Japan govt to shun Huawei, ZTE equipment

TOKYO: Japan plans to ban government purchases of equipment from China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and ZTE Corp to beef up its defences against intelligence leaks and cyber attacks, sources told Reuters.

Chinese tech companies are under intense scrutiny from Washington and some prominent allies over ties to the Chinese government, driven by concerns they could be used by Beijing for spying.

A government ban in Japan will come after Huawei has already been locked out of the US market and after Australia and New Zealand have blocked it from building 5G networks.

Huawei has repeatedly insisted Beijing has no influence over it.

The Yomiuri newspaper, which first reported the news of Japan’s planned ban earlier on Friday, said the government was expected to revise its internal rules on procurement as early as Monday.

The government does not plan to specifically name Huawei and ZTE in the revision, but will put in place measures aimed at strengthening security that apply to the companies, a person with direct knowledge and a person briefed on the matter said.

Japan’s chief government spokesman, Yoshihide Suga, declined to comment.

But he noted that the country has been in close communication with the United States on a wide range of areas, including cybersecurity.

“Cybersecurity is becoming an important issue in Japan,” he told a regular news conference.

“We’ll take firm measures looking at it from a variety of perspectives.” ZTE declined to comment.

Huawei did not immediately comment.

Huawei supplies some network equipment to private Japanese telcos NTT Docomo and KDDI Corp.

And SoftBank Group Corp has a long relationship with Huawei - which in 2011 became the first Chinese firm to join Japan’s conservative Keidanren business lobby - and has partnered with it on 5G trials. — Reuters