For most people, all Chinese are the same person. If you put out from your house one uninvited Chinese guest, don’t be surprised if you don’t have time to look back, he will be on the threshold again … No, wait, this is another Chinese! But whether there is a difference, the same is an uninvited guest or a new one – they have one intention.
No sooner had the scandal involving Chinese Huawei died out, ten times the price of building fiber-optic communication lines from Irkeshtam to Osh in 2015, when in 2018 this company received a contract for the implementation of the Safe City project. According to the plan of the authorities, the network of cameras was supposed to record violations on the roads, install criminals, regulate the lighting and the work of public utilities. These and other long-awaited things promised Kyrgyz citizens Huawei, and people turned a blind eye to the fact that all data would be stored in China, and their own state would pay for them.
Suppose sovereignty is not a priority for Kyrgyzstan.
But even on such compromise terms, cooperation has failed. Huawei exited the project. And last fall, it was received by the Russian company Vega. In Bishkek, they began to build a “Safe City”, and the most common complaint from residents is now “painful” to break the rules on the roads.
It would seem that life began to improve, Kyrgyzstan joined the cohort of selected “digital states”. But Huawei decided to return … Or wait, it was no longer Huawei, but CEIEC (China National Electronics Import & Export Corporation). As she asserts herself about herself – one of the world leaders in the field of digitalization and the creation of Smart City systems. Ecuador, Laos, Venezuela, Brazil, Peru, Myanmar, Bolivia – all these countries have already united CEIEC into a global safety net with a control center in China.
While market participants were waiting for the announcement of the second stage of the competition for the expansion of the “Safe City” project, the government showed a focus invented under the motto – “To be independent is when nothing depends on you.” Prime Minister Mukhammetkaliy Abulgaziyev without a hitch, that is, without absolutely unnecessary contests and public procedures, signed a contract with CEIEC to create in Bishkek a parallel already existing system of smart cameras. In total, CEIEC will install 70 new road surveillance cameras in the near future, more than half of which have face recognition. We need to understand this step as the development of the multi-vector nature of Kyrgyzstan – the more cameras of different companies and states monitor the Kyrgyz people and charge them, the better … But to whom?
And after such decisions in the White House, they are surprised – how did it happen that citizens take to the streets and demand to stop the dominance of China. Guilty on both sides of the conflict are making ordinary people – Chinese traders or Kyrgyz workers. After all, they will be smashed and planted in concentration camps on both sides of the border, but what is their fault? They are victims of someone else’s greed, incompetence, lack of a political core.
Huawei was founded in 1987 by the former engineer of the People’s Liberation Army of China Zhen Zhenfei. It is not surprising that when the company became one of the largest global players in the network equipment production sector, rumors began to emerge about its ties with the Chinese military. It was alleged that it helps China in collecting information about foreign countries and companies. Back in 2008, information about Huawei’s relations with Chinese government and military authorities was announced in the US Congress, after which it was recommended that these firms be removed from any mergers and acquisitions in the United States. Similar opinions on the company’s products were given by the competent authorities in the UK, Australia and India.
After the arrest in Canada of the daughter of Zhengfei, the financial director of Huawei Meng Wanzhou, the attitude of a civilized society to the activities of the corporation became apparent. Violation of sanctions and industrial espionage – that’s what Huawei is afraid of even in the United States. What can we say about Kyrgyzstan, whose annual budget averages about $ 2 billion against Huawei’s annual profit of $ 100 billion. What are the technical capabilities of this state against such a monster, and even that is just one tentacle of the global network of Chinese influence. They are zero.
Customs in various countries regularly find in the simplest Chinese household appliances chips that connect to wi-fi and transmit information to China. Simple people, at first glance, nothing to worry about. But if you drown the world with such chips, then, according to the theory of probability, they will end up in the homes of officials, and all their secrets will instantly become the property of the Chinese. But instead of strengthening the regime of control on the border with China, we simply invite them to put their “Trojan horse” in the center of Bishkek. Let us then honestly tell them: “Come and rule us!”
This story began for a reason with the archetype of the Chinese as a people with one face – the Chinese state is the perfect structure – the neural network. What is known to one part of it is known to all. Put your teapot in the kitchen, and your kitchen talk will no longer be a secret. What can we say about sending to China, through Chinese devices and Chinese programs, data on all movements in Kyrgyzstan, on all those facing the street. Knowledge is power, absolute knowledge is absolute power. After this, will any Kyrgyz official be able to say no to the Chinese? Only as long as he was not shown his photographs in an embrace with prostitutes or the schedule of movement of his children to school.
Toktogula Baudunov
Political and economic news with a Baltic accent 