Chinese telecommunications company Huawei and its fifth-generation (5G) wireless technology represent a very high risk for democracy in Latin America, because of the company’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Euclides Tapia, professor of International Relations at the University of Panama, told Diálogo on June 11.
“The issue is that the CCP intervenes in their company [Huawei], like in any other Chinese company, and it has the last word; it’s even stipulated in the Constitution,” Tapia said. “The danger is that when China requires confidential or security information from our countries, they have unrestricted access to it.”
It is estimated that by 2025, around 12 percent of mobile internet connections in Latin America will be via 5G technology. However, a more optimistic target is for the largest economies in the region, such as Brazil and Mexico, to be able to reach 20 percent connectivity by the same date, German market research platform Statista indicated.
Governments are key in this path. “There are two reasons why they [states] are accessing Huawei 5G services,” Tapia said. “One is the low cost, but unfortunately with very low security, and the other is the speed at which changes are happening at the technological level in the world.”
The problem with these agreements is that they become permanent, Tapia added. “Therein lies the danger, because there is no legislation to reverse what is agreed upon with some governments that have an ideological alliance with China in Latin America,” he said.
Democratic vision
U.S. authorities’ concerns with Huawei equipment go far back. In 2012, the House Intelligence Committee warned in a lengthy report that Huawei telecommunications equipment could be used for spying in the United States and urged companies not to do business with Huawei. In 2017, U.S. intelligence agencies determined that Huawei equipment could disrupt highly restricted Defense Department communications including those concerning U.S. nuclear arsenal, CNN reported.
Since then, the Chinese company has effectively been banned from the United States for posing a national security risk. Other countries followed suit, including Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
Moreover, after Huawei was caught stealing trade secrets, evading U.S. bans on technology transfer to Iran, and was suspected of being an arm of the Chinese intelligence services, the United States imposed a series of controls, Voice of America (VOA) reported.
Those controls have since 2019 cut off the supply of chips from U.S. companies to Huawei, its access to U.S. technology tools to design its own chips and have its partners manufacture them, VOA reported. The United States has been warning partner nations worldwide and in Latin America not to adopt Huawei’s 5G technology for being unsafe, German international broadcaster DW reported.
“Chinese companies, in this case Huawei, are companies that within their philosophical framework and their creation do not have citizens’ data protection; therefore they are not reliable companies,” Gaston Massari, president of the Argentine nongovernmental tech organization Gobernanza, which supports the strengthening of democracy through technology, told DW.
“If there are other 5G options [other than Huawei], even if they are more expensive, they [citizens and governments] will be able to circumvent the danger of being spied on by China,” Tapia said.
New blockade
To date 10 European countries have also banned or restricted Huawei from their 5G networks, CNBC reported. In early June, EU Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton urged more member states to remove Huawei and other high-risk suppliers from their 5G networks.
In late May, Portugal became one of the latest nations to block Huawei technology from its market, Bloomberg reported, with Germany considering making the move.
“Huawei 5G is not a good option for the Latin American region,” Tapia emphasized.
5G will virtually connect all technological systems and environments, including strategic ones such as missile control or nuclear plants, Argentine media Visión Desarrollista reported. In a society so dependent on telecommunications infrastructure, a blackout or sabotage of 5G networks would have as great an impact as a widespread power outage.
“The [Latin American] countries that are about to decide to contract with Huawei 5G must be very clear about defending the democratic system. Otherwise, they will fall into the hands of China, which is contrary to the democratic system. To fall into the hands of Chinese technology is to lose privacy,” Tapia concluded. “Besides, all production from China is cheap and of poor quality.”