The proportion of China Unicom’s US business is not high and adjustment plans have already been made, said company Chairman Wang Xiaochu on Wednesday, in response to the “Clean Network” scheme from the US State Department.
The scheme, which aims to separate Chinese companies from US mobile carriers, app stores, apps, cloud services and cables, would require the cancellation of Chinese carriers’ US business licenses and ban them from connecting to the US telecommunications network.
Wang said the company had not received any details about the exit requirement. “Our business in the US is under the country’s regulation and we have established very good cooperation with our US [customers]. We have passed investigations by the US Federal Communications Commission and a special committee under the US Senate, but the US government announced all of China’s telecoms operators must exit [the US market],” Wang said at an interim earnings release conference on Wednesday.
He said that last year, the business volume of China Unicom in the US was about $110 million, only 0.2 percent of the total revenues of the Chinese carrier.
Wang noted that in the US, China Unicom mainly serves US enterprises doing business in China and Chinese enterprises doing business in the US, hence its assets in the US are not significant and its income scale is not high.
“We have pre-arranged plans. In addition to the US, our businesses in Latin America and some other regions would be shifted from the US to third countries, so we have an adjustment scheme which has already been prepared,” Wang said.
In the first half of the year amid the COVID-19 pandemic, China Unicom’s net profits grew 10.1 percent year-on-year to 7.57 billion yuan ($1.09 billion) and revenues were up 3.8 perce
File photo: People visit the China Unicom stand during the 2017 Mobile World Congress in Shanghai on June 29. Photo: IC
