The annual edition of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona witnessed the powerful presence of large Chinese communications companies, with Huawei at the forefront. The Chinese giant, in addition to mobile phone brands, is well placed to deploy 5G networks, one of the themes of the Barcelona star meeting this year. The point is that there is a growing distrust of Chinese technology in Western countries, which are warned about the possible transfer of information to their country’s government.
In Spain, 38% of the 5G network infrastructure has some type of component of Chinese origin, according to a report by consultant John Strand. In Cyprus the percentage is 100%. Denmark, Sweden, Norway and the Baltic States have done so without deploying Chinese technology, while Austria, Germany and the Netherlands have so far rejected Huawei. Geopolitical decisions will dominate today’s technology investment, which will determine our future in a few months.
The United States has even gone so far as to talk about banning the presence of Huawei in these social communication networks. The UK plans to remove all Huawei products by 2027. The Chinese company is not the only one in the crosshairs. In the UK in 2022 they discovered that most of the CCTV surveillance cameras belong to another Chinese company with strong links to their government. And the European Parliament has trained its staff to install the TikTok application from their mobile phones. This may be a geostrategic move, at a time of Chinese uncertainty about the serious war in Ukraine, but also a legitimate defensive move, examples of unconditional collaboration between these Chinese giants and the all-powerful CCP government.
What seems to be increasingly clear is that, after several years of globalization, political and commercial societies are returning again. There are those who speak of deglobalization to define this process of conversion, of the industrial machines that support local factories. Large European and North American companies – their homeland is the portfolio – joined the bandwagon of offshoring and profits and dividends in the millions. Stupid at last! But finally someone realized the importance of technological dominance and the threats of certain products to democracy itself. Better late than never.
