The United States – and other nations with them – do not want the Chinese company Huawei to deal with the management of some important infrastructures necessary for 5G, the new generation of digital mobile technology. It might seem like something only to insiders – from people reading about it in the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times – but it isn't. Within a few years, 5G technology will almost certainly take the place of 4G technology, which we have all used for almost a decade to connect to the internet with our smartphones; Countries opposed to entrusting its infrastructure to Huawei say the company could use it for espionage, in agreement with the Chinese government. For now, Italy has not yet banned Huawei from putting its hand to 5G, but it is something that in all likelihood will also be discussed here.
For the layman, the key things to know are these. Huawei, which has 150,000 employees in more than 150 countries, is a company headquartered in Shenzhen, China. It is known for its smartphones and digital devices, but it is also the world leader in telecommunications components, because it manages to combine good quality with rather low prices. Without going into too much detail, Huawei is among the leading companies building infrastructure and components for 5G, a technology that in the future will offer faster mobile connection speeds and better coverage.
On average, a new generation of cellular technologies become standard every 10 years. The most recent, 4G, emerged at the beginning of this decade and became a standard starting in 2012, after not a few difficulties in agreeing between governments, operators and phone manufacturers on the frequencies and systems to be used. 5G is expected to become the norm a couple of years after 2020.
On November 23, the Wall Street Journal reported that the US government had asked telephone operators not to use Huawei components, fearing possible future cyber attacks and spying operations carried out by China. On November 28, Spark, the largest telecom operator in New Zealand, said the country's intelligence had blocked a possible role for Huawei in the 5G work for similar reasons. Again for the same reason, Australia had already decided in August to do the same.
The United States, Australia and New Zealand are part, together with Canada and the United Kingdom, of the “Five Eyes”: an agreement for the exchange of information between the intelligence agencies of the five countries. Canada is among the countries that the United States has urged not to make 5G deals with Huawei. The UK has shown suspicion, but seems to want to try a different approach: British intelligence publicly said on November 29 that, as it stands now, Huawei is not trusted to build 5G infrastructure, which is one thing nonetheless. other than blocking their participation in tenders. A spokesman for the British government told the Financial Times that the NCSC (the government agency that deals with cybersecurity) “has doubts about a number of technical issues, pointing out what improvements Huawei must implement” in order to be considered safe. Huawei is not currently banned from working on British 5G; the company has only been alerted to comply with certain rules. But, writes the Financial Times, “the message sent to Chinese society” is clear. There are also those who argue that the move serves to slow down Huawei and allow other companies to catch up and offer similar level 5G infrastructure.
The Financial Times says that even in Germany, according to their sources, “the government's approach is becoming increasingly suspicious of Huawei's possible role in the implementation of the 5G network in the country”; even if it is “too early to say whether Germany will prevent the participation of the Chinese company”.
In short, even if with different intensity and partly different reasons, many important countries have expressed considerable concerns in the role of a large Chinese company in one of the most important technological progress projects of the next few years. Some of these have spoken openly about the risk that another country, China, could use its large company and its infrastructure to spy on them, given the delicacy of the telecommunications sector. In particular, the United States – whose intelligence is described as very active in trying to persuade other countries not to make deals with Huawei – refers to a 2017 Chinese law according to which companies and citizens must support and collaborate with the national activities of intelligence. It means, in other words, that if China were to ask you to provide information, Huawei could hardly say no.
Among other things, Huawei has a complicated and not particularly clear corporate structure. Most of the company's shares are in fact controlled by a kind of workers' union (of which the vast majority of the company's Chinese employees belong): they are unsaleable shares and when an employee leaves Huawei, the shares go back to the company. Despite this structure, it is thought that much of the control remains in the hands of Ren Zhengfei, who is 74 years old and is the founder and current president. Up until five years before founding Huawei, he had been a Chinese army officer: a fact often cited by those who argue that it is impossible to think of Huawei as a truly independent company from the government (said that no company in China can be completely).
However, there are those who argue that Huawei should be considered an autonomous and independent multinational from the Chinese government. In this case the idea is that the United States and other countries are using the pretext of possible espionage to prevent a foreign company from taking a large share of an important market. Huawei's line was simple: it repeated that it was a private company, independent of the government. Eric Xu – a chairman of Huawei's board of directors (the company rotates several people into the role) – said the US also risks falling behind on 5G.
However, not all countries think like the United States. Many others have in fact chosen to rely on Huawei. The New York Times wrote: “A wall is being created that divides the world in two. On the one hand, there are places that accept Chinese technology in important areas such as telecommunications; on the other, those who do not. ” Italy seems to want to be on the side that accepts Chinese technology. At the beginning of October, well in advance of other countries, the auction for 5G frequencies ended, in which the State collected 6.55 billion euros from Tim, Vodafone, Iliad, Wind and Fastweb. Infrastructure remains to be done, an area in which Huawei could play a role. At the end of September, the “Huawei 5G Summit” was held in the Chamber, which was attended by, among others, Luigi Di Maio, Minister of Economic Development.
