US is investigating Chinese telecom firms, including Huawei and ZTE, over concerns they are bypassing US restrictions. Authorities suspect security risks and potential ties to Beijing.
The Federal Communications Commission is investigating several Chinese telecom companies, including Huawei and China Telecom, over concerns that some of them are ignoring restrictions on their operations in the US.
The regulator said it had opened a “sweeping investigation” into Chinese groups that also include ZTE, a big telecoms equipment provider, and Hikvision, the world’s largest maker of surveillance cameras. It is also targeting China Mobile International USA, and the US subsidiaries of China Telecom, and China Unicom.
FCC chair Brendan Carr said the agency believed some groups were ignoring previous US efforts to address security threats from China. The FCC has previously revoked some authorisations to operate in the US, and placed some companies on the “covered list” of groups from which the government cannot buy products because they are thought to pose a security threat.
“We have reason to believe that, despite those actions, some or all of these covered list entities are trying to make an end run around those FCC prohibitions by continuing to do business in America on a private or ‘unregulated’ basis,” Carr said. “We are not going to just look the other way.”
In recent years, US concerns about the potential for Chinese telecom groups, such as Huawei, to help Beijing engage in espionage have soared. China insists that Huawei and other companies are not engaging in spying.
“I’m pleased to see Chairman Carr and the Trump administration taking the fight to Chinese Communist controlled telecoms companies,” Tom Cotton, the Republican head of the Senate intelligence committee, wrote on X. “These firms are little more than fronts for the repressive and corrupt Chinese intelligence apparatus.”
The other targets are two-way radio maker Hytera Communications, Dahua Technology, which makes surveillance cameras, and Pacifica Networks Corp, a telecoms provider and its subsidiary ComNet.
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