US cyber hypocrisy

Is technology giant Huawei a private and independent company, as its leaders contend, or a spying front for the Chinese government, as US officials suggest?

Despite prolonged administrative and Congressional investigations the US has not produced any evidence to substantiate its allegations.

Instead the US National Security Agency has been prying into the servers of Huawei's sealed headquarters, according to revelations by The New York Times and Der Spiegel, which the US has not denied.

Given the NSA's spying is all-pervasive - it was even hacking the cellphone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel - the snooping on a Chinese enterprise, one that is wholly private, should come as no surprise, says a Xinhua commentary.

What was surprising was the US actually had the audacity to flag Huawei as a security threat and lecture other countries - not least China - on cyber security and intellectual property rights, all the while penetrating private networks and accessing secret source codes. The irony here is that what the US has been doing - is still doing - is exactly what it has consistently accused China of doing via Huawei.

In fact, China is a major victim of cyberattacks with millions of computers under siege every year, according to the country's National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team Coordination Center.

China has demanded the US explain and stop the spying activities it has allegedly carried out on Huawei, as well as on China's Ministry of Commerce, national banks and top officials.

Despite being a leading global information and telecommunications technology solutions provider, Huawei has fallen victim to the one country that has not welcomed its otherwise internationally popular products and services.

Trumped-up national security concerns have on more than one occasion met Chinese companies looking to do business in the US, even privately owned ones like Huawei, but this is all too often a pretext for trade protectionism.

But demonization and a de facto ban on doing business in the US is one thing; state-sponsored cyberattacks and the use of a private company as a springboard to other "targets" that "communicate over Huawei-produced products," as The New York Times described it, has revealed a new level of insidiousness.