Should we worry about Huawei?
The Briefing Room
BBC
4.8 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 21 February 2019
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The boss of Chinese telecoms giant, Huawei, says his company would never spy on behalf of the Chinese state. But some experts think it would be a mistake for Britain to involve the company in the development of the 5G network. What's the relationship between Huawei and the government in Beijing, is the company a reliable partner and what should Britain do?
David Aaronovitch is joined by:
Dr Linda Yueh, Economist at the University of Oxford and author of 'The Great Economists'. Wanyuan Song, BBC Journalist Jan-Peter Kleinhans, Project Director IoT-Security at Stiftung Neue Verantwortung Professor Steve Tsang, Director of the China Institute, the School of Oriental and African Studies Charlie Parton, Senior Associate Fellow, Royal United Services Institute Emily Taylor, Editor, Chatham House's Journal of Cyber Policy Dr Tim Stevens, Lecturer in Global Security, King's College London
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.2 | Welcome to the briefing room with me, David Oronovich. |
| 0:08.3 | The briefing room is the place where the top experts take 28 minutes to fill you and me in on one of the big questions of the moment. |
| 0:16.2 | You can subscribe to the podcast via BBC Sounds. |
| 0:20.0 | It'll be really helpful if you tell us what you think by writing |
| 0:22.6 | a review or rating us on your podcast provider. How can we improve otherwise? Our question today, |
| 0:29.7 | should we be worried about the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei? And if you enjoy this |
| 0:35.6 | podcast, you might enjoy other editions of the briefing room, |
| 0:38.6 | which are all available on BBC Sounds. We did quite a good one recently on the Chinese |
| 0:43.2 | Belt and Road Initiative. This week, the boss of Huawei, the Chinese telecoms giant, said his company would never undertake |
| 0:59.2 | any spying activities on behalf of the Chinese state. But a security policy think tank warned |
| 1:05.8 | that allowing Huawei to participate in Britain's 5G network would be naive and irresponsible. |
| 1:12.9 | Last autumn, the United States sent a delegation to Europe to make much the same point. |
| 1:17.9 | So this week we're asking, how worried should we be about Huawei? |
| 1:22.5 | Step inside the briefing room to find out. |
| 1:30.5 | Huawei... briefing room to find out. Huawei, which means splendid act or China is able in Mandarin, isn't quite a household name |
| 1:37.2 | here in the UK, at least not yet. So we've asked the economist Dr. Linda Yu and Juan Song, |
| 1:44.1 | a BBC journalist from China, |
| 1:46.0 | to give us a beginner's guide to the company and how it got to be so big, so fast. |
| 1:56.0 | Huawei was founded by Ren Zhen Zhen Fei in 1987. |
| 2:05.9 | Renzen Fei wasei in 1987. Renzen-Fei was an entrepreneur with a small amount of money as the story goes. He set up Huawei in Shenzhen, which is just across the border |
| 2:11.5 | from Hong Kong. So early on, Huawei was selling imported telecoms equipment that it was buying from Hong Kong, |
... |
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