Germany falls into trap of its own making

According to reports in the German media, the federal government might soon compel German telecommunication companies to remove Chinese components from their mobile networks. The German Interior Ministry was quoted as saying that parts from “non-trustworthy providers” will be banned, even if they are in use. The excuse, as always, is that the components might be a threat to national security.

Although Huawei was not specifically mentioned, the Chinese telecom company is always the target of such moves as it is the world’s leading supplier of network equipment. It is estimated that Huawei products account for 65 percent of all components in German networks. In October 2019, Germany announced that it would not ban Huawei from helping to build its national 5G networks, snubbing calls from the US to exclude the company’s equipment. So what has changed in the last couple of years?

Germany is a core member of North Atlantic Treaty Organization, shares intelligence with the US, and has thrown its hat into the ring with them in backing Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. Thus it is now cornered by its own dependency concerns into doing Washington’s bidding.

The irony is that it is the US not China that bugged German leaders’ telephones via its Prism Project. It is the US, not China, that’s spying on the world. It is the US that has initiated a war in Europe not China. Yet German politicians have Sinophobia, not Americanophobia.

Removing the equipment is easier said than done. Under the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program — or “rip and replace” as it is more descriptively known — US authorities have called for US operators to remove Chinese-made network equipment supplied by vendors such as Huawei and ZTE from their networks, and has incentivized them to do so by offering to cover the costs.

But the cost of removing installed Chinese equipment from US networks and replacing it with like-for-like equivalents from Western vendors has far outstripped the US government’s expectations. The cost of the program was budgeted at $1.9 billion, but US operators have requested grants worth a total of $5.6 billion.

By having to source and install more expensive replacements, which will likely be inferior given that Huawei is a world leader in network telecom tech, the German companies also risk falling behind in the construction of their 5G networks.

Such a scenario would not have happened had some German politicians not been so deeply buried in their Sinophobia. If they viewed the Chinese companies objectively they would realize that there has been nothing forthcoming over the years to substantiate Washington’s telecom-tech-threat allegations.

If they had not got themselves into a tizzy over their energy dependency by clinging to Washington’s coattails, they could have saved all the cost and trouble for the German telecom companies and avoided causing inconvenience to their customers.