Diplomats for China and the US in Latin America have traded brickbats on social media over alleged espionage risks posed by Chinese tech firms in the region, in the latest sign of the two powers’ unfolding strategic tensions in the western hemisphere.
US assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs Juan Pablo Segura named telecoms giants Huawei Technologies, ZTE and Hytera, surveillance equipment makers Hikvision and Dahua, and drone heavyweight DJI in a post on social media on Saturday.
“Chinese law forces these suppliers to cooperate with Beijing’s intelligence services, creating risks of spying, hacking and network shutdowns,” Segura warned, describing their products as “high-risk technologies”.
“We urge US partners in the Americas to quickly switch to trusted suppliers to protect their people and their sovereignty,” Segura concluded in his post, which was shared by the US embassy in Panama minutes later.
Beijing’s diplomatic mission in Panama hit back on Sunday with a statement published on its website that rejected Washington’s accusation as lacking “the slightest factual basis”.
The statement also suggested that it was the United States that had been engaging in intelligence activities across the region, while acting like a thief shouting “stop thief” and beating the victims.
“The true one obsessed with global espionage, without even sparing its own allies, is the US,” the Chinese embassy argued. “For those who only think in terms of geopolitical calculations, even the siu mai might be bugged.”
The embassy also denounced the US for “blatant techno-bullying” by stretching the concept of national security to “coerce” regional countries into replacing Chinese products.
Latin America has emerged as an arena for the strategic competition between Washington and Beijing – laid bare in the continuing contest over the Panama Canal, a vital artery for global trade.
President Donald Trump’s administration has made the western hemisphere a foreign policy priority, designating it a “Homeland Security Zone” and pledging to deny rival powers control over strategically important assets near US shores.
Officials have described the approach as the “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, explicitly linking the competition with China to a policy from more than 200 years ago that aimed to drive European powers’ influence away from the Americas.
Washington’s change of focus has raised concerns in Beijing that China’s strategic space in the Americas could come under increasing pressure.
The latest verbal sparring over Chinese tech companies also comes merely weeks before an expected summit between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington next month.
It follows a White House report, published on August 13, that describes Latin American countries – including Panama, the Dominican Republic and Argentina – as part of what it calls “shadow transshipment network”.
The report portrayed this network as “a distributed system of finishing hubs, logistics platforms, processing corridors, free-zone operators, and re-export centres that allow Chinese goods to enter the US market under new national identities”.
Segura’s remarks were also shared over the weekend by the US embassy in the Dominican Republic and Peter Lamelas, Washington’s top envoy in Buenos Aires.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian dismissed Segura’s allegations as full of “fact-distorting fabrications”, saying on Monday that China “firmly rejects them”.
“We advise the US to stop its political manipulation [and] stop interfering with sovereign nations’ right to independently choose cooperation partners,” he said.
The Chinese embassy in Argentina earlier lashed out at Lamelas, issuing a statement more than a week ago after he accused Beijing of requiring companies to give it access to any data passing through their technology and artificial intelligence networks.
“The Chinese government never requests, nor will it ever request, companies to provide, collect, or store data for the Chinese government in violation of local laws,” the statement said. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
