Huawei opens cybersecurity center in Belgium amid US crackdown

Chinese tech giant Huawei has opened a ‘cybersecurity and transparency’ center in the Belgian capital of Brussels in a bid to convince Europeans that its products do not pose any security risk, despite what the US says.

On Tuesday, the Chinese company’s executives inaugurated the Huawei European Cybersecurity Center, which would allow European customers of Huawei to review the source code used in the firm’s products. The move comes as Huawei seeks to win over the Europeans, who are now facing intense pressure from the US as it urges them to bar the Chinese tech giant from developing their national telecommunications networks.

“Both trust and distrust should be based on facts, not feelings, not speculation, and not baseless rumor,” Ken Hu, a deputy chairman of Huawei, told the crowd that gathered for the opening event in Brussels. His words came as a rebuke at Washington which has so far presented no solid evidence to substantiate its claims that Huawei equipment could be used by Beijing to spy on other nations.

“[The] Chinese government has no intention and has never asked any company, any Chinese company” to “install either backdoor or [to] collect data [and send it] back to China,” said Huawei's Western Europe President Vincent Pang.

Despite US efforts, Europe has so far remained Huawei’s biggest market outside of China and the company hopes to play a major role in developing the continent’s 5G networks.

The Brussels facility is not the first such center opened by Huawei in Europe. Earlier, the Chinese giant established a similar center in Germany’s Bonn. It also funds a government-run British testing site, the Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre, which has existed since 2010. Huawei offered to establish a similar center in Poland following the arrest of a Chinese Huawei employee there on spying charges in early 2019.

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