The United States on Tuesday banned China Telecom from operating in the country citing “significant” national security concerns, further straining already tense relations between the superpowers. The move marks the latest salvo in a long-running standoff that has pitted the world’s biggest two economies against each other over a range of issues including Taiwan, Hong Kong, human rights, trade and technology.
It also comes as US President Joe Biden presses ahead with a hardline policy against Beijing broadly in line with that of his predecessor Donald Trump, whose bombastic approach sent tensions soaring.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ordered China Telecom Americas to discontinue its services within 60 days, ending a nearly 20-year operation in the United States. The firm’s “ownership and control by the Chinese government raise significant national security and law enforcement risks,” the FCC said in a statement.
It warned that it gives opportunities for Beijing “to access, store, disrupt, and/or misroute US communications, which in turn allow them to engage in espionage and other harmful activities against the United States.”
China Telecom is China’s largest fixed-line operator, and its shares jumped some 20 percent in August in its Shanghai stock debut. But it has faced turbulence in the United States for years, particularly during Trump’s presidency as the former president repeatedly clashed with Beijing over trade.
The company was delisted by the New York Stock Exchange in January along with fellow state-owned telecoms firms China Mobile and China Unicom. That followed a Trump executive order banning investments by Americans in a range of companies deemed to be supplying or supporting China’s military and security apparatus.
The US Justice Department had already threatened to terminate China Telecom’s American dealings in April last year, saying US government agencies “identified substantial and unacceptable national security and law enforcement risks associated with China Telecom’s operations. US regulators have also taken action against other Chinese telecoms, notably private giant Huawei.
Trump’s White House in 2018 began an aggressive campaign to short-circuit the global ambitions of Huawei, cutting the tech giant off from key components and banning it from using Google’s Android services. (The move) sends a broader message to Beijing, that regardless of who’s president, the US continues to be concerned about the risks posed by Chinese tech firms operating in the US,” Martijn Rasser, of the Center for a New American Security in Washington, told Bloomberg.
Source: IOL
In other news – Metro FM DJ MoFlava ties the knot
Congratulations are in order for Metro FM DJ MoFlava, whose real name is Moeti Tsiki. The DJ secretly tied the knot with his wife Mbali Cele this past weekend.
The couple got married in a traditional private ceremony and they looked like a dream in their traditional outfits. On his show yesterday. Learn more