China put pressure on Faroe Islands through trade deal to take 5G contract with Huawei

The Chinese ambassador to Denmark has pressured the government of the Faroe Islands to partner with Huawei to build a 5G network. This is the opinion of the Copenhagen-based newspaper Berlingske on the basis of an audio fragment.

Berlingske writes that Chinese Ambassador Feng Tie would have threatened to drop a free trade agreement with the archipelago if the Faroe Islands government did not opt ​​for an agreement with Huawei for the upcoming 5G network. According to the paper, the audio clip shows that the Chinese diplomat has clearly linked the Huawei contract with the wider trade interests of the archipelago, which would particularly affect the large salmon exports to China.

For the past seven days, the government of the Faroe Islands has been trying to keep the audio recording out of the public eye, by obtaining a court order, preventing local TV station Kringvarp Føroya from publishing about it. That broadcaster wanted to publish about it last week, reports Berlingske.

The source of the information is said to be two meetings on 11 November between Ambassador Feng Tie and the Faroese Foreign Minister and the Minister of Finance. The message was that if Faroese telecom operator Føroya Tele allowed Huawei to build the Faroese 5G network, all doors would be open for a trade deal between China and the archipelago. The ambassador is also said to have said that a trade deal would not be possible if Huawei did not get a contract for the 5G network. The recording would also show that the Danish Ministry of Defense has advised against choosing Huawei.

The recording does not contain any direct statements from the ambassador or the ministers; they do not appear in the sound fragment. The audio clip contains about a minute’s conversation between Faroese trade minister Helgi Abrahamsen and the chief executive of his department. On that day of the shooting, November 15, Abrahamsen was to be interviewed by Kringvarp Føroya about Huawei. Shortly before the interview was scheduled to take place at the ministry, the head of the department would have called the minister in, after which the discussion turned to the threats from the Chinese ambassador. The head of department was not present at the conversations in question, but he knew what had been said. This private conversation was inadvertently recorded because the minister already had a microphone on his jacket, in preparation for the interview.

Huawei has said it had no knowledge of the meetings between the Chinese ambassador and government officials of the archipelago. According to the Global Times, China has now let them know that the claims about the threats are completely false. According to China, there is no free trade agreement with the archipelago. Huawei consistently denies that there are close ties between the company and the Chinese government.