US criticized for bullying Chinese firms
Print Edition
CHINA yesterday denounced the US suppression and containment of Chinese high-tech firms by abusing state power, calling the relevant moves “a typical act of bullying” aimed at maintaining its high-tech monopoly.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin was responding to the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who called for a big expansion of US government curbs on Chinese technology, saying that it wants to see “untrusted Chinese apps” pulled from the Google and Apple app stores.
Wang said the United States’ claim has no factual basis and went against market principles. The decision is to protect its monopoly in the high-tech field, he said. China urges the US to correct its mistake and create conditions where enterprises around the world can proceed with normal economic and trade cooperation.
Pompeo said expanded US efforts on a program it calls “Clean Network” would focus on five areas and include steps to prevent various Chinese apps, as well as Chinese telecoms companies, from accessing sensitive information on American citizens and businesses.
Pompeo called out popular video app TikTok and the messaging app WeChat, which people in the US use to communicate with others in the US and China, as “significant threats to the personal data of American citizens.”
TikTok currently faces a deadline of September 15 to either sell its US operations to Microsoft Corp or face an outright ban.
Pompeo said the United States was working to prevent Huawei Technologies from pre-installing or making available for download the most popular US apps on its phones. He said the State Department would work with other government agencies to protect the data of US citizens and American intellectual property by preventing access from cloud-based systems run by Alibaba, Baidu, China Mobile, China Telecom, and Tencent.
Pompeo said he was joining Attorney General William Barr, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, and acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf in urging the US telecoms regulator, the Federal Communications Commission, to terminate authorizations for China Telecom and three other companies to provide services to and from the United States. He said the State Department was also working to ensure China could not compromise information carried by undersea cables that connect the United States to the global Internet.
Wang stressed that many of the Chinese companies currently subject to unilateral US sanctions are innocent and their technology and products are safe, adding that there has never been a cyber security incident like the “Snowden affair” or “WikiLeaks issue,” nor has there ever been a cyber surveillance activity like the “Prism Gate,” the “Equation Group” or the “Echelon System.”
“How ridiculous is it for America to talk about a ‘clean network’ when it is covered in dirt?” Wang questioned.
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