China is facing the wrath of the international community left, right and centre. And the whole world seems to be cancelling the Communist regime with no saving grace in sight, including the technology behemoth Huawei that Beijing had nurtured in hopes of dominating the world with the next generation technological developments. In the latest addition to the back to back setbacks that China is facing comes from the approval of the proposal to set up a new National Security Directive on telecommunication sector by the Cabinet Committee on Security, which will help in classifying telecom products and their sources under the ‘trusted’ and ‘non-trusted’ categories.
This has led to China crying hoarse as it sees another big market getting out of its hand at a time when it cannot afford any such eventuality because of the precarious economic situation domestically. It has become so frustrating that the Global Times, Communist Party’s mouthpiece, has started preaching India about the bad effects the decision will bring. Basically, China is crying over the preferential exclusion Indian government is practicing over Chinese companies while simultaneously not backing down in the LAC as well as imposing a trade blockade of itself on the Australians. Thus level of hypocrisy is only possible from a very few countries of which China is an undisputed leader.
The Telecom and Information Technology minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said, “The methodology to designate trusted products will be devised by the designated authority, who is the National Cyber Security Coordinator. Telecom service providers are required to connect new devices which are designated trusted products. The designated authority will make its decision based on approval of a committee headed by the deputy NSA (National Security Advisor),” he also added that the cabinet committee has given its approval for the National Security Directive on Telecommunication Sector. As per the approval, for maintaining the integrity of supply chain security, the government will declare a list of trusted sources/products for the benefit of telecom service providers. It is a very articulated and diplomatic language stating that the government will not let vendors of Chinese Origin, like ZTE and Huawei not enter the market.
Moreover, India and Japan, members of the Quad have joined hands again to effectively counter Chinese influence in the telecommunications and information sector. This joint step will effectively take the relations to another level of cooperation and will efficiently undercut the Chinese ambitions to dominate the 5G market.
The Chinese seem to have been badly hurt by the loss of another big market as India has pulled a strategic maneuver against Beijing. The already plummeting economic statistics in China barely kept together by fraudulent statistics generation has been hurt real bad, by combined actions of multiple countries in isolation but having a collective effect. In addition to India clearing the ground for eventual blacklisting of Huawei and ZTE, that is, China’s 5G vendors, Beijing is getting ready to brace for high economic impact.