Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council

There are new allegations regarding the Chinese telecommunication company Huawei, with Reuters reporting that an Iranian partner of Huawei, Soda Gostar Persian Vista, last year tried to sell embargoed American antenna equipment to an Iranian firm.

This latest report of breaching US sanctions, may further undermine Huawei's concerted efforts to improve its image in Australia, following an Australian government decision in March this year to block Huawei from bidding on its National Broadband Network (NBN) due to national security risks.

In March this year the Australian government decided to block Chinese telecommunications company Huawei from bidding on the National Broadband Network (NBN) due to security risks.  Recently Canada stated its intention to exclude Huawei from helping it build a secure Canadian government communications network, due to security risks. Now a report by the US Congress on Huawei released on October 8 appears to support Australia and Canada's security concerns.

In a quick followup to Sharyn Mittelman's recent blog on the growing numbers of international students who are coming to study in Israel and learn how Israelis innovate, the China Daily is the latest newspaper to run a story about this phenomenon, highlighting that China's growing ties with Israel are becoming more public within China and that more Chinese are starting to sit up and take notice of the benefits of the relationship.

Recently the Australian media has been focused on news that the Australian government blocked the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei from participating in the national broadband network (NBN).

While most commentators are discussing the cyber security concerns, few are raising Huawei's questionable activities in Iran - with reports that Huawei empowered the Iranian regime to track dissidents during the 2009 demonstrations.

Burgeoning relations between Israel and China has been the focus of considerable attention in recent months, including from us here at AIJAC (see here and here)

Now Israeli journalist Oren Kessler has written a new piece which is a must read for anyone interested in this subject - it's entitled "Shalom, Beijing" and appears in the American publication Foreign Policy this week.

Israel's cutting edge advances in water and agriculture are helping the country make commercial and diplomatic inroads into parts of Asia that have previously been difficult to reach.

Over the past 10 to 15 years, China has become a rising power in the Middle East, rivalling the United States and Russia for strategic influence.

Its presence in the region rests squarely on a strategic relationship with Iran, and friendly, interlocking relations with Arab oil states to ensure a constant flow of energy resources to fuel China's insatiable economy, and to contain separatist movements among its Muslim Uighur Turkic ethnic minority in Xinjiang province, northwestern China.

After weeks of controversy over a Palestinian statehood bid of little real consequence, some in the UN have been attempting to shift their focus onto one of the many situations in the world in which innocent people are being killed on a daily basis. To this end, the UN Security Council attempted to pass a motion to prevent Syria's ongoing crackdown on dissenting citizens. Initially, the European countries were attempting to sanction Syria through imposing an arms embargo. As Foreign Policy's UN correspondent Colum Lynch reports, even a watered-down version of this that merely condemned Syria and did not call for any tangible sanctions was vetoed by Russia and China...

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