back to article ZTE slams Congress spying claims, doubles down on sales ban

ZTE has defended itself against claims that its hardware is a security risk and has suggested that if Congress is that concerned, it should recommend not buying any Chinese-manufactured equipment, which would include tech sold by Western companies who have outsourced their manufacturing. On Monday the US House of …

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  1. Alan Denman

    Having your cake and eating it.

    What goes round comes round and the US are now looking a bunch of protectionist fools.

    Congress have a habit of looking complete hypocrites yet it is sad to see that they are steering us into possible global protectionism.

    Recession, you ain't seen nothing yet!

    1. Shagbag

      Re: Having your cake and eating it.

      I was in Australia around a year ago, just after they'd had the worst flooding on record. It devastated their agricultural crops and resulting in the price of bananas rocketing to £15 per kilo. After a cursory analysis it was apparent the high price had very little to do with the floods and very much to do their their backwards protectionist policies dressed up under the guise of 'quarantine' policy.

      £15 a kilo for bananas that I could get in Tesco for less than £1 a kilo imported from Costa Rica. But no matter where you went the Aussies wouldn't have a bar of it and kept on blaming the floods for the high prices.

      LMAO? I wet my pants at their stupidity.

      1. Neoc

        Re: Having your cake and eating it.

        Where the hell where you shopping? I live on one of the areas that was flooded and we never saw those kind of price rises. I'd say it was rather your local shop taking advantage of the floods to see how badly they could gouge their customers. (pretty much the GFC was a godsent to those companies that needed an excuse to fire people).

      2. PatrickE

        Re: Having your cake and eating it.

        Shagbag, I'm sure your analysis was quite "cursory". The price of bananas was impacted but more by opportunism than floods. I can't see a price of £15 existed here though. Maybe $15 but tops I saw was around $12. We didn't buy any bananas for a month or so.

        As far as protectionism dressed up as quarantine - well mate you are effing wrong. We are very protectionist about quarantine issues. No foot and mouth, no rabies etc. We have problems here with a number of feral imports such as rabbits, foxes, goats, pigs, buffalo, camel, rats, mice, cane toads, to name a few (Poms too come to think of it (oh heck, I'm a feral import too :) )), so we take these concerns seriously. We will go to great lengths to keep agricultural disease out of Australia with complete support from plebs like myself.

        Since we are so scummy, please feel free to visit somewhere else next holiday right? More considerate poms from the country of my birth are welcome of course. cheers

    2. LarsG
      Meh

      Time

      Time to bring the manufacturing and jobs back then.

  2. Lars Silver badge
    Coat

    The problem

    I suppose is that China is such a big market for Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks and Alcatel-Lucent for now.

    (Think twice before you complain). Personally I think it’s a bit late to complain about the "manners" of China, perhaps it’s just better to incorporate them as deep as hell into the world economy. In twenty years or earlier they will have trade unions and rising wages (if it wants to stay "alive"). As far as I remember this "cheep stuff journey" started from made in Hong Kong to Japan to Korea and now to China.

    1. (AMPC) Anonymous and mostly paranoid coward
      Gimp

      Re: The problem

      So right,

      Free markets tend to drive prices down and encourage innovation. When the US automotive industry last used Congress to crack down on lower priced, economical (and better quality) Japanese imports, the US auto industry stagnated for decades while the Japanese proceeded to dominate world markets.

      I would like to believe we learned a lesson from that last big clusterf*k but this latest debacle doesn't help convince me.

      Trade wars and protectionism killed too many people and jobs in the last Great Recession, it really is time to move on.

  3. solidsoup
    Thumb Down

    Ericsson, Nokia, et al are terrified of reprisal from Chinese government and losing market share if they are seen antagonistic to ZTE/Huawei, even if they have legitimate ground for WTO/EU complaint. What a bunch of short-sighted morons. They will never be able to compete on level ground with Chinese companies in China and will lose their remaining EU market share to cheap Chinese kit.

    As to Alan Denman's mock outrage, I wonder if he also writes angry anti-Chinese vitriols when an American or European joint venture with a Chinese company mandated by PRC goes titsup right after the Chinese firm steals all the Western IP and then springs to market with its own product weeks later. ZTE has shown it will not be bound by US law by forging export forms and reselling Cisco kit to Iran. Who cares if they also have backdoors?

  4. naive

    Fata morganas were there is nothing

    Nobody complains because most companies have this great fata morgana that someday... they will have penetrated this 1Billion+ market in China. Everybody should know by now the barriers for importing goods into China are sky high, regulations on foreign investments and profit taking are harsh.

    EU politicians can not be blamed for playing soft on those totalitarian spy-ware companies, they got them selves so deep into their self proclaimed Euro heaven that nobody is to be insulted who might be good for a handout.

    So since nobody has the courage to face off China, there is a huge future potential for an Opensource project that achieves safe internet over compromised networking infrastructure.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Fata morganas were there is nothing

      Who told you that Eu is playing soft in the first place.

      Both of these companies are still under an investigation for illegal subsidies and dumping. That investigation is delayed, but not gone away.

  5. Richard Altmann
    Mushroom

    Breaking News

    The CIA just released a bulletin stating, they found evidence Huawei is using secret facilities in Northern Korea to produce Routers of Mass Distruction in support of Al Qaida.

    1. Fatman

      Re: Breaking News...Routers of Mass Distruction

      I wonder, did that report come from the same section that foisted the weapons of mass destruction bullshit that got the US involved in Iraq???

      1. Richard Altmann

        Re: Breaking News...Routers of Mass Distruction

        No,that section is busy in the climate change denying/confirming departement now

  6. JaitcH
    FAIL

    ... truth that most networking equipment is manufactured in China anyway ...

    The futility of the U.S.Congress is highlighted again.

    This is not about security, it's the U.S.doing an end run around WTO rules and regulations as they have done to other countries. They can't operate on a level playing field.

    But they screwed themselves. Companies wanting to up their profits ship their assembly and manufacturing operations to China. The Chinese are no dummies, so they 'borrow' the American technology, and improve it, then sell it back to the US as a competing product. Actually, the Chinese government is now demanding IP transfers / licencing.

    Since American imports exceed exports their trade surplus. it drains the treasury. So the Treasury issue bonds, the Chinese fearing a loss of their main market, buy the bonds.

    Now the Chinese have US technology, production, and the control of debt. It's called holding all the cards.

    And the US thinks it is the greatest? Dumb b*stards. End of the American empire.

  7. Arctic fox
    Thumb Up

    @JaitcH RE "it's the U.S.doing an end run around WTO rules"

    Indeed it is - highly ironic since the US was the prime driver for the establishment of the WTO and also spent the nineties and the early noughties ramming bilateral free-trade agreements down the throats of various trading partners. The issue of IP that is so often mentioned in relation to China in these debates today is an interesting one. Every country that has gone through industrialisation etc goes through a period of having zero interest in respecting patents and copyright (officially or unofficially) until they have caught up and their balance of interest is served by the protection of intellectual property. In the late nineteenth century/very early twentieth the US itself was a major offender in this area. Artists ranging from Charles Dickens via George Bernard Shaw, Arthur Conan-Doyle to Gilbert and Sullivan had monster sales in the US - much of it illicit copies of their work for which they did not see a penny piece. As far as patent law is concerned it was only when US tech had reached the "Edison stage" that US industry, commerce and the US Congress had the faintest real interest in protecting IP. One is already beginning to see the Chinese authorities on the cusp of the "ought we not to take IP seriously?" point in their industrial and commercial development. Why? Because increasing numbers of Chinese companies have IP of their own they want to protect - hardly surprising that some of them are now discovering the joys of respecting intellectual poperty!

  8. Dire Criti¢

    I'm afraid it has to be said...

    "US House of Representatives Intelligence Committee"?

    Oxymoron?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Oxymoron

      You missed out the letters '...gen thieving ...s'.

  9. sueme2
    Big Brother

    simples

    It is all about who owns the backdoor that does not exist, and whose home owns the phone that never calls. If it's not A*merican, then it will be evil thru and thru.

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