Photo:VCG

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said on Wednesday local time that it plans to toughen oversight of submarine communications cables, proposing rules that will make it harder for Chinese companies ‌to provide equipment and fast-track approvals for trusted US tech firms, Reuters reported.

This is not the first time the FCC has targeted Chinese submarine cable companies. The FCC last year barred the use of equipment or services in undersea cable facilities from companies on its list of companies deemed to pose threats to US national security, and the new rules are expected to expand the ban to include the use of equipment from China or any other foreign adversary in submarine cable systems, according to the report.

This is a worrying trend. International undersea cables are the most important information carriers in international communications of our time and the underpinning infrastructure for the international digital economy and cross-border trade. They carry the vast majority of international data traffic and underpin cross-border trade, cloud computing, telemedicine, remote education, and virtually every digital service that modern economies depend on. 

Demand for bandwidth is surging, making submarine cable expansion more critical than ever. Their construction has never been a feat any single nation could accomplish alone. From fiber preforms to deep-sea laying technologies, and from cable manufacturing to long-term maintenance, the global submarine cable industry operates through deeply intertwined supply chains built on complementary strengths.

Yet in recent years, the US has used national security as a tool, arbitrarily branding purely commercial procurement and cross-border infrastructure cooperation as geopolitical risks, with the aim of blocking Chinese suppliers from the global submarine cable supply chain under the guise of safeguarding security. The practice casts a shadow over global digital infrastructure cooperation and will backfire on the US.

As China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian previously made clear, undersea cables are typical types of international infrastructure for civilian use, which bear on global cyber connectivity and the wellbeing of people around the world. China firmly opposes the US turning undersea cables into a political and security issue, which severely disrupts international market rules and threatens global digital connectivity and cybersecurity.

The US is in a critical window of large-scale digital infrastructure upgrades. The development of artificial intelligence, the rollout of 5G networks, the interconnection of cloud data centers, and the spread of telemedicine and online education have all created unprecedented demand for transoceanic communication bandwidth. Under these circumstances, when Washington creates barriers and uses administrative means to block foreign suppliers and favor local players, it directly shrinks the pool of available options for US submarine cable projects. That move inevitably leads to higher construction costs and potential project slowdowns, undermining the operational efficiency and growth potential of the US digital economy itself.

Also, the drag on submarine cable deployment will directly push up the operating costs of the US cloud computing and big data industries and restrict the expansion of their global infrastructure. As the world's largest digital economy and a major hub for global submarine cable networks, any uncertainty in US cable deployment may drag down the entire sector's upgrading. In this sense, the US moves to curb China's communications industry actually hinder the sound progress of the entire global communications sector.

Fundamentally, the value of submarine cables lies in interconnection, and their vitality depends on open collaboration. Politicizing such physical infrastructure runs completely counter to the "universal interconnection" logic of the digital era. China has always supported the international community in conducting undersea cable cooperation under the principles of fairness, justice, equality and inclusiveness. 

Meanwhile, countries across Asia, Africa and Latin America continue to advance submarine cable projects through international collaboration, demonstrating that global digital infrastructure development does not grind to a halt because of one nation's unilateral restrictions. If Washington attempts to build a digital iron curtain in the submarine cable sector, it won't halt the development pace of other countries - it will only trap itself in a predicament of soaring costs and limited industrial choices.