What Can They Be Thinking? Can They Be Thinking?

"[Ottawa should re-examine the bidding process awarding contracts on price alone, since it] creates vulnerabilities."
"The problem of competing with state-owned companies is very difficult."
"There are long-term implications for Western economies."
Guy Saint-Jacques, former Canadian ambassador to Beijing

"Nuctech provides the services, systems and software to support its equipment, which can be connected to databases containing the personal data of millions of Europeans managed by airports. 'It’s extremely worrisome if a foreign state-funded company gets more and more control over our strategic infrastructure', stated Axel Voss, German federal politician."                                                   Politico

"All electronic equipment is an end-point and potential access point into your network and data. For Global Affairs to proceed when China has been implicated in a systematic campaign of cyber-espionage against Canada, while former diplomats are being held hostage and tortured in Chinese prisons, is unintelligible."                                                                                                            Unnamed Canadian Security expert

A Nuctech Company at a trade show in Germany in 2017. Dado Galdieri/Bloomberg/File

"The security and safety of people in our embassies, consulates and high commissions around the globe is a top priority."
"We are currently looking into the offer with Nuctech Company to provide some security screening equipment in our missions abroad. This standing offer is not a contract, and Global Affairs has not purchased any equipment from Nuctech at this time. Any possible issue relative to security or safety will be properly reviewed and all appropriate actions taken to ensure the safety of our missions around the world."
Global Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne

China has a way of appropriating the hard work, investment and expertise achieved by others to benefit itself. Cyber espionage is a great help in this regard. As is infiltrating the scientific circles of other countries with their own scientists, who learn strategems and study and lift industrial, military, commercial and scientific blueprints and return home with them for development as made-in-China enterprises. Which is what happened with Canada's telecommunications giant, Nortel, out of which was born Huawei, destroying Nortel.

Beijing has been busy of late punishing Canada for its temerity in holding Huawei's CFO under a U.S. extradition warrant, kidnapping two Canadian businessmen and imprisoning them on espionage charges in exchange; the implication being that as soon as Meng Wanzhou is released from her bail conditions in Vancouver to return to Beijing, not extradited to stand trial in the U.S., Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor will be released.

Another two Canadians accused of drug smuggling have been given death sentences. In the interim, punishing trade sanctions against Canadian exports and punitive tariffs have been imposed to make abundantly clear the extent of China's displeasure with Canada. A state of affairs that will clamp tighter should Canada get around to locking Huawei out of the country's 5G upgrade as Britain, Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. have done. Threats are loud and clear. As relations go from bad to worse between Canada and China investment by China in Canada has also plunged.

Despite all of this, the Liberal government of Canada hesitates to further anger the trade giant that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and senior Liberal figures have worked so hard to placate in their eagerness to enter the Chinese market for fun and profit, under guise of still supporting human rights, while overlooking Beijing's gross human rights violations. Even while threatening dire consequences should Canada snub Huawei's involvement in its 5G upgrade, Canada has awarded a highly intelligence-and-security-sensitive contract to yet another Chinese firm.

State-owned Nuctech Company, funded by the son of the former General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Hu Jintao, has a contract to supply security equipment for 170 Canadian embassies, consulates and high commissions around the world. Conveyor-model X-ray machines will now be supplied by Beijing-based Nuctech, known as the "Huawei of airport security".

Airports and customs offices in 150 countries have been supplied with X-ray machines, scanners and explosive detection systems by this state-owned company. Its airport body scanners featuring thermal imagining cameras to detect elevated body temperatures is the pride of their future business. Embassy security for Canada saw Global Affairs upgrade for the future, inviting tenders for walk-through metal detectors, X-ray machines and bullet resistant windows and doors.

The tender document made it clear that the winning contract would go to the lowest-cost bidder. That contract won by the Communist Party-owned supplier would see "significant pieces of Chinese technology sitting in every embassy", in the words of one security industry source, of the contract that includes delivery, installation, operator training and software. In fact, the contract for the metal detectors had been won by California-based Rapiscan Systems, then subsequently undercut by Nuctech for the X-ray contract.

According to critics of Beijing=owned enterprises, the Chinese government subsidizes its companies to enable them to bid at lower prices than its competitors in the West. And though the contract includes Chinese workers installing the machines in Canadian foreign missions, the reverse would never be countenanced, that Canadian workers be permitted to install security equipment in Chinese embassies

Global Minister François-Philippe Champagne. Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press/File

This is a company that has amassed an unfavourable reputation for controversial business practices undertaken in Africa, Asia and Europe. China sweeps through the world imposing its advanced technologies wherever its influence extends, being careful to ensure that no reciprocity in exchanges with Western sources is able to compromise its China-only policies in its long-range plan to gather unto itself the mantle of unchallenged world power.