Reuters reported on April 6 that China's largest telecommunications companies plan to build a huge undersea telecommunications cable network to challenge the US's dominance in operating global Internet infrastructure.
Reuters said that three companies: China Telecom, China Mobile Limited and China Unicom are in the planning stage for a $500 million undersea fiber optic project connecting Asia with the Middle East and Europe.
The large fiber optic network, called EMA ( Europe - Middle East - Asia), is said to be in competition with another cable system being built by the US company SubCom LLC, called SeaMeWe-6 (Southern - Middle East - Western Europe -6). SeaMeWe-6 is a 19,200 km long marine cable system connecting Singapore to France (Marseille), passing through Egypt via land cable.
Chinese company HMN Tech (formerly Huawei Marine Networks) was originally selected in 2020 to produce cables for SeaMeWe-6. However, a US pressure campaign that included millions of dollars in "training" overseas telecommunications companies in exchange for a vote transfer has ultimately pushed the contract to HMN's competitor in the US last year, despite a significantly higher cost.
The three Chinese telecommunications companies are said to have signed deals with telecommunications companies in France, Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, with further deals in other parts of Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Companies hope to put the EMA into operation by the end of 2025.
A source told Reuters that the project has clear advantages for China faster connectivity between China, Hong Kong (China) and the rest of the world gives Beijing an insurance policy if cut off from US-controlled networks. Washington has campaigned for years to pressure its allies to eliminate Chinese companies from future infrastructure projects.
However, Reuters sources said they are concerned that this plan predicts the growing division of global Internet infrastructure into what a researcher from the military industry consultancy RAND Corporation described as "US-led Internet and China-led Internet ecosystem".
The more the US and China separate in the information technology sector, the more difficult it is to perform basic functions and global trade, RANDs Timothy Heath told Reuters, warning that forcing third countries to choose between the two would make technologies such as GPS satellites and online banking much less reliable.
Antonia Hmaidi, an analyst at the Mercator Research Institute of China, agreed that the division of global Internet traffic between the two superpowers would significantly increase the likelihood of the superpowers manipulating and tracking data, leading to a general decline in service quality and quantity until the entire structure of the Internet suddenly does not work as expected.
