The US on Tuesday banned China Telecom Corp (中國電信) from operating in the country, citing “significant” national security concerns.
The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ordered China Telecom Americas Corp to discontinue its services within 60 days, ending nearly 20 years of operations in the US.
The firm’s “ownership and control by the Chinese government raise significant national security and law enforcement risks,” the FCC said in a statement.
Photo: AP
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,” it said.
“The FCC’s decision is disappointing,” China Telecom spokesman Ge Yu (葛宇) said in an e-mail, Bloomberg News reported. “We plan to pursue all available options while continuing to serve our customers.”
There was no response to an e-mail sent to the press contact at the Chinese embassy in Washington.
The announcement on Tuesday ramped up concerns about further measures against Chinese tech firms and battered shares in such firms listed in New York.
The selling continued yesterday in Hong Kong, where Chinese tech firms experienced hefty selling, pulling the Hang Seng Index 1.6 percent lower.
The Hang Seng Tech Index lost more than 3 percent, with Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊), Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴), JD.com Inc (京東) and XD Inc (心動) among those taking a hit in morning trade.
The move “seems to dampen previous hopes that the US-China relations may be turning for the better,” IG Asia Pte market strategist Yeap Jun Rong said.
It “has raised some doubts as to whether further escalation may bring back more US scrutiny on Chinese technology players,” he said.
China Telecom, China’s largest fixed-line operator, was delisted by the New York Stock Exchange in January, along with fellow state-owned telecoms firms China Mobile Ltd (中國移動) and China Unicom Hong Kong Ltd (中國聯通).
That followed an executive order by then-US president Donald Trump banning investments by Americans in a range of companies deemed to be supplying or supporting China’s military and security apparatus.
The US Department of Justice in April last year threatened to terminate China Telecom’s US dealings, saying that US government agencies “identified substantial and unacceptable national security and law enforcement risks associated with China Telecom’s operations.”
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,” the Washinton-based Center for a New American Security’s director of the technology and national security program, Martijn Rasser, told Bloomberg.
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
‘ARMED GROUP’: Two defendants used Chinese funds to form the ‘Republic of China Taiwan Military Government,’ posing a threat to national security, prosecutors said A retired lieutenant general has been charged after using funds from China to recruit military personnel for an “armed” group that would assist invading Chinese forces, prosecutors said yesterday. The retired officer, Kao An-kuo (高安國), was among six people indicted for contravening the National Security Act (國家安全法), the High Prosecutors’ Office said in a statement. The group visited China multiple times, separately and together, from 2018 to last year, where they met Chinese military intelligence personnel for instructions and funding “to initiate and develop organizations for China,” prosecutors said. Their actions posed a “serious threat” to “national security and social stability,” the statement
RSS