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Huawei Technicians Helped African Governments Spy on Political Opponents

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Re: Huawei Technicians Helped African Governments Spy on Political Opponents

#61

Post by arcticfox »

ivanhoe wrote: post #41
motohagiography wrote: post #13

Huawei will likely become the main competition for NSO group and companies like it, but that's the least of the worlds worries. Governments with resource wealth don't need large public services that would operate a sophisticated intelligence service, so they outsource it. So far these governments have been doing point targeting against dissidents w/ mercenary surveillance companies, but it's possible these companies…

In Serbia it was primarily Israelis who sold all of the surveillance tech to the government, and now China seems to be pushing everyone else out of the market. It really makes a very little difference to common people, one foreign actor or the other, none of the sides is really altruistic in that game...

Israel is very powerful and ambitious for its size, but at 8 million people they're fundamentally limited in what kind of power they can or would want to project. No matter how advanced your intelligence or military there's just so far you can go when you're so tiny.

China on the other hand has almost 8 million people for every country on Earth. Imagine how many people they could assign to messing with each country around the world if they wanted to.

These are totally different players.

Re: Huawei Technicians Helped African Governments Spy on Political Opponents

#62

Post by yorwba »

Nokinside wrote: post #35

Mobile networks can be considered strategic infrastructure. Normally US State Department would be working closely with US companies to push back against Huawei with all kinds of political tie-ins and perks. Except that the US is not in the market. US based mobile network infrastructure assets (Lucent Technologies and Motorola's wireless network infrastructure business) were sold to Europeans long time ago. Both of th…

The paper you link doesn't show that Huawei is government-owned (as is pretty clear from the abstract) and in any case, the government is going to support private enterprises just as much. The problem for Ericsson and Nokia is rather that their countries don't have dedicated economic representatives in Uganda who could assist them.

There doesn't seem to be a Swedish Chamber of Commerce in any African country [1], whereas Finland does have one, but it's only responsible for West Africa, which doesn't include Uganda [2]. On the other hand, both the USA [3] and China [4] have Chambers of Commerce that also operate in Uganda.

[1] https://www.swedishchambers.se/swedish-chambers-of-commerce-...

[2] https://www.finncham.fi/africa

[3] http://www.amchamuganda.co.ug/

[4] http://www.cgcca.org/

Re: Huawei Technicians Helped African Governments Spy on Political Opponents

#63

Post by pms »

rhegart wrote: post #26
tibbydudeza wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly it has been shown the United States circa 2019 is not an ally anymore ... it is an alien country to most of us now where you have somehow elected a nativist leader who is a racist. At this stage for us Africans the Chinese seems like a more dependable and friendlier lot.

I see the propaganda machine has completely brainwashed you. Similar to how the propaganda machine painted USA as completely benevolent in my early years. Opposite effect now.

Isn't this against Hacker News rules to call another user "completely brainwashed"?

Brainwashing is what WSJ does since Murdoch took control over it and what mainstream Western media were doing to motivate the last deadly invasion on Iraq [1,2]. Just look at the reality. The US military killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, while the US public elected and supported its leaders who started this war by brainwashing the global population to believe their lies (and now the story repeats itself with Trump [3]).

Who was/is brainwashed?

[1] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/20/18274228/a...

[2] https://www.cnn.com/2013/03/11/opinion/kurtz-iraq-media-fail...

[3] https://theintercept.com/2019/08/14/trump-iran-worst-lies/

Re: Huawei Technicians Helped African Governments Spy on Political Opponents

#64

Post by _ptgt »

Barrin92 wrote: post #52
NicoJuicy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still an ally, more than the Chinese will ever be. Just wait and see, the loans you are getting ( not investments) are for Chinese workers. The loans are at 4-6% if the work isn't executed by Chinese workers. That's not an ally

>It's still an ally, more than the Chinese will ever be. The US has no concept for Africa, because unlike China which uses infrastructure projects and investment as a way to offload its export surplus the US is an overwhelmingly domestic economy. There will never be an American 'Belt and Road' because it just doesn't make much sense for a country that has so little international economic exposure, whenever the US for…

Even this framing is suspect -- China has very publicly been trying to shift from an export-driven economy to a domestic consumption economy recently.

I question how stable the relationship is when that stability rests on the assumption China fails to meet its economic goals.

Re: Huawei Technicians Helped African Governments Spy on Political Opponents

#65

Post by CharlesColeman »

yorwba wrote: post #62
Nokinside wrote: post #35

Mobile networks can be considered strategic infrastructure. Normally US State Department would be working closely with US companies to push back against Huawei with all kinds of political tie-ins and perks. Except that the US is not in the market. US based mobile network infrastructure assets (Lucent Technologies and Motorola's wireless network infrastructure business) were sold to Europeans long time ago. Both of th…

The paper you link doesn't show that Huawei is government-owned (as is pretty clear from the abstract) and in any case, the government is going to support private enterprises just as much. The problem for Ericsson and Nokia is rather that their countries don't have dedicated economic representatives in Uganda who could assist them. There doesn't seem to be a Swedish Chamber of Commerce in any African country [1], whe…

> The paper you link doesn't show that Huawei is government-owned (as is pretty clear from the abstract)

You're wrong. The paper's abstract says that Huawei is effectively government-owned, given the known facts. Read the last quoted paragraph carefully:

> * The Huawei operating company is 100% owned by a holding company, which is in turn approximately 1% owned by Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei and 99% owned by an entity called a “trade union committee” for the holding company.

> * We know nothing about the internal governance procedures of the trade union committee. We do not know who the committee members or other trade union leaders are, or how they are selected.

> ...

> * Given the public nature of trade unions in China, if the ownership stake of the trade union committee is genuine, and if the trade union and its committee function as trade unions generally function in China, then Huawei may be deemed effectively state-owned.

Also, ownership is just a specific cultural form of control. It's not synonymous with control, and lack of ownership does not necessarily imply a lack of control. The issue with Huawei isn't so much who owns is but who controls it. Hair-splitting arguments about ownership just distract from the issue.

Re: Huawei Technicians Helped African Governments Spy on Political Opponents

#66

Post by yorwba »

CharlesColeman wrote: post #65
yorwba wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The paper you link doesn't show that Huawei is government-owned (as is pretty clear from the abstract) and in any case, the government is going to support private enterprises just as much. The problem for Ericsson and Nokia is rather that their countries don't have dedicated economic representatives in Uganda who could assist them. There doesn't seem to be a Swedish Chamber of Commerce in any African country [1], whe…

> The paper you link doesn't show that Huawei is government-owned (as is pretty clear from the abstract) You're wrong. The paper's abstract says that Huawei is effectively government-owned , given the known facts. Read the last quoted paragraph carefully: > * The Huawei operating company is 100% owned by a holding company, which is in turn approximately 1% owned by Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei and 99% owned by an enti…

> if the trade union and its committee function as trade unions generally function in China, then Huawei may be deemed effectively state-owned.

That's the "they're Chinese, so obviously they can't be independent" argument. It not necessarily wrong, but also not terribly illuminating.

As you say, a more interesting question is that of control. Given the level of disunity within the Chinese government, a useful answer to that question would really need to break it down to the personal allegiances of the decision-makers. Unfortunately, those are unlikely to be recorded in publicly available documents.

In any case, Chinese government officials will extend their support even to Chinese companies they do not own, control or otherwise directly benefit from, so long as there's no competitor for whom that is the case.

Re: Huawei Technicians Helped African Governments Spy on Political Opponents

#67

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #59
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there's no indication whatsoever that Huawei is government-owned. Stop spreading FUD. There are plenty of state-owned enterprises in China, but Huawei isn't one of them.

That is what is some times called "Not readily believable" Huawei certainly isn't a worker coop as it claims.

The objection in the article is that the workers don't directly own shares. It's still a company in which workers vote and share in the profits. They just can't sell their stake on the market.

Re: Huawei Technicians Helped African Governments Spy on Political Opponents

#68

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

DeonPenny wrote: post #58
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there's no indication whatsoever that Huawei is government-owned. Stop spreading FUD. There are plenty of state-owned enterprises in China, but Huawei isn't one of them.

Theres a lot of evidence that they are state-owned. For example, a large number of board members being active in the CCP

That has nothing to do with being state-owned. Lots of people in China are in the party.

China has SOEs. It has private companies. They operate quite differently from one another. Huawei operates like one of the latter, and legally, definitely is one of the latter.

Re: Huawei Technicians Helped African Governments Spy on Political Opponents

#69

Post by CharlesColeman »

yorwba wrote: post #66
CharlesColeman wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The paper you link doesn't show that Huawei is government-owned (as is pretty clear from the abstract) You're wrong. The paper's abstract says that Huawei is effectively government-owned , given the known facts. Read the last quoted paragraph carefully: > * The Huawei operating company is 100% owned by a holding company, which is in turn approximately 1% owned by Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei and 99% owned by an enti…

> if the trade union and its committee function as trade unions generally function in China, then Huawei may be deemed effectively state-owned. That's the "they're Chinese, so obviously they can't be independent" argument. It not necessarily wrong, but also not terribly illuminating. As you say, a more interesting question is that of control. Given the level of disunity within the Chinese government, a useful answer…

> That's the "they're Chinese, so obviously they can't be independent" argument. It not necessarily wrong, but also not terribly illuminating.

What do you mean by that? China doesn't have independent trade unions, because the Chinese Communist Party doesn't allow political organization outside of its control, which independent trade unions would be. It's worth pointing that out because western misconceptions could cloud understanding.

See https://clb.org.hk/content/labour-relations-china-some-frequ...:

> Do workers in China have freedom of association?

> No. There is only one legally-mandated trade union, namely the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU). All enterprise trade unions have to be affiliated to the ACFTU via a hierarchical network of local and regional union federations. (See simplified organizational chart right). The ACFTU is primarily under the control and direction of the Chinese Communist Party. Any attempt to establish an independent trade union movement is seen by the Party as political threat. The only time in the history of the People’s Republic of China that an independent union was established was the short-lived Beijing Workers’ Autonomous Federation in 1989. The BWAF was declared an illegal organization and disbanded in the wake of the military crackdown in Beijing on 4 June 1989.

See https://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/chinalbr02/chinalbr0802-01....:

> At no point over the last twenty-five years, despite widespread unemployment, serious labor law violations, and appallingly dangerous working conditions, has the ACFTU attempted to distance itself from the CCP leadership or to question its policies. It has not defended the principle of independent union organizing, and it has never spoken out against laws and regulations routinely employed to justify imprisonment of labor activists who organize outside its aegis.

----

> Given the level of disunity within the Chinese government, a useful answer to that question would really need to break it down to the personal allegiances of the decision-makers.

The Communist party is united enough to make that irrelevant to the question of who controls Huawei in the contexts where it's typically posed.

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