This article was originally published by Radio Free Asia and is reprinted with permission.
Vietnam is planning to lay two new undersea fiber optic cables as part of a telecoms infrastructure master plan hinging on emerging technologies, the government said.
The choice of suppliers is proving controversial, amid reports the U.S. is lobbying Vietnam against choosing Chinese companies.
Wednesday’s announcement on the plan for the new cables came as Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Hoa Binh signed a digital infrastructure development strategy that aims to roll out a much-delayed 5G mobile network by the end of next year, Reuters news agency reported.
The government unveiled its Information and Communication Infrastructure Master Plan 2021-2030 in January, focusing on integrating technologies such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing and the internet of things.
As part of the plan, Vietnam aims to add as many as 10 fiber optic cables by 2030.
That would be relatively modest compared with Southeast Asian neighbors. By 2023, Singapore aims to have 39 cables, Malaysia 25, the Philippines 24, and Thailand 13.
Vietnam currently has five underwater cables linking it to the global internet. The aging infrastructure has suffered repeated failures over the past decade, slowing internet speeds to a crawl, Vietnamese media reported.
Selecting a new supplier is proving a headache for a government keen to establish itself as a regional tech hub and win more business from the likes of Google and Meta.
U.S. officials have been lobbying their Vietnamese counterparts since January to persuade it not to sign contracts with Chinese suppliers such as HMN Technologies, Reuters reported in September, citing people involved in or briefed about the talks.
Washington also shared satellite images and other intelligence with Hanoi it said pointed to possible sabotage of Vietnam’s existing cables, the news agency said without naming any suspected culprit.
Vietnam faces three main risks if it chooses a Chinese cable company, according to Carl Thayer, emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales, Canberra.
“First, China will have the ability to monitor all traffic through this network and mine all data for Big Data analysis for purposes of developing machine learning and artificial intelligence. This has regional defense implications,” he said.
“Second, China will have the ability to disrupt traffic on the undersea cables at a time of crisis.
“Third, Vietnam could find itself dependent on Chinese technology given the present trend initiated by the United States of decoupling U.S. designed and manufactured technology and devices from Chinese systems.”
Buying American is no guarantee of data security though. In October 2023 the Washington Post cited documents obtained by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden as showing the agency secretly tapped the cables connecting Yahoo and Google’s global data centers, collecting internet communications from hundreds of millions of accounts around the world.
Vietnam and China raised relations to the highest level of Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in May 2008 but Vietnam has taken steps to avoid overreliance on Chinese companies amid a global post-COVID push to broaden supply chains.
When Vietnam raised the U.S. to the same partnership level as China on Sept. 10, 2023, the White House said the agreement signified “deepening cooperation on critical and emerging technology to increase the prosperity for our people—and for people across the Indo-Pacific region.”
Last month, Vietnam’s new General Secretary To Lam met U.S. tech giants, including Meta, Google and Apple in New York as he sought to turn talk of tech cooperation into concrete investment.
“U.S. companies have greater experience and higher-level technology than Chinese competitors,” according to Carl Thayer.
“U.S. and allied countries dominate global markets, including undersea cable systems, with 42 of the top fifty telecommunications and technology companies compared to China’s eight.”
