New Delhi, Jul 4 (UNI) China's Communist Party and its military arm use data collected about Indians through mobile 5G networks as a weapon and these technologies are clearly a spying tool for India's northern neighbour, according to experts and thinkers on India's national security.

They also called for a long-term strategy to provide greater impetus to development of indigenous technologies and manufacturing capabilities in the telecom sphere, apart from an omnibus national security law to deal with non-military threats from the Asian dragon.

There also exists a need to curb China's economic expansionism, based on its reliance on manufacturing cheap goods coupled with Communist government's subsidy, which has almost de-industrialised the US and several European countries.

The experts and thinkers at the webinar on "Data as a weapon: Chinese invasion through Mobile Apps, 5G" were India's retired Telecom Secretary and former NASSCOM president R Chandrashekhar, data sovereignty activist and Secretary of Centre for Knowledge Sovereignty Vinit Goenka, and senior journalist and television news anchor Siddharth Zarabi. The webinar was hosted on Friday evening by New Delhi-headquartered think-tank Law and Society Alliance and defence and strategic affairs news magazine Defence.Capital.

"A long-term strategy aimed at providing greater impetus to development of indigenous manufacturing industries along with an omnibus national security law to deal with threats outside military issues are essential for taming the Chinese dragon that has built its global economic clout by amassing data from across various countries," the experts said.

The webinar happened just days after India banned 59 Chinese mobile Apps and has barred Chinese companies from participating in Indian infrastructure projects such as national highways, railways and other critical sectors, even as their armies are engaged in an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation in eastern Ladakh for the last two months.
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