I'm Sailing Huawei

[El Pollo Diablo]

Should we let the Chinese build us some mobile 5G infrastructure? Or should we let someone else? Is it better that the French spy on us or the Chinese?

[Bird on a Fire]

Should we let the Chinese build us some mobile 5G infrastructure? Or should we let someone else? Is it better that the French spy on us or the Chinese?

If I were in charge of buying tech infrastructure for a country, I would certainly prefer that the inevitable spying was done by somebody with whom we share intelligence, rather than somebody we don't particularly trust and actively spy on.

As a personal user, I'm not super fussed whether I'm spied on by China or Five Eyes. I feel like it's pretty moot as to which is more likely to harm me.

[Little waster]

I just like babbling near my Huawei phone about my top-secret work on producing giant man-eating badgers for the British Army, just to put the shits up the Chinese.

My eavesdropper is great, I call him "Uncle Dave", he's from Xian and likes basketball and movies about giant robots, he often wakes me up when I sleep through my alarm which is kind.

[lpm]

We're choosing Huawei because it's cheaper, not because it's inherently better. This seems dumb.

And annoying Donald Trump is not a good idea this year, when we're desperate. After all that grovelling the Queen did as well.

[Nero]

A pretty sane and informed piece of analysis here:

https://www.baldingsworld.com/2020/01/1 ... st-huawei/

I've worked in the Telco space for far too long, Huawei kit forms a large chunk of the 3G/4G network. It's going to be nigh on impossible to keep 5G based traffic off those networks. So if we are worried about Huawei kit then it will need to be stripped out of the other networks. Pretty much all of the UK telcos have a shed load of Huawei kit installed.

[Herainestold]

As a personal user, I'm not super fussed whether I'm spied on by China or Five Eyes. I feel like it's pretty moot as to which is more likely to harm me.

Probably 5 eyes. They can do more to affect your daily life than Chairman Xi.
And the Chinese have a much better record of non interference in sovereign states and support for anti imperialism and anti colonialism.

[JQH]

The population of Tibet might beg to differ with your last point.

[Gfamily]

The population of Tibet might beg to differ with your last point.

There are countries in Africa that might beg to differ in a couple of decades too.

[Boustrophedon]

I'm Sailing Huawei; they're a Geordie company then?

[Herainestold]

The population of Tibet might beg to differ with your last point.

There are countries in Africa that might beg to differ in a couple of decades too.

African countries economic resurgence is almost entirely due to Chinese investment.

[Bird on a Fire]

The population of Tibet might beg to differ with your last point.

There are countries in Africa that might beg to differ in a couple of decades too.

African countries economic resurgence is almost entirely due to Chinese investment.

That investment has come with a lot of quid pro quo, though. Not directly equivalent to Western imperialism with sanctions and bombs, which China only does within its own borders (and in annexed territories), but there's certainly a non-zero cost to a lot of African people. The important question is whether those costs exceed the benefits, and over what time frame, etcetera.

[Herainestold]

There are countries in Africa that might beg to differ in a couple of decades too.

African countries economic resurgence is almost entirely due to Chinese investment.

That investment has come with a lot of quid pro quo, though. Not directly equivalent to Western imperialism with sanctions and bombs, which China only does within its own borders (and in annexed territories), but there's certainly a non-zero cost to a lot of African people. The important question is whether those costs exceed the benefits, and over what time frame, etcetera.

Ask African peoples which they prefer.

[Martin_B]

African countries economic resurgence is almost entirely due to Chinese investment.

That investment has come with a lot of quid pro quo, though. Not directly equivalent to Western imperialism with sanctions and bombs, which China only does within its own borders (and in annexed territories), but there's certainly a non-zero cost to a lot of African people. The important question is whether those costs exceed the benefits, and over what time frame, etcetera.

Ask African peoples which they prefer.

It's not always the Chinese investment.

From conversation with some locals in Zambia (and from them, similar experiences in other sub-Saharan countries) the Chinese methodology is to come in and offer to construct significant infrastructure at very low cost and low interest rates, using Chinese know-how to train locals to help promote local industries.

Once the contracts are signed, there are then variations, and the projects end up costing more than expected, interest rates increase, labour is done mainly by imported Chinese labourers (some of whom are prison labour), local industry gets ignored, locals don't get jobs or training, maintenance requires Chinese expertise (which costs much more than maintenance by locals, but it's all in the contract/variations) and apparently when the construction project is complete the Chinese leave the workers behind (especially if they are prison labour - why bother re-importing them to China?) so the local economy ends up with a sudden influx of unemployed Chinese criminals.

The win-win situation which the Africans thought was the basis of the contract (Africa gets infrastructure and the chance to generate income through exporting resources to China and others) becomes very one-sided (Africa gets much more expensive infrastructure and large debts which have to be serviced through the export of resources to China which take priority over any other exports, regardless of any imbalance in Chinese prices and spot prices).

Of course, YMMV.

[Gentleman Jim]

That investment has come with a lot of quid pro quo, though. Not directly equivalent to Western imperialism with sanctions and bombs, which China only does within its own borders (and in annexed territories), but there's certainly a non-zero cost to a lot of African people. The important question is whether those costs exceed the benefits, and over what time frame, etcetera.

Ask African peoples which they prefer.

It's not always the Chinese investment.

From conversation with some locals in Zambia (and from them, similar experiences in other sub-Saharan countries) the Chinese methodology is to come in and offer to construct significant infrastructure at very low cost and low interest rates, using Chinese know-how to train locals to help promote local industries.

Once the contracts are signed, there are then variations, and the projects end up costing more than expected, interest rates increase, labour is done mainly by imported Chinese labourers (some of whom are prison labour), local industry gets ignored, locals don't get jobs or training, maintenance requires Chinese expertise (which costs much more than maintenance by locals, but it's all in the contract/variations) and apparently when the construction project is complete the Chinese leave the workers behind (especially if they are prison labour - why bother re-importing them to China?) so the local economy ends up with a sudden influx of unemployed Chinese criminals.

The win-win situation which the Africans thought was the basis of the contract (Africa gets infrastructure and the chance to generate income through exporting resources to China and others) becomes very one-sided (Africa gets much more expensive infrastructure and large debts which have to be serviced through the export of resources to China which take priority over any other exports, regardless of any imbalance in Chinese prices and spot prices).

Of course, YMMV.

+1
A Tanzanian friend told me that much of the railway built by the chinese was a different gauge to the rest that had bee built by the Brits- esp at international borders
To repay, much of the coffee grown was bought by the Chinese but the contract specified that the roasted, ground coffee, then had to be bought by the Tanzanian government at the inevitably much higher price

[Nero]

Don't forget the very generous funding and building of the African Union HQ by China.

https://medium.com/dukeuniversity/whats ... 454c1f31a2

Not so sure this was much of a win-win.

[Bird on a Fire]

A village where I stayed for a while on an island in West Africa had recently traded with "the Chinese"*: access to its fishing waters for shiny new satellite dishes.

Nobody in the village has electricity.

There's just a bunch of satellite dishes up trees, wires trailing to nowhere, getting shat on by vultures.



*Not sure if the government or a private enterprise, though the distinction is a bit fuzzy anyway

[Herainestold]

Don't forget the very generous funding and building of the African Union HQ by China.

https://medium.com/dukeuniversity/whats ... 454c1f31a2

Not so sure this was much of a win-win.

The article was much less than it appears at first. Huawei code had no back doors and nobody found responsible for leaks and no allegations of damage.

[lpm]

Well, that was an expensive mistake then.

Expensive in the sense of being only a tiny fraction of the more expensive mistakes the UK is currently making.

[Bird on a Fire]

According to the Beeb:

The UK last reviewed Huawei's role in its telecoms infrastructure in January, when it was decided to let the firm remain a supplier but introduced a cap on its market share.

But in May the US introduced new sanctions designed to disrupt Huawei's ability to get its own chips manufactured.

This led security officials to conclude they could no longer assure the security of its products if the company had to start sourcing chips from third-parties for use in its equipment.

The minister cited a review carried out by GCHQ's National Cyber Security Centre as being the motivation for the changes.

However, other political considerations are likely to have also come into play including the UK's desire to strike a trade deal with the US, and growing tensions with China over its handling of the coronavirus outbreak and its treatment of Hong Kong.

In other words, the new UK decision isn't because of anything changing with Huawei, nor a mistake as such, but because of the impacts of the new US sanctions. It's not clear to me that those are motivated by genuine security concerns, rather than US economic issues.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53403793