An original Apple computer, hand-built by company founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak 45 years ago, goes under the hammer in the United States on Tuesday. 

The functioning Apple-1, the great, great grandfather of today’s sleek chrome-and-glass Macbooks, is expected to fetch up to $600,000 at an auction in California. 

The so-called “Chaffey College” Apple-1, is one of only 200 made by Jobs and Wozniak at the very start of the company’s odyssey from garage start-up to megalith worth $2 trillion. 

What makes it even rarer is the fact it is encased in koa wood — a richly patinated wood native to Hawaii. Only a handful of the original 200 were made in this way. 

Apple-1s were mostly sold as component parts by Jobs and Wozniak. One computer shop that took delivery of around 50 units decided to encase some of them in wood, the auction house said 

“This is kind of the holy grail for vintage electronics and computer tech collectors,” Apple-1 expert Corey Cohen told the Los Angeles Times. “That really makes it exciting for a lot of people.” 

Auctioneers John Moran say the device, which comes with a 1986 Panasonic video monitor, has only ever had two owners. 

“It was originally purchased by an electronics professor at Chaffey College in Rancho Cucamonga, California, who then sold it to his student in 1977,” a listing on the auction house’s website says. 

The Los Angeles Times reported the student — who has not been named — paid just $650 for it at the time. 

That student now stands to make a pretty penny: A working Apple-1 that came to the market in 2014 was sold by Bonhams for more than $900,000. 

“A lot of people just want to know what kind of a person collects Apple-1 computers and it’s not just people in the tech industry,” Cohen said. 
…

Connecting everyone in the world to the web will not single-handedly bridge the digital divide, tech experts at the Web Summit said this week, citing other invisible barriers like high costs, low digital literacy and complicated user interfaces.

The so-called “digital divide” refers to the gap between those who have access to computers and the internet and those who don’t, with the latter group made up of nearly half the world’s population, according to the United Nations.

With many essential services like schooling and banking moving online, the coronavirus pandemic has brought new urgency to global efforts to get the unconnected online by bringing internet coverage to remote or deprived areas.

“(COVID-19) made us clearly understand that what used to be seen as a ‘nice-to-have’ technology is now a ‘must-have’,” said ‘Gbenga Sesan, executive director of Paradigm Initiative, a pan-African social enterprise working on digital inclusion.

Reaching everyone can be a daunting task.

Even identifying where exactly internet access is needed is no easy feat in parts of the globe, said Sophia Farrar, who leads a program that uses satellite imagery and other data to locate offline schools and get them connected.

“No one actually knows how many schools there are in the world,” Farrar, of the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF, told a panel at Europe’s biggest tech conference in Lisbon.

“What we aim to achieve through the mapping is even just setting what that baseline target is.”

Increased mobile penetration has accelerated the process.

The number of active mobile broadband subscriptions worldwide jumped more than 75% to nearly 6 billion, including people with multiple accounts, between 2015 and 2020, according to the International Telecommunication Union.

Only about 450 million people live in areas not covered by mobile broadband, according to telecoms lobby group GSMA.

But even where there is coverage, more than 3 billion are not online, largely because they lack tools, skills and money to make use of it, said Robert Opp, chief digital officer at the U.N. Development Program (UNDP).

“If you just connect somebody with infrastructure, it doesn’t mean that you’re going to have productive use of your internet connection,” told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview.

Cost is one major barrier, he noted.

There are only a few developing countries where internet prices are in line with the U.N.’s target of less than 2% of the national average monthly income, Opp said.

Even in rich nations like Britain or the United States poor people often can’t afford to buy data, an issue that has sparked calls for price caps and motivated some countries to declare the internet an essential public service during the pandemic.

Others might not have the skills to navigate often complex, jargon-filled websites and applications, Opp added.

The problem has come to the fore with COVID-19 vaccine rollouts, as the elderly and the frail in countries from Sweden to South Africa report having trouble booking their shots online.

Lack of digital literacy also leaves people exposed to risks such as misinformation and loss of privacy, said Opp.

While education is key to helping people protect themselves online, designing digital tools that are easier to understand and tailored for the communities they are meant to serve is also essential, said Howard Pyle, a digital designer turned social entrepreneur.

“Most websites and mobile apps are designed for digitally privileged users who already know how to use those tools – typically the most profitable users that companies will get most traction with,” Pyle said in an interview at the Web Summit.

“But this excludes people who have different needs or different abilities, for example, those who are older or lack experience with technology or lower income users who have limits in terms of the types of devices they have access to.”

Pyle’s social enterprise, ExperienceFutures, looks to help firms and governments make their web services more accessible by cutting jargon and complexity and involving the communities they are trying to serve at the design stage.

“At the moment, there is too much emphasis on trying to create one-size-fits-all tools and expect users to learn how to use them,” he said.

“We have to evolve to a place where the technology is flexible enough that individuals can understand it based on their abilities.”
…

Cybersecurity experts say Microsoft’s recent disclosure that alleged Russian hackers successfully attacked several IT service providers this year is a sign that many U.S. IT companies have underinvested in security measures needed to protect themselves and their customers from intrusions.

But a U.S.-based association of IT professionals says the industry’s efforts to combat foreign hacking attacks are hampered by their customers not practicing good cyber habits and by the federal government not doing enough to punish and deter the hackers.

In an October 24 blog post, Microsoft said a Russian nation-state hacking group that it calls Nobelium spent three months attacking companies that resell, customize and manage Microsoft cloud services and other digital technologies for public and private customers. Microsoft said it informed 609 of those companies, known as managed service providers, or MSPs, that they had been attacked 22,868 times by Nobelium from July 1 to October 19 this year.

‘Well-known techniques’

As of its October 24 blog post, Microsoft said it determined that “as many as 14” of the resellers and service providers had been compromised in the Nobelium attacks, which it said involved the use of “well-known techniques, like password spray and phishing, to steal legitimate credentials and gain privileged access.”

Nobelium is the same group that Microsoft said was responsible for last year’s cyberattack on U.S. software company SolarWinds. That attack involved inserting malicious code into SolarWinds’ IT performance monitoring system, Orion, and gave the hackers access to the networks of thousands of U.S. public and private organizations that use Orion to manage their IT resources.

The White House said in April that it believed the perpetrators of the SolarWinds hack were part of the Russian foreign intelligence service, or SVR.

In an October 29 statement published by Russian network RBC TV, Russia’s foreign ministry dismissed as “groundless” Microsoft’s accusation that SVR was behind the recent cyberattacks on IT companies. It also said Microsoft should have shared data on the attacks with the Russian government’s National Coordination Center for Computer Incidents to aid a “professional and effective dialogue to … identify those involved.”

VOA asked Microsoft whether the company had communicated with Moscow regarding the latest hacking incidents, but Microsoft declined to comment.

It also has not disclosed the names or locations of any of the targeted or compromised IT companies.

Charles Weaver, chief executive of the U.S.-based International Association of Cloud and Managed Service Providers, also known as MSPAlliance, told VOA that he had not heard of any of his organization’s members being affected by the latest Nobelium attacks.

MSPAlliance describes itself as the world’s largest industry group for people who manage hardware, software and cloud computing services for customers. It says it has more than 30,000 members worldwide, about two-thirds of them based in North America.

Insufficient attention

The apparently successful cyberattacks on Microsoft-linked IT companies are a sign that U.S. MSPs are not putting enough priority on cybersecurity, said Jake Williams, a chief technology officer at U.S. cybersecurity company BreachQuest and a former U.S. National Security Agency elite hacking team member.

“The profit margins for MSPs are often razor-thin, and in the majority of cases, they compete purely on cost,” Williams told VOA in an interview. “Any work they do that doesn’t directly translate to additional revenue is generally not happening.”

One cybersecurity practice that more MSPs should adopt is the sharing of information with U.S. authorities about hacking incidents, said James Curtis, a cybersecurity program director at Webster University in Missouri, in a conversation with VOA’s Russian Service.

Curtis, a retired U.S. Air Force cyber officer and a former IT industry executive, said MSPs do not like to admit they have been hacked.

“They don’t want to share that their users’ information has been stolen, because it may hurt their bottom line and may hurt their stock prices, and so they try to handle that internally,” he said.

“The MSP community is not perfect,” Weaver said. “Our members face a lot of cyberattacks and their job is to protect their customers against these things. For 21 years, MSPAlliance has strived to promote best practices for our global community, and we will continue to incrementally improve as fast and as often as we can.”

But Weaver said criticism of MSPs for not devoting enough attention to cybersecurity is misplaced.

Customer practices

“MSPs have been urging their customers to make easy and inexpensive fixes such as adopting multifactor authentication to back up their data to the cloud,” Weaver said. “But I personally have witnessed a lot of nonconformity amongst the customers. They have to be the ones that ultimately pay for and allow MSPs to deploy those fixes.”

The Biden administration also has used a variety of tools this year to try to protect U.S. targets from Russian and other foreign hackers. In May, President Joe Biden issued an executive order for U.S. authorities to tighten cybersecurity contractual requirements for IT companies that work with the federal government. The order said the companies should be required to share more information with federal agencies about cyber incidents impacting the IT services provided to those agencies.

In an earlier action in April, the Biden administration sanctioned six Russian technology companies for providing support to what it called malicious cyber  activities of Russia’s intelligence services.

Senior U.S. officials also have used diplomacy to try to expand international participation in a Counter-Ransomware Initiative (CRI). A U.S. National Security Council statement issued Wednesday said deputy national security adviser Anne Neuberger briefed representatives of 35 countries Tuesday on the outcome of last month’s first CRI meeting of experts from law enforcement, cybersecurity, financial regulators and foreign affairs ministries.

Chris Morgan, an intelligence analyst at Britain-based cybersecurity company Digital Shadows, told VOA the stronger cybersecurity practices mandated by the U.S. government for federal contractors will not necessarily be voluntarily adopted by IT companies working in the private sector. One such mandated practice is for federal contractors to adopt a “zero-trust” security model, in which users who log in to a network are not automatically trusted to do whatever they like within that network but must instead undergo continual authentication.

Larger government role

“Implementing zero-trust is a real change in the way that your network is managed and comes with significant costs. I think that’s the reason why a lot of companies are quite hesitant to do so,” Morgan said. “I think a lot of people would like the U.S. government to take a more active role in combating cybercrime [through promoting measures like zero-trust].”

Weaver, of MSPAlliance, said applying federal cybersecurity regulations to the entire private sector is not a good idea because different industries, such as banking, health care and energy, have different IT needs.

He also said the U.S. government could effectively curb ransomware attacks by doing more to hold the perpetrators accountable.

“Cyberattacks are a big business, yet the hackers are in countries beyond the reach of our law enforcement,” Weaver said. “So you have a business model that has no disincentive to stop. And all we have are the IT guardians against those attacks. I just don’t think that putting regulations on the guardians is going to solve this.”
…

China now depends almost entirely on its own online content providers, as the number of big foreign companies in the market, such as Yahoo and LinkedIn, keeps dwindling, giving the government a boost in controlling the internet, analysts say.

On Monday the Silicon Valley internet service provider Yahoo closed all of its services in China, following LinkedIn’s pullout announcement in October and earlier blockages of Google content.

In an e-mailed statement, Yahoo cited an “increasingly challenging business and legal environment in China.” Many Yahoo services were largely blocked in China, where the email and search engine provider has operated since 1999.

“My first reaction was, I didn’t know Yahoo was still alive in China,” said Danny Levinson, Beijing-based head of technology at the seed investment firm Matoka Capital.

Domestic services flourish

Chinese netizens seldom use Yahoo or other major Silicon Valley internet services, especially for media and communications, as domestic rivals have flourished over the past two decades. The government can handily monitor local providers for what it considers subversive content by calling in company managers for discipline.

Chinese use China-based WeChat for the bulk of their daily communication, watch TikTok videos instead of YouTube and check China’s Baidu.com rather than Wikipedia. Alibaba, headquartered in Hangzhou, takes care of e-commerce, although foreign rivals can still get into China given their trade’s lack of political sensitivity.

“They had all the ingredients in place,” said Kaiser Kuo, a U.S.-based podcaster who has worked in Chinese tech. “You had a really large, very fast-growing market. There was a need for people to come in with services that were catered to Chinese language users and Chinese tastes. On top of that, it was so cutthroat that foreign internet companies just couldn’t compete very well.”

The roughly 1 billion Chinese who use the internet have spawned an industry with an operating revenue of about $155 billion in the first 11 months of 2019, up 22.4% over the same months of 2018, according to Caixin Globa, a Chinese economic news-focused website.

Chinese mass media have said the country aims to become technologically self-sufficient by 2030 and get around U.S. government bans on doing business with some of its flagship companies.

Chinese netizens contacted this week say they’re unfazed by Yahoo’s withdrawal. Many Chinese have never visited Yahoo’s homepage, one veteran Beijing internet user said.

Laws discourage foreign providers

China has monitored the internet for two decades, by blocking websites and filtering social feeds, to intercept anti-government material. Its latest effort, the Data Security Law, restricts outflows of sensitive data from China and requires internet operators to give their internal data to law enforcement agencies.

Getting around that law can be costly and upset users outside China who oppose censorship, some analysts say.

“If there was a platform that was willing to go into China and completely cede control to the Chinese government and regulators to manage that, I think there would be an opportunity to grow, but so far most companies have chosen not to,” said Zennon Kapron, director of the finance industry research firm Kapronasia.

China previously blocked Facebook, Google and most other global social media sites and search engines as well as flagship Western news websites. Foreign media content providers “haven’t been really there for a long time in force,” said Ma Rui, founder of the San Francisco-based consultancy Tech Buzz China.

Users in China can still access foreign internet content by using a virtual private network, but authorities search out and block overseas-based VPNs that are not authorized for specific companies doing business in China. The “efficacy” of VPNs to stop filtering or blocking of content has declined over the years, Levinson said.

Emailing can still take care of Chinese people’s overseas business matters, Ma said, while foreign companies active in China normally use WeChat. China, however, does not allow end-to-end encrypted e-mail or chats.

“The email gets through, but based on the originating DNS [domain name system], it might get blocked, and it might get filtered. So it’s not a 100 percent panacea, but for normal business communication it’ll be fine,” Levinson said.

China’s constitution affords its citizens freedom of speech and press, but authorities target web content that the government believes will expose state secrets or might endanger the country, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, a research group.
…

An Earth-flight giant contributes to NASA’s upcoming moon missions. Plus, words from the next crew to visit the International Space Station and grim news from NASA about the future of food on Earth. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us the Week in Space.
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Social media behemoth Facebook is facing public and regulatory scrutiny after the disclosure of thousands of pages of internal documents by a whistleblower who used to work for the company.

What are the Facebook papers?

After compiling the documents while working as a Facebook product manager, Frances Haugen distributed them to a group of 17 U.S. news organizations that collaborated on a project to individually publish stories on their findings.

The stories, released on a coordinated day in late October, portray Facebook as pursuing audience growth and profits while ignoring how people were using the platform to spread hate and misinformation.

The documents showed Facebook particularly struggled with monitoring for hate speech, inflammatory rhetoric and misinformation by users posting in certain countries, including some that Facebook had determined were at the most risk for real-world consequences of such abuses.

The failures included both inadequate artificial intelligence systems and not enough human moderators who speak the many languages spoken by Facebook users.

Who else received them?

In addition to providing the documents to journalists, Haugen has also made them available to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Congress. Haugen has also appeared before the Senate Commerce Committee and testified before the British Parliament.

Haugen used her smartphone camera to capture the documents.

Why are they important?

The company has massive global reach. Facebook had 2.74 billion active users as of the end of September, according to company statistics. That is about 1 out of every 3 people on the planet, and the company also operates other popular services such as WhatsApp and Instagram.

How has Facebook responded?

Facebook spokesperson Mavis Jones said in a statement that the company is working to stop abuse on its platform in places where there is a higher risk of conflict, and that it has native speakers to review content in 70 languages.

Founder Mark Zuckerberg spoke during a quarterly earnings conference call Monday and said Facebook is facing “a coordinated effort to selectively use leaked documents to paint a false picture of our company.”

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, the Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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The U.S. government has added four foreign technology companies to its restricted companies list, saying they “developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments” and that the spyware was used “to maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers.”

The State Department accused the companies of “engaging in activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.” 

The companies are Israel’s NSO Group and Candiru, Russia’s Positive Technologies, and Singapore’s Computer Security Initiative Consultancy PTE. LTD. 

These companies will now face severe restrictions in exporting their products to the U.S., and it will make it difficult for U.S. cybersecurity firms to sell them information that could be useful in developing their products. 

“This effort is aimed at improving citizens’ digital security, combating cyber threats, and mitigating unlawful surveillance,” the State Department said. 

According to Reuters, both NSO Group and Candiru have been accused of selling their products to authoritarian regimes. NSO said it takes actions to prevent the abuse of its products. 

Positive Technologies has been in the crosshairs before, having been sanctioned by the Biden administration for allegedly providing assistance to Russian security forces. The company said it has done nothing wrong. 

None of the companies commented on their blacklisting. 

Some information in this report comes from Reuters. 

 
…

Facebook says it is shutting down its facial recognition system.

Citing “growing societal concerns” about the technology that can automatically identify people in photos and videos, the company says it will continue to work on the technology to try to address issues. 

“Regulators are still in the process of providing a clear set of rules governing its use,” Jerome Pesenti, vice president of artificial intelligence at Facebook, said in a blog post. “Amid this ongoing uncertainty, we believe that limiting the use of facial recognition to a narrow set of use cases is appropriate.” 

The move will delete the “facial recognition templates” of more than 1 billion people, Reuters reported. Facebook said that one-third of its daily active users opted into the technology. 

The deletions should be done by December, the company said.

The company also said that a tool that creates audible descriptions of photos for the visually impaired will function normally, but will no longer include the names of people in photos. 

Facebook, which rebranded itself as Meta last week, doesn’t appear to be shutting the door permanently on facial recognition. 

“Looking ahead, we still see facial recognition technology as a powerful tool, for example, for people needing to verify their identity or to prevent fraud and impersonation,” the company wrote, adding it will “continue working on these technologies and engaging outside experts.” 

Some information in this report came from Reuters.
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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), one of the world’s largest chipmakers, has announced plans to build a new plant in Japan, a move experts say may help revive Japan’s declining chipmaking sector and bolster its economic security.

The new plant is slated to begin operation in 2024, said CEO C.C. Wei,

who announced the expansion. The operation will expand TSMC’s worldwide production while fostering Taiwan’s economic ties to Japan, according to Yukan Fuji, a Japanese newspaper.

The move comes as Japanese manufacturers and others eye Beijing’s intentions toward Taiwan, where most TSMC plants are located. Any disruption in Taiwan affecting TSMC production could strain the global supply chain to the snapping point.

“We have received strong commitment to supporting this project from our customers and the Japanese government,” said Wei.

The Japanese government intends to subsidize about half of TSMC’s roughly $8.81 billion project, according to TechTaiwan. 

Kazuto Suzuki, a University of Tokyo professor who focuses on public policy, told VOA Mandarin that it is “very important” that “Sony and Toyota’s parts manufacturer Denso is also invested in the joint construction. … Furthermore, TSMC’s products are tailored to demand. With Sony’s vast customer base, TSMC can establish a model of close communication with customers and create products with higher customer satisfaction.” 

TSMC’s plans to build a new plant in Japan are part of its global expansion.  

The chipmaker is already building a $12 billion facility in the U.S. state of Arizona, where production is expected to begin in 2024. The plant is slated to produce 5-nanometer chips, the latest in semiconductor technology.

Decreasing reliance on China

Expanding into Japan will bolster that country’s chipmaking. “We expect our country’s semiconductor industry to become more indispensable and self-reliant, making a major contribution to our economic security,” Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters on October 14, after TSMC’s announcement.

“The increasingly tense relationship between Taiwan and China has increased geopolitical pressure on the supply chain, so the world is rebuilding the supply chain to break away from dependence on China,” Ruay-Shiung Chang, chancellor of Taipei University of Commerce, told VOA Mandarin. 

“From the perspective of risk management, Western countries and China will inevitably be polarized in the future, and many industry standards may become interchangeable,” he added.

Suzuki believes that TSMC’s plan will make the company an “economic and trade friendship ambassador” to Japan as the economic link between Tokyo and Beijing deteriorates. 

“Since the Trump administration, exports of semiconductors to China have been restricted. For example, Japan no longer cooperates with Huawei,” he said, referring to the Chinese tech multinational targeted by the U.S. for its close ties to Beijing. “So regardless of whether TSMC enters Japan or not, the semiconductor industry ties between Japan and China are a big problem, and there is currently no solution.” 

Impact on other chipmaking countries

Nikkei Asia reported that if TSMC accepted financing from the Japanese government, South Korea and other countries could file complaints with the World Trade Organization (WTO), citing the loss of semiconductor exports to subsidized plants in Japan. 

“How about South Korea’s subsidies for its own domestic [chipmakers]?” Chang said. The South Korean government said in May that it plans to offer tax incentives and state subsidies worth a combined $453 billion to chipmakers to meet the government’s goal of becoming a global leader in chip production, according to Yonhap, the South Korean news agency.

Chang pointed out that because TSMC is establishing a factory in Arizona, the U.S. would likely not support South Korea’s filing against Japan at the WTO.

However, a country seeking to file a complaint with the WTO often encounters difficulty proving the connection between its projected losses and the subsidies provided by the possible defendant countries, Chang added. Without that direct link, an action cannot proceed.

“The U.S. and EU (European Union) regarded China’s massive subsidies to support the semiconductor industry as a major issue, but they still failed to lodge a complaint with the WTO due to difficulties in producing evidence, ” said Chang.

“From a global perspective, TSMC’s establishment of a factory in Japan is of great help in increasing semiconductor supply capacity,” Suzuki said.  

Companies manufacturing chips solely for use in their own products is a model that market forces will eliminate, he added, and this will give TSMC, which makes chips usable by many manufacturers, a long-term advantage.

“However, the factory will not be fully operational until 2024, and there will be no immediate impact in the short term. The important thing is that Japan is not very dependent on Samsung’s [chips] because they are designed and manufactured for Samsung’s own products. Sony, Mitsubishi, Hitachi and other products rely on TSMC … more than Samsung, so the impact is very limited, ” Suzuki said.
…

Yahoo said it stopped providing services in mainland China because of what it described as a difficult operating environment.

The U.S. web services provider said in a statement on its website the move took effect on November 1 “in recognition of the increasingly challenging business and legal environment.”

November 1 is the date on which China’s Personal Information Protection Law took effect. The law limits what information companies can compile and standardizes how it must be archived. Other content restrictions on internet companies also were recently imposed.

China previously blocked Facebook, Google and most other global social media sites and search engines. Users in China can still access these services by using a virtual private network (VPN). 

In October, Microsoft stopped providing its Linkedin business and employment service in China, citing a “more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements in China.”

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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Green energy is the new focus of China’s one-of-a-kind Belt and Road Initiative or BRI, that aims to build a series of infrastructure projects from Asia to Europe.

The eco-friendlier version of BRI has caught the attention of some 70 other countries that are getting new infrastructure from the Asian economic powerhouse in exchange for expanding trade.

The reset on China’s eight-year-old, $1.2 trillion effort comes after leaving a nagging layer of smog in parts of Eurasia, where those projects operate.

Now the county that’s already mindful of pollution at home is preparing a new BRI that will focus on greener projects, instead of pollution-generating coal-fired plants. It would still further China’s goal of widening trade routes in Eurasia through the initiative’s new ports, railways and power plants.

The Second Belt and Road announced in China on October 18, coincides with the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP26, which runs from Sunday through November 12 in Glasgow, Scotland. China could use the forum to detail its plans.

“China’s policy shift towards a more green BRI reflects China’s own commitment to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2060 and its efforts to implement a green transition within China’s domestic economy,” said Rajiv Biswas, Asia-Pacific chief economist with the market research firm IHS Markit.

“Furthermore, China’s policy shift…also reflects the increasing policy priority being given towards renewable energy and sustainable development policies by most of China’s BRI partner countries,” he said.

The Belt and Road helps lift the economies of developing countries from Kazakhstan to more modern ones, such as Portugal. BRI also unnerves China’s superpower rival, the United States, which has no comparable program.

History of focusing on fossil fuel

China has a history of putting billions of dollars in fossil fuel projects in other countries since 2013, the American research group Council on Foreign Relations says in a March 2021 study.

From 2014 to 2017, it says, about 90% of energy-sector loans by major Chinese banks to BRI countries were for fossil fuel projects and China was “involved in” 240 coal plants in just 2016. In 2018, the study adds, 40% of energy lending went to coal projects. Those investments, the group says, “promise to make climate change mitigation far more difficult.”

South and Southeast Asia are the main destinations for coal-fired projects at 80% of the total Belt and Road portfolio, the Beijing-based research center Global Environmental Institute says.

Global shift toward green energy

Chinese President Xi Jinping said last year China would try to peak its carbon dioxide emissions before 2030. The Second Belt and Road calls for working with partner countries on “energy transition” toward more wind, solar and biomass, the National Energy Administration and Shandong provincial government said in an October 18 statement. 

Some countries are pushing China to offer greener projects due to environmental pressure at home, though some foreign leaders prefer the faster, cheaper, more polluting options to prove achievements while in office, said Jonathan Hillman, economics program senior fellow at the Center for International & Strategic Studies research organization.

“There was a period in the first phase of the Belt and Road where projects were being shoveled out the door and with not enough attention to the quality of those projects,” he said.

Poorer countries are pressured now to balance providing people basic needs against environmental issues, said Song Seng Wun, an economist in the private banking unit of Malaysian bank CIMB. The basics still “take priority,” he said, and newer coal-fired plants help.

“Although I would say environmental issues (are) important, I think a lot of people don’t realize how much more efficient these more modern coal plants are, so I think we must have a balance,” Song said.

In the past few years however, cancellation rates of coal-fired projects have exceeded new approvals, Hillman said. “The action honestly has come more from participating countries,” he said. “They’ve decided that’s not the direction they want to go.”

In February, Chinese officials told the Bangladesh Ministry of Finance they would no longer consider coal mining and coal-fired power stations. Greece, Kenya, Pakistan and Serbia have asked China to dial back on polluting projects, Hillman said.

“The next decade will show to what extent the Belt and Road will drive green infrastructure,” London-based policy institute Chatham House says in a September 2021 report.

Belt-and-Road renewable energy investments reached a new high last year of 57% of its total for energy projects in 2020, according to IHS data.

New pledges at COP26?

COP26 is expected to showcase the environmental achievements of participating countries as they try to meet U.N. Paris Climate Change commitments, Biswas said.

China’s statements ahead of the conference so far differ little from past statements. But China’s energy administration said on October 18 that its second Belt and Road “emphasizes the necessity of increased support for developing countries” in terms of money, technology and ability to carry out green energy projects.

Chinese companies on BRI projects may eventually be required to reduce environmental risks, Biswas said. Those companies would in turn follow principles released in 2018 to ensure that their projects generate less carbon. A year later, as international criticism grew, Chinese President Xi added a slate of Belt and Road mini-initiatives, including some that touched on green projects.

But the 2019 plans were non-binding and untransparent, Hillman said. At COP26, he said, “I would take any big announcements with more than a grain of salt.”
…

The U.S. Senate voted unanimously on Thursday to approve legislation to prevent companies that are deemed security threats, such as Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. or ZTE Corp., from receiving new equipment licenses from U.S. regulators. 

The Secure Equipment Act, the latest effort by the U.S. government to crack down on Chinese telecom and tech companies, was approved last week by the U.S. House in a 420-4 vote and now goes to President Joe Biden for his signature. 

“Chinese state-directed companies like Huawei and ZTE are known national security threats and have no place in our telecommunications network,” Republican Senator Marco Rubio said. The measure would prohibit the Federal Communications Commission from reviewing or issuing new equipment licenses to companies on its “Covered Equipment or Services List.” 

In March, the FCC designated five Chinese companies as posing a threat to national security under a 2019 law aimed at protecting U.S. communications networks. 

The affected companies included the previously designated Huawei and ZTE, as well as Hytera Communications Corp., Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co., and Zhejiang Dahua Technology Co. 

The FCC in June had voted unanimously to advance a plan to ban approvals for equipment in U.S. telecommunications networks from those Chinese companies even as lawmakers pursued legislation to mandate it. 

The FCC vote in June drew opposition from Beijing. 

“The United States, without any evidence, still abuses national security and state power to suppress Chinese companies,” Zhao Lijian, a spokesperson at China’s Foreign Ministry, said in June. 

Under proposed rules that won initial approval in June, the FCC could also revoke prior equipment authorizations issued to Chinese companies. 

A spokesperson for Huawei, which has repeatedly denied it is controlled by the Chinese government, declined to comment Thursday but in June called the proposed FCC revision “misguided and unnecessarily punitive.” 

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr said the commission has approved more than 3,000 applications from Huawei since 2018. Carr said Thursday the bill “will help to ensure that insecure gear from companies like Huawei and ZTE can no longer be inserted into America’s communications networks.” 

On Tuesday, the FCC voted to revoke the authorization for China Telecom’s U.S. subsidiary to operate in the United States, citing national security concerns. 

 
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