Can Taipei resist Beijing’s attractively cheap, but highly-suspicious, technology?

The National Interest
Date: April 25, 2019
By: Elise Thomas
Taiwan is walking an increasingly fine line between its security and economic interests when it comes to major Chinese technology companies—and it’s about to get (even more) political.

Last Friday, the Taiwanese government announced an expanded crackdown on the use of Chinese technology. According to a spokesperson, the Taiwanese government is in the process of drawing up a blacklist of tech companies that pose a risk to national security. The ban will cover specific equipment such as servers, webcams, drones, cloud services, core network hardware, computer software and anti-virus software. Taiwanese government agencies, state-controlled companies and providers of critical infrastructure—including water, energy, telecommunications and financial services—will be prohibited from using equipment from companies on the list, which is expected to be released in a few months.

It is anticipated that major Chinese technology companies, such as Huawei, ZTE, Alibaba, Hikvision and Baidu, will be included in the list. According to Nikkei Asian Review, the government spokesperson said that ‘most’ Chinese (as well as Russian) companies are likely to be banned.

However, Taiwan’s high-tech manufacturing industry remains heavily reliant on Chinese demand—including from many of the very same companies which its government intends to ban.    [FULL  STORY]