THE Senate Committee on Public Services, chaired by Sen. Grace Poe, may only cause costly delay if it keeps looking into the national security issue and the integrity of the selection process of the country’s much-needed third telecom provider involving a Chinese firm.
After all, what is there to worry about when China is already involved in the political, social and economic life of the country, important issues that have strong implication on national security, long before Poe was elected to the Senate.
Besides, isn’t the deal transparent and the entry of Mislatel, a trade alliance of Filipino tycoon and China Telecom, to the Philippines’s wireless communications industry, in accordance with normal procedures?
Dennis Uy, a Davao-based billionaire and long-time supporter of President Rodrigo R. Duterte, formed a joint-venture agreement with state-controlled China Telecom to form Mislatel Group, making it the Philippines’s third telco carrier after two rival bids and other players were rejected.
At this time that the midterm election has already begun and Senator Poe is a reelectionist, people might suspect that the Senate probe is being just conducted “not in aid of legislation but in aid of reelection.”
The President last year invited China to be the Philippines’s third telecom provider to compete in the country’s problematic telecommunications industry that has long been controlled by Globe and PLDT-Smart.
On Tuesday Senator Poe’s committee conducted a hearing to address issues regarding the integrity of the deal and that it might threaten state secrets if the deal has no security safeguards.
Specifically, Poe raised alarm over reports that China Telecom “hijacked and rerouted 15 percent of the world’s Web traffic into its own servers for 18 minutes.” Where she got the report, she did not explain, but claimed: “It is not a secret that China Telecom is a government corporation of China — a country claiming control of the South China Sea.
In his best-selling book Sea Power, published by Penguin books last year, James Stavridis described the specifics on the involvement of China in the construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea as staggering. “Thus far—and construction continues—China has created nearly 3,000 acres of land out of the ocean. Just consider that the highly touted and massive US aircraft carrier [from which can be launched a wing of more than 70 jets and helicopters] are only about 7 acres of flattop,” said Stavridis.
“Are these artificial islands similar to hundreds of unsinkable aircraft carries in the South China Sea? Think that shifts the balance between the two competing militaries? You bet it does,” he said.
Stavridis said China’s artificial island buildup begun in earnest in the past several years, and China already has built dozens of islands, mostly in the eastern and southern portion of the South China Sea.
“Instead of stone, brick and wood, this new ‘great wall’ consists of artificial islands strung out across the South China Sea—a region Beijing claims by virtue of historical right. China’s claim is encompassed by its terms as ‘nine-dash line,’ a radical demarcation of maritime sovereignty that takes an enormous bite out of the legitimate territorial claims of Vietnam, the Philippines, and other countries ringing the South China Sea,” Stavridis said.
He explained that, “the crucial context of this behavior is that the South China Sea—Asia’s cauldron,’ as geostrategist Robert D. Kaplan calls it—is bubbling like the witches’ kettle in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.”
He clarified that the history of the waterways is not only about ships passing through it, and the small and great wars on the coasts; it is about the scattered island chains that provide a means for nations to claim chunks of the sea if they can only establish claim. “This is the story of the seemingly constant conflict over the Paracel and Spratly islands, for example, as well as over Mischief Reef.”
“What drives all this, of course, is the presence of hydrocarbons and fish in the South China Sea,” Stravridis said, adding that: “While most of the nations would be content with the rules and regulations generated by the United Nations Law of the Sea, which came largely into force in the 1980s, what is in dispute is access to the region’s fisheries near the seafood markets of Asia and the seabed hydrocarbons.”
“Some estimates put the total amount of oil and natural gas at levels similar to the Middle East, a mother lode of resources, especially for small players along the littoral. So it’s no surprise that there has been a constant game of occupying the island chain for nearly 50 years,” Stavridis said.
Senator Poe said: “In the past, it has been reported that the company (China Telecom) has been proven to have hijacked Internet traffic,” adding that: “Are we allowing a substantial control of a portion of our Internet traffic for the purpose of furthering their interest? In fact, do we even have the capability to reduce, control or mitigate these risks?”
“Can we trust them?”
Mislatel said that under the group’s rollout plan, data protection and national security are its “top priority.”
To reach the writer, e-mail cecilio.arillo@gmail.com.