The US State Department has backed down on a controversial decision to install computers made by Chinese company Lenovo on its classified networks, officials said. But the department's purchase of about 16,000 personal computers (PCs) from Lenovo raises serious questions given accusations that China is aggressively spying on the United States, Republican lawmaker Frank Wolf said. Word of the State Department order for the desktop PCs was made public in March, 10 months after Lenovo completed its 1.75-billion-dollar acquisition of IBM's PC division. The department chose to install about 900 of the PCs on its secure network at home and at embassies around the world, according to documents released by Wolf.| *Sigh* |
While welcoming the department's reversal, he said the purchase of the 16,000 computers from the Chinese state-backed company was still troubling. Launching an impassioned attack on China's foreign policies and human-rights record, Wolf said that "of course you would take them (Lenovo) off the list" of companies approved to provide technology to the US government. "No American government agency should want to purchase from them," he said. Last year's acquisition vaulted Lenovo to third place among global PC makers, behind only Dell and Hewlett-Packard. The Chinese firm kept the right to use the IBM name on its PCs and the "ThinkPad" brand on laptop computers.
The takeover was cleared by the US government, despite objections from members of Congress who noted that Lenovo is controlled by Legend Holdings, which in turn is majority-owned by the state Chinese Academy of Sciences. Members of the US-China commission said even the use of Lenovo PCs on unclassified State Department networks was troubling. "It's fair to say that unclassified computer communications could be infiltrated and pose a threat," Democratic commissioner Michael Wessel said. The Lenovo row was highlighted on the same day that China denied as "groundless" allegations that it was trying to steal military and scientific intelligence from the United States. A Taiwanese man, Ko-Suen Moo, has pleaded guilty in the United States to spying for Beijing. He was accused by the US District Attorney's office in Miami of seeking illegally to export missiles and aircraft parts to China.