Huawei to complete PNG internet project despite pushback

China’s Huawei will complete construction of an internet network in PNG despite opposition from the US.

US Vice President Mike Pence speaks during an informal press conference at APEC Haus in Port Moresby. Picture: AP

Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies will complete construction of an internet network in Papua New Guinea despite opposition from Australia, Japan and the US, after the South Pacific country dismissed concerns about cyberspying.

William Duma, the state investments minister for the small but resource-rich country, said PNG as a developing economy can’t walk away from a project that is more than half finished.

“Whatever views Australia or the US might have in relation to cybersecurity, as far as Huawei or China are concerned, those are for the big boys to worry about,” Mr. Duma said Tuesday. “We in PNG have no enemies. If there is a proposal on the table for us from any country which will help us in terms of our telecommunications, we would not be that stupid to reject it.”

A Huawei spokesman declined to comment. A State Department spokesman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

When completed, the almost 5500 kilometre network of submarine cables will link the capital of Port Moresby with several other coastal towns — as well as an island on which the US and Australia plan to expand a naval base — as strategic rivalries with China intensify in the western Pacific.

Huawei has effectively been locked out of major US telecommunications networks for years due to fears that its equipment could be used to spy on Americans, an assertion Huawei has long denied. Officials in Washington have lately stepped up a campaign to block Huawei from allied networks elsewhere in the world.

James Carouso, the acting US ambassador to Australia, said in September that the US, Australia and Japan were preparing a last-minute counteroffer to the $US200 million PNG project, due to concerns about China’s growing influence in the region.

In addition to cybersecurity worries, PNG was among the first in the Pacific to sign on to China’s Belt and Road initiative, which seeks to build a global network of ports, railways, roads and pipelines while expanding Beijing’s strategic reach.

Other more recent worries, security officials in Australia said, related to the risk of cyberattacks through an international undersea cable that Australia is building into the country after elbowing Huawei out of a deal which connects the Solomon Islands and PNG with a regional hub located in Sydney.

Those worries have escalated, two Australian intelligence officials said, since Vice President Mike Pence used a recent Pacific Rim economic summit in Port Moresby to say Washington would join with Canberra to expand a naval base on PNG’s Manus Island, on the southern approaches to the South China Sea. Australia’s defence minister has said ships might be stationed there permanently. The island is one of several to be linked to Huawei’s network, one of the officials said, which “raises the possibility of future vulnerabilities.”

PNG’s decision to push ahead with Huawei comes in opposition to efforts by Western allies to lock the company and other Chinese equipment providers out of next-generation cellphone and communications networks. In August, Australia’s government in August spearheaded the push by banning Huawei and ZTE Corp. from participating in the country’s next-generation 5G mobile network.

Mr Duma said no concrete alternative proposals were offered by Western allies. He said it is too late to voice concerns because the Huawei project was agreed upon two years ago and is more than 60 per cent completed, linking 14 provinces in the country of eight million people.

PNG, with its rugged and earthquake-prone landscape, lack of infrastructure and undeveloped communities, needed to improve the lives of its citizens through better communications networks, Mr. Duma said.

A spokeswoman for Australia’s foreign ministry said Canberra, as PNG’s former colonial ruler and largest donor, would “continue to work closely with the government of Papua New Guinea to progress a range of infrastructure priorities including the Coral Sea Cable System.”

Dow Jones