WASHINGTON (Reuters) – China’s biggest telecommunications equipment maker said its path into the United States had been blocked by unsubstantiated “allegations based on allegations” that threatened to harm ties between the world’s two biggest economies.
The complaint by Huawei Technologies Co – topped by a reference to McCarthy-era Red Scare witch-hunting – was spelled out on the eve of the company’s scheduled testimony today at a rare public hearing of the US House of Representatives’ Intelligence Committee.
The committee is completing a nearly year-long investigation of security threats allegedly posed by equipment sold by Shenzhen, China-based Huawei, as well as ZTE Corp, a smaller cross-town rival also frustrated by challenges entering the US market.
The concern is that their products may be booby-trapped and provide the Chinese “an opportunity for greater foreign espionage, threaten our critical infrastructure, or increase the opportunities for Chinese economic espionage,” the Republican-led House Intelligence panel said in a notice about the hearing.
Huawei, second only in telecom gear sales worldwide to Sweden’s Ericsson, pushed back with an 81-page paper titled “The Case for Huawei in America,” published on the web site of its US subsidiary last night.
“Much of the evidence fueling lawmakers’ concerns remains classified,” said the heavily footnoted paper by Dan Steinbock, described as an authority on trade and investment and US-Chinese relations.
“However, when one set of allegations are substantiated with another set of allegations, the line between investigation and maltreatment grows thin,” the Huawei-commissioned paper said, decrying “allegations based on allegations.”
Continued rebuffs of Huawei in the United States, the document added, “is giving rise to a de facto blueprint for mirror-like Chinese measures to protect perceived strategic industries in the mainland.”
A spokesman for the Chinese embassy had no immediate comment on the congressional hearing. Testifying for Huawei will be Charles Ding, a corporate senior vice president; for ZTE, Zhu Jinyun, senior vice president for North America and Europe.
