Australia is shocked – shocked – to discover that its main supplier of telecom equipment, Ericsson, depends on Chinese equipment from Panda Electronics, a Nanjing-based manufacturer that appears on the Pentagon’s latest list of Chinese companies linked to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
The supposedly incendiary revelation, by now widely reported in the Australian press, came as the US Defense Department named Panda as being “owned by, controlled by or affiliated with China’s government, military or defense industries.”
Panda Electronics, it turns, has a joint venture in China with Swedish giant Ericsson, a major supplier of equipment used by Australian telecom network providers Telstra and Optus. Those tie-ups means Panda, by at least one degree of separation, is and will be involved with Australia’s pending 5G rollout.