- Biden hinders Huawei & Co.’s US network expansion
- CAI: EU Commission publishes annexes
- Xinjiang: Genocide debate soon in the German Bundestag?
- Sweden’s permanent conflict with China
- 24 new virus varients discovered in China
- G7 and EU criticize Hong Kong decision
- Liya Yu: Children do not think geopolitically
The tone is set for the first US-China meeting since the US presidential transition: When foreign ministers from both world powers see each other in Alaska on Thursday, Beijing will define the Biden administration’s latest sanctions as a continuation of Trump’s policies. Finn Mayer-Kuckuk assesses the implications of the American move for the German debate about Huawei.
Since the signing of the European-Chinese investment agreement CAI at the end of 2020, there has been a lot of speculation about the contents hidden in the previously unknown annexes. After seven weeks, Brussels has finally revealed the secret. Amelie Richter has looked through almost 270 pages.
China.Table has already devoted its own analyses to the relations of the EU member states Italy and the Czech Republic with China in recent weeks. Today Christiane Kühl looks at Sweden’s relationship with China.
Did the Carlsen publishing house bow to Chinese censorship when it took its latest children’s book off the market just days after it was published? The book, “Ein Corona Regenbogen für Anna und Moritz” (“A Corona Rainbow for Anna and Moritz”), says the virus also originated in China, prompting angry protests from people of Asian descent who see it as discrimination. Rightly so, writes researcher Liya Yu in her opinion piece today, warning of a growing divide in society as Asian-born children and their families are unfairly stamped as complicit in a global pandemic.
Our new section at the end of the China.Table, “So To Speak”, is about more than just learning the language. Every Monday, Verena Menzel will translate important terms and phrases and give us insight into the cultural background.
Antje Sirleschtov
Feature
Biden hinders Huawei & Co.’s US network expansion
US President Joe Biden is de facto kicking major Chinese telecoms equipment suppliers off domestic networks. Providers like Huawei are an “unacceptable risk”, the US Telecommunications Authority announced. The decision means network operators will not receive funding from the government’s billion-dollar network expansion fund if they order accessories from China. In parallel, the government is asking mobile and Internet providers to remove equipment from Chinese suppliers and replace it with domestic products. For smaller providers with less than ten million customers, there is compensation. This scrapping premium for mobile phone antennas and routers is called “rip and replace“; it is financed by the big economic stimulus package with which Biden wants to revive the economy after COVID-19. The government could hardly express its distrust of Huawei more clearly.
The list of allegedly risky vendors includes Huawei, ZTE, Hytera Communications, Hangzhou Hikvision, and Dahua, in an explicit move by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to implement the will of the new administration. “This list is a big step toward restoring trust in our communications networks,” said FFC Acting
Chairwoman Rosenworcel. Biden had elevated the lawyer to her post in late January. It was a “mistake” to install Chinese equipment in the first place, Roenworcel said.
Before the US election, Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei had expressed hope that Joe Biden would be more open to Chinese business than his predecessor. However, the Biden administration is now applying a Trump-era anti-China law without mitigation. Trump had ordered the FCC to ferret out security risks two years ago. Joe Biden could now have formulated a milder policy – but he didn’t. Now, in the third month of his presidency, another hard blow came against Huawei.
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