China Looks at Syria, Sees $$$
Russia is betting its geopolitical future in the Middle East on a military intervention to prop up the regime of Bashar al-Assad. But one of the biggest companies from another rising power, China, is betting that when the long civil war in Syria is over, the country will be a good place to do business.
Huawei, one of China’s richest companies and the largest telecommunications equipment maker in the world, has signed an agreement with Syria to design a “national strategy for information and communication technology,” including the construction of a broadband network for Internet service, the company announced earlier this month.
This isn’t the first time Huawei has gone to work for an authoritarian Middle Eastern regime. In 2011, the company signed a contract to install equipment for Iran’s largest mobile phone company as part of a system to track people’s locations via their cell phone signals. And U.S. intelligence officials have long suspected that the company gives the Chinese government and its security services access to the equipment that it installs, effectively acting as an arm of the Chinese surveillance apparatus.
The Syria deal won’t alleviate those concerns. It runs until 2020 and covers both a short and long-term plan to repair and develop Syria’s telecom infrastructure, which has been badly damaged by five years of civil war, and says that Huawei will advise the country’s communications and technology ministry.
That assumes, of course, that there still is a ministry, or a government at all for Huawei to work with. The future of Syria and its embattled dictator is very much in doubt, despite Vladimir Putin’s best efforts. So, why would a massive Chinese firm, with longstanding and deep ties to the government, take such a risk?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/27/china-looks-at-syria-sees.html
Fun with archives...Look at all these DUers rushing to defend a telecom giant that's a front for Chinese intelligence all because Snowden said they were getting spied on by the big, bad, NSA: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014762667
There are plenty other threads about that "expose" to peruse, I just chose the first one...
= new reply since forum marked as read
