China and US set for cybersecurity duel
Clashes over Huawei expected at Munich conference
The US and China are sending top-level hawks to Europe for what’s shaping up as a showdown between the two powers at a key security conference as they vie for influence and technological dominance in one of the world’s richest markets.
The US and China are sending top-level hawks to Europe for what’s shaping up as a showdown between the two powers at a key security conference as they vie for influence and technological dominance in one of the world’s richest markets.
Politburo member Yang Jiechi will be the most senior Chinese official to attend Friday’s Munich Security Conference since it began in 1963. He will head the largest delegation to what in essence is an annual gathering of the US-led transatlantic defence community.
Yang, a former ambassador to the US, is known for delivering diatribes on the status of Taiwan and other issues sensitive to Beijing. He is expected to push back against a US campaign to exclude Chinese companies, in particular, Huawei Technologies, from the construction of Europe’s 5G mobile networks.
Huawei has become a lightning rod for the broader tussle between China and the US for sway. The US has repeatedly cited concerns about the telecoms giant as a “Trojan Horse” for Chinese security infiltration, while Beijing says the claims are unfounded and a bid to contain China, seen as a threat to decades of US dominance.
Running alongside the Huawei tensions is a trade war which, despite a short-term truce, still risks higher tariffs on Chinese goods.
A bipartisan US delegation headed by vice-president Mike Pence is also expected to set records for its size at Munich, unless a fresh government shutdown
emerges and keeps dozens of legislators at home.
In October, Pence shocked Beijing with a Cold War-style speech that accused an “Orwellian’’ Chinese state of systematic cheating on trade rules, corporate espionage and intellectual property theft as it
sought to control “90% of the world’s advanced industries’’ and gain military dominance.
“It’s a big moment, and quite worrying in terms of the symbolism,’’ said Kerry Brown, a professor of Chinese studies at King’s College London. He described the US-China relationship
as increasingly competitive and difficult to manage because the two sides had fundamentally conflicting goals.
“The US doesn’t want to be displaced as number one in the world, and China is going to be number one,’’ said Brown.
Although Munich is effectively home turf for US leaders, Pence may have his work cut out for him. There is widespread concern in Europe over President”Donald First policies, Trump’s especially “America since the departure of internationally trusted officials who had promised to maintain US foreign policy continuity most recently James Mattis as secretary of defence in December.
“US policy is increasingly looking like Trump’s tweets,’’ said the authors of a report issued by the event’s organisers in advance of the Munich conference. A Pew Research poll in the same report asked Britons, Canadians, French, Germans, Japanese and Russians whether they saw US or Chinese power and influence as the greater threat; the US was the bigger concern for all but Japan.
That result was repeated when respondents were asked who they trusted to “do the right thing regarding world affairs Trump or President Xi Jinping?
US secretatry of state Mike Pompeo warned that in Hungary, a Huawei hub for Europe, co-locating Chinese equipment with “important US systems’’ would make it difficult for countries to continue partnering with the US.