151–160 of 481 posts
This kind of thing is going to play out a lot over the next few years. It's a tough question: how to marry globalisation with the political realities. When China was very poor, it didn't really matter, or perhaps the assumption was that China would liberalise more quickly than it has. But China, while increasingly mature economically, has not developed proper civil society, human rights, freedom of expression, democr…
It's not like the UK is a paragon of freedom of expression.
So yes, this is a small victory in a massive war.
This kind of thing is going to play out a lot over the next few years. It's a tough question: how to marry globalisation with the political realities. When China was very poor, it didn't really matter, or perhaps the assumption was that China would liberalise more quickly than it has. But China, while increasingly mature economically, has not developed proper civil society, human rights, freedom of expression, democr…
It's not like the UK is a paragon of freedom of expression.
During Soviet times, a Russian man was arguing with a British man over whether their respective countries had freedom of speech. The British man said "I can go to the Houses of Parliament and call Margaret Thatcher an idiot". To which the Soviet man said "It's the same for us. I can go to Red Square and call Margaret Thatcher an idiot".
Total crap;either it is a security risk and it has to be removed yesterday or it is not. 2027 is meaningless.
U.S. is just concerned that China, and not them, will get an edge in spying and the next industrial revolution. Speaking of human rights it should be noted that U.S. not only wantonly attacks or bullies other countries, but it also has the highest incarceration rate in the world - in absolute terms the number of inmates is comparable to that of China and India combined.
Regarding your first point, yes, that’s an interesting take. Regarding the criticism of the US, yes you’re probably correct, but this is a “what about” argument that doesn’t really aid the discussion in my opinion.
In that context the failures of the US (as it is de-facto the standard-bearer of political liberalism in a broad sense), have real influence.
When the Chinese look around the world and they see the state of the US on imprisonment, racial conflict, failure during the current covid crisis and so on, this strengthens the domestic control of the party and the alternative autocratic system the government is advocating.
The justification is that the equipment presents a national security risk. If that's true, how is it reasonable to allow this equipment to operate in the UK for 7 more years? Doesn't that mean the UK is willingly under national security risk for 7 years? Unless, of course, there was never a security risk...
Because it will be obsolete and 6G will be the new hotness in seven years.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It isn't just 5G, Huawei equipment is used throughout the telecom industry.
Which does raise the question, why are we concerned about 5G when Huawei is presumably also behind much of the 4G and other existing infrastructure? What's the difference in terms of security risk?
And we already know China has been backdooring other equipment: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h... So yes, this is a small victory in a massive war.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not some neutral decision, but a move forced by the fallout of US sanctions, that the UK can’t do anything about. They’re giving up a partnership they entered after independently reviewing the equipment, I can’t see how it is a good outcome for them.
The UK left the EU so now it has no option but to be a big guy's bitch because it is too weak to face them by itself, and it has always been quite obvious that it would be a satellite of the US. This is not the same situation for the EU.
France for instance is about to take the same steps as UK, and get out of Huawei deals within the next years.