war for dominance over telecommunications and other high-tech industries. Canada must take a stand.