China’s largest network equipment manufacturer has offered the Australian government far-reaching security concessions as it seeks to participate in a A$42bn ($44bn) broadband project.
Huawei, which was founded by a former People’s Liberation Army officer but denies any links to the Chinese military, said it would employ only Australian citizens with security clearance to work on Australia’s National Broadband Network, grant Canberra access to the company’s source code and let a third party conduct a security audit of its equipment. “We still hope we can persuade them to consider Huawei as a supplier,”, Huawei said yesterday, adding that it intended to bid for the project’s second main contract.
Alcatel-Lucent won the first big NBN contract in 2010 and the government was originally scheduled to pick a second main vendor by the end of last year, but that selection has been delayed. While China is a major buyer of Australia’s natural resource exports, Canberra has recently strengthened its longstanding military alliance with the US in response to concerns about the PLA’s expanding regional presence.