George Soros has praised Donald Trump for sanctioning Chinese tech-giant Huawei, claiming they could use the company as a front to gain more authoritarian control over China’s citizens.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed he wrote that Trump’s hard-line approach is a major foreign policy benefit to the world and his “greatest” foreign policy achievement. He also urged the US Congress to stop Trump from using the sanctions as a bargaining chip in the larger ongoing trade dispute.
Trump recently made it illegal for American companies to supply any components to Huawei following a number of scandals, arrests, and fears that the company is using its technology to spy on citizens of foreign nations. US officials also fear that the company will become more dominant as it rolls out its 5G networks across the world.
Soros and Trump have historically been at odds with the former donating heavily towards the President’s opponents. Trump in return has accused Soros of plots against him and has tweeted against him many times.
At the Davos economic forum in January, Soros spoke of the “mortal danger” that China’s advancing technology posed to the West. He stated how they already used it to further repress Chinese citizens but would also use it to exert control over Western democracies.
He used his speech to urge the US to aggressively counter the threats posed and to crackdown on tech giants coming out of China such as Huawei and ZTE.
“Instead of letting ZTE and Huawei off lightly, [the US] needs to crack down on them,” Soros said. “If these companies came to dominate the 5G market, they would present an unacceptable security risk for the rest of the world.”
Soros wrote in his op-ed that he believes Trump wants to meet with President Xi Jinping prior to the 2020 elections in order to make a trade deal. He added that Trump “wants Huawei’s status on the table as one of the bargaining chips”.
Over the last year, Huawei has been embroiled in a number of high-profile scandals including the arrest of Directors in Poland on charges of espionage, the arrest of the CFO, and the company founder’s daughter Meng Wanzhou on charges of fraud. Huawei are also facing charges of intellectual property theft in the US. As a result, a growing number of countries have either banned Huawei or severely restricted their business within their jurisdiction.
In April, amidst the companies legal woes and accusations of espionage and spying, Huawei announced a new education program in Albania called “One Thousand Dreams”. The program will train 1000 IT talents, donate 1000 books to university libraries and give 1000 toys to children’s hospitals over the next five years.
This combined with the ‘One Belt, One Road’ project which includes countless Chinese-led investments in infrastructure projects across the world and includes airports, ports, roads, and energy projects. The project has been described as “debt-trap diplomacy” and there has been evidence of the Chinese then interfering in the domestic policy of the countries that they work with.
