A crucial facet of China’s game plan to encircle and dominate India is related to how it has quietly over the years crept into the country’s telecom network and infrastructure backbone. A policy of cheap imports, unrestricted market access and vendor financing has led to a situation that Chinese firms Huawei and ZTE have come to dominate the Indian telecommunication services market.

It is not just network equipment but even handsets where Chinese firms like Xiaomi and Vivo among others have cornered a three-fourth market share. In the process, these firms have dislodged South Korean giant Samsung and even local companies like Micromax over the past five years.

Simultaneously, Chinese companies have pumped in money into pushing software applications like TikTok among dozens of others to also grab that chunk of the market.

This is not all. China’s giants - Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent (BAT) – have also invested large sums of money in several dozen Indian start-up firms offering multiple services like cabs, food delivery and the payments business, among others.

So, Chinese firms basically dominate the entire digital ecosystem in India to a very large extent. While English language consumers in India utilise the services of US companies like Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram among others, Chinese apps like TikTok have found huge acceptance across India’s geographical and language diversity.

Unlike their American counterparts, Chinese firms are accused of not following the rule of law prevalent in democracies. The Federal Investigation Bureau (FBI) has already charged Huawei with racketeering and the US is seeking the extradition of Huawei’s chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou from Canada.

FBI Director Christopher Wray has said that Huawei, which is China’s largest private sector company and the world’s biggest telecom equipment maker, has been charged with racketeering conspiracy and has repeatedly stolen intellectual property, obstructed justice, and lied to the U.S. government and commercial partners, including banks. “The allegations are clear. Huawei is a serial intellectual thief, disregarding both the rule of law and the rights of its victims”, he said.

The FBI boss warned that “if Chinese companies like Huawei are given unfettered access to our telecommunications infrastructure they could collect any of your information that traverses their devices or networks. Worse still, they would have no choice but to hand it over to the Chinese government if asked”.

It is interesting to note that the FBI is actively probing over 2000 counterintelligence cases that are related to China. Wray further warns that “the Chinese government is engaged in a broad, diverse campaign of theft and malign influence, and it can execute that campaign with authoritarian efficiency. They are calculating, persistent, patient, and they are not subject to the righteous constraints of an open democratic society with a rule of law.”

It is interesting to note that the FBI is actively probing over 2000 counterintelligence cases that are related to China. Wray further warns that “the Chinese government is engaged in a broad, diverse campaign of theft and malign influence, and it can execute that campaign with authoritarian efficiency. They are calculating, persistent, patient, and they are not subject to the righteous constraints of an open democratic society with a rule of law.”

The FBI head also adds that the “Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will continue to try to misappropriate our ideas, influence our policy makers, manipulate our public opinion and steal our data. They will use all tools and all sectors and that demands our own all tools and all sectors approach and response.”

The FBI is probing Chinese espionage activities all over the United States of America through all its 56 offices across the length and breadth of the country. In fact, the number of such cases has gone up 1300 per cent in the last one decade. There is very intense espionage activity by Chinese interests in US industry including aviation, healthcare (pharma, research institutions), agriculture and overall cyber espionage traced back to China. Very few US companies have been left untouched according to the FBI, which is also probing espionage activities in US universities and academia.

Even India has not been left untouched. A Chinese backed internet service provider company was accused of snooping in India as way back as 2000-01. Since then, Chinese telecom products have penetrated deep into our telecom backbone and nothing is safe. Indian intelligence agencies have been repeatedly warning about the dangers for years now, but very little has been done to prevent the, from gaining dominance. Only Reliance Jio has the credit of not having a single piece of Chinese equipment in its network.

Given this backdrop, what should India do? China is the second largest economy in the world and wants to topple the US and become the dominant global superpower. China does not follow established rules and conventions of politics, trade, and business. The concept of state owned and private sector, government and party, personal and public, privacy and human rights – all are very different in China from the rest of the world. Its overall ecosystem is geared up in a manner that it cannot peacefully co-exist with India.

The options are many but at the heart of the entire exercise should be the realisation in India that our number one adversary is China – a country that has repeatedly betrayed India and has behaved as an enemy through various means including by propping up the failed state of Pakistan.

India will necessarily have to build up its own industry and manufacturing, turn to deeper cooperation with the US, France, Germany, and Israel among other nations. We need to cut our dependence on imports from China and insist that Chinese companies set up manufacturing bases in India. We need to evolve a national digital infrastructure security doctrine that takes the Chinese threat seriously.

A multi-pronged approach is needed – which ensures that Indians do not lose their digital sovereignty and market to an adversary and unfriendly nation like China. Higher import duties, reduced market access, encouragement of “Make-in-India” and strong telecom and cyber security rules are the need of the hour. Otherwise, the Chinese companies can prove to be a modern-day East India Company.