By Elishya Perera
WASHINGTON (CWBN)_ The US government is ready to offer loans and other financial assistance to developing countries to persuade them to shun Chinese telecommunication equipment, and to use alternatives which they claim are “safer, and have fewer strings attached”.
Accordingly, the Wall Street Journal reported that the US is willing to offer financing worth billions of dollars, for countries to buy hardware from suppliers in “democratic countries, rather than from China”.
The effort will be led by Bonnie Glick, the deputy administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Under this new tool, which broadens the tech Cold War with China, the Agency will deploy staff to developing nations in order to convince them that it is bad idea to use telecommunication gear from Huawei Technologies Co. and ZTE Corp., which Washington claims will be used by the Chinese government to spy or conduct cyber attacks.
Meanwhile, The Commerce Department of the US has also imposed export controls on certain US technology which China would need to develop advanced telecommunication equipment.
However, the Chinese government is also expected to take measures in response to U.S. actions. Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer and daughter of the founder of Chinese telecom giant Huawei, was arrested in Canada in 2018, on a U.S. extradition request, and nine days later two Canadians, Dominic Barton and Michael Spavor, were detained in China, in retaliation, even though Beijing claims that there is no link between the two arrests.
For a couple of years, the US government has lobbied allies to join them in banning Chinese-made gear which uses 5G technology, which promises super fast speed, that may enable driverless vehicles and other innovations. And even though the US campaign which focused on 5G deployments in Europe has had some success, however, they face a bigger challenge in convincing developing nations and luring them away from Chinese technology, since China has been offering them finance deals that are below market rates with repayment schedules which the US or Europe haven’t been able to match.
However, according to the U.S. Export-Import Bank, the new China-focused initiative is expected to finance deals with terms and rates that are competitive with Chinese agencies, while Glick says that this new effort by the US government would convince developing nations that Chinese equipment is vulnerable to espionage, and that the loans offered by China to finance the equipment can trap them.
