Is the very Chinese ZTE also grabbing the Pnrr funds?
Italy has left the Silk Road, but Chinese tech giants like ZTE are coming back through the window. The speech by Marco Mayer, professor of Intelligence and National Security at Lumsa
After the failure to renew the agreement on the Silk Road, the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, confirmed her intention to visit President Xi Jiping with the aim of establishing new trade agreements with China and promoting Chinese investments in Italy. The diplomatic framework in which to insert these projects is the strategic partnership promoted and signed by Silvio Berlusconi in 2004 to which Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani referred last September during his visit to Beijing.
20 years have passed since 2004 and many hopes have been dashed due to political involution, the harsh repression in Hong Kong in 2020 and above all the increasingly close fraternal ties with Putin's Russia that have characterized Beijing's foreign policy in the last two years.
For these reasons, the new trade agreements mentioned by President Meloni should be encouraged on the one hand in the interests of our businesses, and on the other evaluated with great rigor from the point of view of national security, perhaps by creating a specific task force between the Farnesina and services as already happens informally in the armaments sector.
Excellent – for example – the export of quality wines and our entire supply chain of agricultural and food excellence
Equally positive is the promotion in China of Made in Italy in the fashion and luxury , pharmaceutical, environmental industry, construction, etc. sectors. And the same reasoning applies to the relaunch of Chinese tourism in Italy and Italian tourism in China
Very politically delicate and always unresolved problems arise – vice versa – in the field of imports and technological investments, in particular in the telecommunications sector, satellite networks and the digital universe. These same dangers are also inherent in certain inter-university cooperation and scientific collaboration projects between Italy and the Dragon.
The risk to be avoided at all costs is clear: the Silk Road that has just left the door must not return through the window, creating a "Digital Silk Road" in Italy – which in part already exists – if not in name, then in fact.
The truth is that by moving carefully and slowly, Chinese technology companies have managed to maintain an important role in our country and in the current political phase they are trying to increase it. I am referring to giants such as Alibaba, Zte, Huwaei, HikVision, Tencent, Baidu, DJI.
When we talk about drones, towers, routers, cables, terrestrial networks and submarine cables, video surveillance, voice and/or image recognition equipment – not to mention Artificial Intelligence and/or Cloud Computing – we automatically enter the world of Dual Use and consequently National Security comes into play, as repeatedly reiterated by Copasir.
There are in particular two facts on which the Government, Parliament and all political parties should make full clarity:
- despite the specific alarm launched at the time by Copasir, Chinese supplies in Italy have increased: 51% of 5G compared to 41% of 4G.
- the second aspect concerns the Pnrr. Are there any Chinese companies among the successful bidders (including the supply chain of subcontractors)? And if so which ones and why? I cite just one case that deserves an explanation. Is it true that ZTE srl (the largest state company in China in the telecommunications sector) received more than 32 million euros from the Recovery and Resilience Plan? This figure seems to emerge from the data published online on the first 100 successful tenderers of the Pnrr.
It would be a good idea to check how things are as soon as possible and, if necessary, remedy them.
NOT JUST ZTE: WHAT MUSK'S STARLINK IS UP TO
A further element to be explored is a possible government opening to Elon Musk's Starlink, which as is known has had a very particular relationship with the Dragon for years. Senator Alessio Butti, undersecretary of the Prime Minister with responsibility for Innovation, in the press conference on 12 December, on the occasion of the event organized by Corcom-Digital360 (in which Hu Kun, CEO, participated together with other managers of the main Telcos of Zte, in the photo) declared : “In 2035 we will have a new technology which is already entering the Italian market today which is satellite technology. There is an interest, for example, on the part of Elon Musk for application and implementation."
Beyond the possible and mysterious role of ZTE in the PNRR or the closeness of Elon Musk with President Xi Jinping, Italy must not forget that China is conducting a global disinformation campaign, using Artificial Intelligence, to attack and denigrate democracies and influence elections that will affect 76 nations around the world in 2024. The Dragon's interference was reconstructed in a report drawn up for the State Department last September. The Interior Ministry should reflect carefully on the conclusions of this report and the EU's warnings in view of the European elections on 9 June.
The "Chinese shadows", the possible arrival of Elon Musk, the hostile use of Artificial Intelligence by authoritarian regimes could create unprecedented problems in the electoral campaign for the European elections exactly as is happening in Taiwan in recent days, where the citizens will be called to the polls on January 13th.
WHAT THE MELONI GOVERNMENT SHOULD DO
From my point of view, Giorgia Meloni exaggerates when she talks about the "devastating" impact of Artificial Intelligence because I don't think it's right to only highlight the dangers. I think that decision makers should also communicate the relevant and numerous benefits of the new technology to the public. On the other hand, the Prime Minister's position is understandable because on 6 September she was the first-hand victim of the deep fakes carried out by the Russian group T499.
What I have said should suggest to Italian politicians and citizens to keep their eyes open and keep their guard up to prevent the Silk Road that has just left the door from coming back through the window. In any case, for those who want to know more about the risks of the Chinese presence in Italy, I refer you to reading the very useful report drawn up in 2020 by Giulio Terzi di Sant'Agata and Laura Hart for the Fare Futuro foundation, the well-known think tank founded by the minister Adolfo Urso.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/zte-pnrr/ on Tue, 09 Jan 2024 07:11:31 +0000.