Opinion

Stop fear tactics against Chinese firms

By Chen Weihua (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-08-31 16:41

Imagine this: Eight National People's Congress lawmakers write to the Chinese government, requesting to block deals by a long list of United States companies, from Lockheed Martin and Boeing to Honeywell and General Electric.

The reason is simple yet compelling: National security. All these US companies have close ties with the US military. Allowing them to invest in China and supply equipment to sensitive Chinese industries will pose a serious threat to the country.

There is more. The EP3 spy plane built by Lockheed Martin was directly responsible for the collision with the Chinese fighter in the South China Sea in April 2001, resulting in the death of Chinese pilot Wang Hai.

Meanwhile, Northrop Grumman, a top US military industrial firm which is set to supply radio communication systems to the Chengdu area air traffic control center, should also be barred, because it manufactured the USS George Washington, the aircraft carrier which has been at the center of debate over recent joint military drills by the US and South Korea.

The request by the lawmakers could go on and on to trace every US company back to the days of the Korean War to find out whether their products have been used by the US army or any other armies against the Chinese.

By doing this, hundreds of US companies could be blacklisted for providing supplies such as planes and canned food to the US army during the Korean War, which claimed more than 200,000 Chinese soldiers.

If you think I am witch hunting, you are absolutely right.

However, eight US Congressmen wrote a letter to the Obama administration using exactly that kind of language in a bid to block Chinese telecom firm Huawei from supplying equipment to the wireless broadband network of Sprint Nextel, the third-largest mobile operator in the US.

The letter, dated Aug 18, charged Huawei of once selling communications technology to Saddam Hussein's regime and the Taliban before its fall. Huawei's fiber optic equipment in Saddam Hussein's air defense network had routinely been used to target US military aircraft.

Well, could we find out how many US companies sold deadly weapons to Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden when both of them were regarded as friends of the US?

The letter, by US Senators Jon Kyl, Christopher Bond, Richard Shelby, James Inhofe, Jim Bunning, Jeff Sessions, Richard Burr and Susan Collins, also warned the US government of the background of Huawei's founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei as a former People's Liberation Army officer.

Well, should the Chinese also start to check how many US companies doing business in China are headed by those with a US military background? In fact, I once knew one US business executive in Shanghai who had not only served in the CIA, but also its predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services.

Yes, I have been absurdly witch hunting like the eight US senators. Witch hunting with various scare tactics seems to be a favorite sport among US politicians these days, especially in this election year.

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In his mocking of Fox News channel, which claims that the funding for the proposed mosque near Ground Zero might be linked to terrorists, talk show host Jon Stewart jokingly traced back Fox News' ties with Osama bin Laden and told the audience "as a nation, we should stop watching Fox News".

Huawei has been a victim of such scare tactics in the US. Its expansion in the US has encountered repeated setbacks due to so-called security concerns, despite its fast growth in other parts of the world.

Just a month ago, Huawei lost a bid for 2Wire, a private US company that makes broadband software, simply because the sellers doubted Huawei's ability to win US government approval for the purchase.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an inter-governmental agency that reviews foreign investment in sensitive US industries, was reportedly saying it is reviewing the letter by the eight US senators.

Hopefully, the CFIUS will not choose to believe in the fear tactics adopted by lobbyists, interest groups and in this case, a small group of Congressmen who yearn for more attention during the upcoming election.

US President Barack Obama knows just too well about the scare tactics, having suffered enormously from those tactics by his opponents in pushing forward his healthcare reform and other programs. He should not let the CFIUS allow the scare tactics to work against Chinese companies that are coming to create US jobs.

E-mail: chenweihua@chinadaily.com.cn