EU says China’s Huawei, ZTE pose higher risk to bloc security

BRUSSELS, Belgium—Chinese telecoms giants Huawei and ZTE pose a risk to the EU’s security, the European Commission warned Thursday, as it announced it will no longer use services that rely on the companies.

“The commission considers that Huawei and ZTE represent in fact materially higher risks than other 5G suppliers,” the EU’s executive arm said in a statement.

It added the commission “will take relevant security measures so as not to procure new connectivity services that rely on equipment from those suppliers”. The EU’s internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton, called on the 27 member states and telecoms operators to exclude Huawei and ZTE equipment from their mobile networks.

“We cannot afford to maintain critical dependencies that could become a ‘weapon’ against our interests. That would be too critical a vulnerability and too serious a risk to our common security,” Breton said during a press conference in Brussels.

Some 24 EU member states have adopted the rules or are laying down the groundwork to give national authorities powers to issue restrictions, the commission said.

But Breton pointed out that only 10 members, without naming which countries, had used the rules to restrict or exclude high-risk vendors.

“This is too slow, and it poses a major security risk and exposes the union’s collective security, since it creates a major dependency for the EU and serious vulnerabilities,” he said.

The move comes three years after the commission introduced strict 5G rules but they did not include an outright ban on any supplier and did not name Huawei.

Thursday’s announcement, therefore, marks a departure for the bloc and represents the EU’s increasingly tougher line on China, while maintaining ties with Beijing.

The United States has put pressure on Europe to exclude the companies over national security concerns and last year issued a ban on the import or sale of communications equipment from Chinese companies including Huawei and ZTE.

Washington has previously expressed fears that Huawei equipment could be compromised by Chinese intelligence. AFP

Xi Jinping meets with ‘old friend’ Bill Gates in Beijing after $50-m pledge

BEIJING, China—President Xi

Jinping told his “old friend” Bill Gates on Friday that China had always placed its hopes in the American people, after the Microsoft cofounder’s foundation pledged $50 million to help Chinese efforts to battle disease.

Gates—one of the world’s richest men—is the latest in a string of Western business leaders to visit China since the country ended strict Covid controls that largely closed it off from the world for almost three years.

The visit is Gates’ first to China in four years and included a rare sitdown between the Chinese head of state and a foreign business leader.

“You are the first American friend I have met in Beijing this year,” Xi told Gates in Beijing, according to the state-run People’s Daily.

“We have always placed our hopes on the American people and hoped for continued friendship between the peoples of the two countries,” Xi added.

Gates, in turn, said he was “very honored to have this chance to meet”, according to a recording shared by state broadcaster CCTV.

“We’ve always had great conversations and we’ll have a lot of important topics to discuss today,” he said.

“I was very disappointed I couldn’t come during these last four years, and so it’s very exciting to be back.”

A state media readout also quoted Gates as praising China’s efforts

Bloomberg News reported this month that authorities were planning a rollout of support measures, with the State Council said to target the ailing property sector.

A further loosening of monetary policy to boost lending could also be on the cards as well as more infrastructure spending.

The commerce ministry said Thursday that promotion of the car, home appliance and catering industries was also on the agenda, Bloomberg said.

“It seems China’s policymakers have had enough and are unwilling to sit idle and watch consumer sentiment crumble,” said SPI Asset Management’s Stephen Innes. With AFP

US seeks more resilient supply chains, says Tai

WASHINGTON, USA—Global supply chains need to be redesigned, with a greater focus on raising standards and building resilience for the sake of economic security, US Trade Representative Katherine Tai said Thursday.

“Fragile supply chains and an unsustainable version of globalization” call for reform, and such challenges will have a bearing on trade policy, Tai said in a speech at the National Press Club.

President Joe Biden’s administration has sought to move away from traditional trade deals.

By focusing on efficiency and low costs, Tai added, those deals allowed significant content to come from countries that were not parties to the agreements.

This benefited “free riders, who have not signed up to any of the other obligations in the agreement, such as labor and environmental standards,” Tai said.

She believes such practices bring advantages to countries that used “unfair competition to become production hubs.”

“That is how the supply chain rules in these (Free Trade Agreements) tend to reinforce existing supply chains that are fragile and make us vulnerable,” said Tai.

She also added that with a focus on efficiency and low cost, production moves outside America and becomes “increasingly consolidated in one economy,” like China, which “manipulates cost structures” and controls key industries.

While the expectation was for a gradual rise in labor standards and environmental protection as countries gained wealth from more trade flows, there were no guardrails to ensure this. AFP said, hailing China’s efforts in eradicating malaria and poverty reduction.

“China has made significant gains reducing poverty and improving health outcomes within China,” Gates said.

“I’m hopeful China can play an even bigger role in addressing the current challenges, particularly those facing African countries.”

Gates last visited China in 2019, where he met with first lady Peng Liyuan to discuss his foundation’s work in HIV/AIDS prevention.

Vietnam’s power crisis hits local firms, investors

HANOI, Vietnam—An intensely hot summer and unprecedented drought are straining energy supplies in northern Vietnam, prompting rolling blackouts and sudden power outages that have led to “uncountable” losses among local firms and foreign manufacturers.

Vietnam is a crucial part of the supply chain for some of the world’s most important companies, and many of them—including Samsung and Apple supplier Foxconn—have factories in the north, not far from the capital Hanoi.

it would give $50 million to support Chinese efforts to fight malaria and tuberculosis.

This combination of pictures created on June 15, 2023, shows US philanthropist Bill Gates in New York on Sept. 21, 2022, and China’s President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Oct. 23, 2022. AFP in “tackling the Covid-19 pandemic, setting a good example for the world.”

The meeting comes ahead of an expected visit to China by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday, during which Beijing said the two countries “will exchange views on China-US relations and major international and regional issues of common interest”.

“China will state its position and concerns on China-US relations and resolutely safeguard its interests,” foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a regular briefing on Friday.

The tete-a-tete also follows an announcement by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on Thursday that

The foundation announced it would renew a collaboration with the Global Health Drug Discovery Institute-- a Beijing-based group set up by Gates, the Beijing municipal government and Tsinghua University.

The $50 million will support “efforts to improve health outcomes worldwide through lifesaving therapies for infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria, which disproportionately affect the world’s poorest”, the Gates Foundation said in a statement.

On Thursday, Gates gave a speech at GHDDI, the Gates Foundation

During a visit to the country the previous year, he brandished a jar of human waste at a forum in Beijing in a bid to draw attention to the shortage of toilets in the developing world.

A string of American business leaders have visited China this year, talking up their optimism about its vast market and trade ties between the two economic powerhouses.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon visited China in recent weeks, as did Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who made his first trip there in more than three years.

Musk, who has extensive business interests in China, met senior officials in Beijing and visited Tesla’s Gigafactory on the outskirts of Shanghai for a late-night meeting with staff.

In March, Apple CEO Tim Cook visited Beijing, saying his company enjoyed a “symbiotic” relationship with China. AFP

Operations at a large number of factories have been badly impacted by the lengthy power outages, business leaders told AFP. Some were given very little notice or had no warning at all.

“We had a 26-hour power cut. It cost us tens of thousands of dollars that day. It’s not nice at all,” said Vu Chi Hieu, director of Vietnam’s KingBill XNK Joint Stock Company that produces aluminum parts in Bac Ninh province, which neighbors Hanoi.

Last week, several northern areas —many of them home to key industrial parks—were told to cut their energy use in half, forcing the Japanese, Korean and European chambers of commerce to petition the government to find a quick solution to the crisis.

Susumu Yoshida from Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry told AFP that direct damage from one single power outage affecting five manufacturers at an industrial park was over $190,000. AFP