http://www.newsmax.com/smith/chinese_companies/2007/10/10/39642.html
Chinese Cos. Tied to Military Buying U.S. Companies
On paper, Huawei seems like a nice little Chinese telecom. It has the backing of U.S. Bain Capital Partners to go ahead with a plan to buy out the American communications firm 3Com.
With such high power backing one could rest assured that all is well with Huawei.
However, Huawei is close to the Chinese military and 3Com makes equipment used by the Pentagon to block computer hackers, including those from the Chinese military.
According to a Rand Corporation report, the Huawei Shenzhen Technology Company was founded in 1988 by Ren Zhengfei, a former director of the PLA General Staff Department’s Information Engineering Academy. Zhengfei is an ex-staff officer of the People’s Liberation Army.
The department that Zhengfei left is responsible for telecom research for the Chinese military.
“Huawei maintains deep ties with the Chinese military, which serves a multi-faceted role as an important customer, as well as Huawei’s political patron and research and development partner. Both the government and the military tout Huawei as a national champion,” notes the Rand report.
Yet, there is more to Huawei than mere “deep ties” to the Chinese military. According to a May 2004 U.S. Defense Department report to the inspector general, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Huawei is “a Chinese company that operated in Iraq under Saddam Hussein.”
Huawei’s operations inside Saddam’s Iraq included smuggling in communications gear forbidden by the U.N. and taking payments in the form of cash from the Iraqi oil-for-food program. In fact, Huawei’s antics inside Iraq were detailed by the CIA in its Iraq Survey Group final report.
“One Chinese company, illicitly provided transmission equipment and switches to Iraq from 1999 to 2002 for projects that were not approved under the UN OFF Program. Reporting indicates that throughout 2000, Huawei, along with two other Chinese companies, participated in extensive work in and around Baghdad that included the provision and installation of telecommunication switches, more than 100,000 lines, and the installation of fiber-optic cable,” noted the CIA report.
The fiber-optic systems installed by Huawei, in violation of the U.N. sanctions, had a much more sinister function than providing Saddam with access to the Internet. That function was spelled out in 2001 Senate testimony from Gary Milhollin, professor emeritus, University of Wisconsin Law School and director, Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control.
Huawei, according to Milhollin, was “caught helping Iraq improve its air defenses by outfitting them with fiber optic equipment. The assistance to Iraq was not approved by the United Nations, and thus violated the international embargo.”
Ironically, much of the Iraqi air defense network installed by Huawei was made of equipment exported to China by U.S. manufacturers. Huawei’s air defense network even acquired the NATO code-name “Tiger Song” because allied aircraft had to dodge missiles and bomb the system on a regular basis.
“These exports no doubt make money for American companies, but they also threaten the lives of American pilots,” stated Milhollin in 2001.
However, America is not the only nation to get a clear picture of Huawei. The Times of India reported in 2005 that several Indian government agencies, including the RAW — the Research and Analysis Wing (India’s CIA) — concluded that Huawei “poses a specific threat.”
The Indian intelligence agency stated that Huawei “has been responsible for sweeping and debugging operations in the Chinese embassy. In view of China’s focus on cyber warfare, there is a risk of exposing our strategic telecom network to the Chinese.”
Moreover, India’s Ministry of External Affairs cited concerns over Huawei’s “links with the Chinese military and intelligence establishment, their clandestine operations in Iraq and Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, and their close ties with the Pakistan army.”
These ties to the Taliban were discovered by American forces when another Huawei military command network was found in Afghanistan.
U.S. intelligence officials stated that Huawei installed a telephone system in Kabul in 2001. The system was described as a switching network to handle up to 130,000 users.
The U.S. intelligence reports contradicted Beijing’s claims that no Chinese firms worked for the Taliban. Of course, no one told the official Taliban news outlets not to announce the deal with Beijing.
In September 2000, according to the official Kabul Radio Voice of Shari’ah in Dari/Pashto, the Tablian met with representatives of China’s export trade and electronics industry and a number of Chinese engineers.
The Chinese “briefed the minister of communications, Mowlawi Yar Mohammad Rahimi” and “promised that during their stay they would implement practical measures to lay the fiber-optic cable and prepare sites for the installation of newly-purchased units. The Chinese delegation came to Kabul recently to carry out the preparatory work for installing the 12,000-line telephone exchange.”
The history of Huawei is very clear, documented by Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, two customers who kept their receipts. Huawei violated a U.N. ban on Iraq and took money destine to feed starving Iraqi children to put an air defense network in the desert. They sold a similar network to the Taliban, aimed again at U.S. soldiers. Huawei worked to kill Americans.
The question of Huawei should not be whether to allow them to buy 3Com but why are these monsters doing business here in the first place?
Alas, the lives of U.S. soldiers are not discussed at the corporate board level or, apparently, inside the U.S. State Department. The investors and stockholders of Bain should be sickened by this attempt to grab cash over the lives of dead Americans.
The widows and orphans of U.S. service personnel killed in action due to the efforts of Huawei should haunt the Bain executives and stockholders. Those who invest money into companies that kill Americans need to find a new haven for their cash.
Huawei and companies like Huawei need to be kicked out of America and banned from doing business here.