In the latest instalment of News Corp Australia’s anti-Huawei propaganda campaign, today they have published a report that says that the Chinese government provided monetary subsidies and financial aid to Huawei – when it was just a fledgling company.
According to a report from the Wall Street Journal (also owned by News Corp — seeing a pattern forming here?), Huawei has “received tens of billions of dollars in assistance from the Chinese Government” in a bid for it to become competitive in a difficult industry to break into. The assistance came in the form of grants, loans, tax breaks and other forms of financial assistance adding up to around AU$108 billion.
Huawei told the paper that the same grants were also given to other companies as well. The report also accuses Huawei of dodging tax fraud allegations when the Chinese government assembled an auditing team usually reserved for state-owned companies.
News.com.au and the WSJ also note that other countries do give subsidies to their companies, with that financial powerhouse Finland providing the same to Nokia, albeit 17 times less. They did make a quick note in passing that the Chinese GDP at the same time was 34 times that of Finland — which in effect means Huawei received proportionally less than Nokia did.
Finland’s GDP has only grown by 4 billion dollars from US$270 to US$274 billion from 2013 to 2018 while the Chinese GDP went from US$9.6 trillion to US$13.4 trillion. This allows the Chinese governments to hand out more favours to their companies, such as cheap loans and tax advantages.
There is very little note, if any, in either articles to acknowledge that this kind of financial incentive is exactly what many (if not most) countries with strong economies offer to their own resident companies.
Germany handed out AU$17.2 billion PER YEAR to the car industry in the ten years leading up to 2017. Guess what, the German car industry is thus thriving. Meanwhile in Australia the car industry received very little, if any, support from our federal government and thus we are left with nothing aside from a lot of unemployed people.
The very same journal which reported this also found that Huawei’s largest US competitor, Cisco Systems Inc., received $44.5 million in state and federal subsidies, loans, guarantees, grants and other U.S. assistance since 2000.
Cisco was found with a large number of back doors included in their hardware and software (8 were patched in 2018 alone) — maybe that’s why the US is worried. Is this is how they operate, paying for back doors into US-made systems so they suspect everyone else does the same?
Look at the tax and financial incentives that governments literally fall over themselves to throw at Amazon Inc., a company that needs absolutely zero support from taxpayers funds in any country. And yet that practice continues.
Of course the end of the News Corp article states that this is the reason why Huawei was excluded from the 5G network — its government influence. Australian top spy chiefs have said that “the high level of integration expected in 5G could pose more significant risks to national infrastructure rather than just user privacy.”
Never mind the fact that the 4G network is predominantly built by Huawei, and operates in substantially the same way as 5G networks do (and would).
Once again, the @WSJ has published untruths about #Huawei based on false information. This time, wild accusations about Huawei’s finances ignore our 30 years of dedicated investments in R&D that have driven innovation and the tech industry as a whole. Read on for the #facts. pic.twitter.com/MpFVDIUecO
— Huawei (@Huawei) December 26, 2019
The spy chiefs believe that if Huawei was involved in the 5G networks it would allow for the Chinese government to “disrupt key pieces of infrastructure such as the power grid”.
These beliefs and suspicions are formed without a shred of evidence that has been made public, and in fact many European countries are not following the USA like lapdogs and are allowing Huawei to build their 5G networks — sometimes with a few provisos such as full access to their source material and a specific security setup by Huawei.
New Zealand is also looking to loosen their restrictions on Huawei as well.
In the end the Australian government has blocked Huawei from our 5G network so we will end up with inferior technology with inferior speeds — after the NBN debacle that does not surprise me.
We will continue to see anti-Chinese and anti-Huawei news from some sections of the media. Thanks, uncle Rupert!
Those who back up their rhetoric with facts will have more success but in the end some people believe whatever they read, hear or watch.
Huawei have in the past and continue to deny all spying allegations and have also denied they received any special form of handouts from the Chinese government that other companies did not.
Where do you sit on all of this?
