Despite growing scrutiny over Huawei's operation worldwide, a new report suggests that Chinese telecommunication firm has secured contracts to provide cloud infrastructure in emerging economies in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
This grip over the emerging markets could allow Beijing to harvest important and sensitive information for "coercive leverage," Voice of America (VOA) reported citing a research paper published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
The report from Washington thinks tank identified 70 deals in 41 countries between Huawei and foreign governments or state-owned enterprises for cloud infrastructure and e-government services, a bundling that can cut administrative costs.
The contracts were executed from 2006 until April 2021. This comes as several countries around the world are banning or restricting Huawei from their 5G networks.
According to the CSIS report, Huawei carves out a niche as a provider to governments and state-owned enterprises, "its activities could provide Chinese authorities with intelligence and even coercive leverage."
Huawei issued a statement in response to the report saying the company does not own or control any customer data. "Network security and user privacy are our top priorities," the statement added.
The US has been at the forefront of an effort to restrict the use of Huawei equipment in 5G mobile networks, citing serious security issues.
Huawei Technologies Co. and ZTE Corp were designated as national security threats by the US, saying they have close ties with the Chinese Communist Party and China's military apparatus.
Huawei is also facing resistance from other governments over the risk that its technology could be used for espionage.
( With inputs from ANI )
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