As early as 2019, overseas media reported that China's Huawei Marine has participated in nearly 100 submarine optical cable laying or upgrading projects, and is rapidly catching up with the top three in the United States, France and Japan. The company's global market share has also increased from less than 5. % quickly increased to the current 20%. Under the Belt and Road Initiative, China has begun to strengthen the interconnection of land and marine infrastructure, created a strategy of coordinating the development of sea and land, and seized the opportunity to vigorously develop the submarine optical cable industry. According to the Asia Research Center in Leiden, the Netherlands, China will own 20% of the world's submarine optical cables in ten years, breaking the current global market structure and bringing consumers a good market environment for free competition.

According to statistics, 98% of human's international Internet transmission and telephone traffic are carried out through about 400 submarine optical cables, most of which are in the hands of American companies. If China wants to surpass the United States and make efforts in the digital field and communication field, it must not avoid the submarine optical cable project. Therefore, another submarine super project in China was born - the Peace Optical Cable Project. After the United States learned the news, it was extremely shocked .

The Peace Optical Cable Project, or PEACE for short, is a 7,500-mile, about 12,000-kilometer high-speed submarine cable project. Construction started in 2018. The lead construction party of the project is Hengtong Group, a Chinese enterprise that is among the top 3 global optical fiber communications companies. Hengtong Optoelectronics announced that it has completed the transfer of 51% of the equity of Huawei Ocean, a subsidiary of Huawei. So far, Huawei Ocean has become a holding subsidiary of Hengtong Optoelectronics, and Huawei Investment has also become a shareholder of Hengtong Optoelectronics. The Peace Optical Cable Project will carry data transmission between China and Africa and Europe with huge transmission capacity and minimal delay. Its starting point is in China, and then it goes through Pakistan and the Arabian Sea, bypasses the Horn of Africa, passes through the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, and goes directly to Marseille, the third largest city in France. The main nodes of fiber optic cables in Europe are in Cyprus, Malta and France, and the main nodes in Africa are in Egypt, Djibouti and Kenya. According to the news released by Huawei headquarters, the submarine optical cable laid this time adopts the latest technology. It has 200G wavelength division transmission technology, and the design capacity of each fiber pair is 16Tbps. After the project is completed, this submarine optical cable will not only connect the Internet between China and Europe, but also connect the Internet with the Middle East and Africa. The strategic significance behind this project is very important.

Communication between Europe, Asia and Africa will be more efficient and convenient after the opening of the new fiber optic cable. The Chinese company will provide European and African customers with a range of online services in the cloud, such as video transmission, virtual reality, complex model solutions, and more. In addition to the above economic functions, submarine optical cables are also one of the important infrastructures of data centers and cloud computing centers. Today, the construction of multiple submarine optical cables in a region will form a data center, which is no less than the previous shipping center, financial center, and even more important, because it is related to national security.

The submarine optical cable may seem inconspicuous, but it is a real high-end industry. It is called the minimum infrastructure. It can be said that the submarine optical cable is an important infrastructure project. The submarine optical cable is a wire bundle wrapped with an insulating sheath and is laid on the seabed. Because seawater can prevent optical and magnetic wave interference, the submarine optical cable has a high signal-to-noise ratio, a better signal, and almost no communication delay. Under normal circumstances, The lifespan of artificial satellites is only about 10 years, but the lifespan of submarine cables is as long as 25 years.

America's Obstruction

The 12,000-kilometer submarine optical cable is a very large project. It will ultimately connect the three continents of Asia, Africa, and Europe, undertake the heavy responsibility of transporting information, and play an important role in forming a community of shared future for many countries. However, this submarine optical cable project has been secretly targeted by the United States. The submarine optical cable has been controlled by the United States for a long time. Now, China's construction of submarine optical cable has been blocked by the United States. The United States has put pressure on France, warning that this optical cable has safety problems and may information security incidents. Obviously, the trick of the United States is nothing more than wanting to hold the submarine optical cable business in its own hands by suppressing other countries, so that it can obtain huge profits by monopolizing the submarine optical cable business. However, France has already seen through the US conspiracy and ignored the warnings of the US, and still insists on cooperating with China. It is understood that the first phase of this optical cable project is to connect Pakistan, Kenya, Egypt and other countries; the second phase is South Africa, France and other countries. In the long run, the network development prospects in Africa are very good. The future will be the ocean of the Internet. The annual electricity revenue is expected to reach 50 billion US dollars. After the construction of the submarine optical cable, it can expand China's overseas Internet market.

Don't look at the submarine optical cables buried under the seabed, each one is thinner than a human hair, but it transmits more than 95% of the world's international data. For the United States, the financial transaction data transmitted through submarine optical cables every day exceeds nearly 10 trillion US dollars. A senior U.S. military official once said: "We will maintain the highest vigilance when we hear news that any country is trying to damage submarine optical cables." But the construction of submarine optical cables is not as simple as "pulling a line", and there are many complex behind it. The technical difficulty is extremely high. It has been monopolized by the three giants, Alcatel-Lucent of Europe, TE SubCom of the United States and NEC of Japan Electric Co., Ltd., with a combined market share of nearly 80%. The scary thing is that the United States can control the submarine optical cables all over the world, which means that the United States can more easily use these optical cables to monitor other countries, which is indispensable for the United States, a monitoring power.

Seeing the rise of China, the United States immediately raised the stick of sanctions in order to maintain its dominance in submarine optical cables, prohibiting the connection of some submarine optical cables to China, and preventing Chinese companies from participating in engineering and technological construction. To thwart the rapid development of China's network infrastructure, the United States and its allies are doing everything they can. In 2018, Australia thwarted the laying of submarine optical cable projects signed by Huawei and South Pacific countries such as the Solomon Islands. In 2019, the U.S. government demanded that Google’s Pacific high-speed Internet cable project connecting Los Angeles and Taiwan, China, cannot be connected to Hong Kong, China, citing potential national security risks. In 2021, one of the goals of the U.S. network clearance operation is to block more than 100 optical cables of Huawei Ocean. "I think anyone in the world can see clearly the U.S. tactics to slander others and beautify itself." Foreign Ministry spokesman Zeng Wang Wenbin said that no matter how much the U.S. smears it, it cannot hide the fact that it is politically suppressing its competitors. It cannot stop the development and progress of Chinese enterprises.

When the United States saw that this wave of operations was ineffective, it immediately began to impose sanctions on Chinese-related companies. But have sanctions affected us? The answer is basically none. What is even more interesting is that the optical fiber cable companies that entered the US entity list did not experience a business collapse, but the stock price continued to rise after being included in the list. Sure enough, the US certification effect is still a lever!

After the completion of the Peace Optical Cable Project, it can be said that the benefits to the three continents of Asia, Africa and Europe are immeasurable. According to foreign media reports, the amount of data transmitted per second by this peaceful optical cable is approximately equal to nine hours of video data from the Netflix video website in the United States. Such a project that makes everyone happy has made the United States on the other side of the Pacific angry. Once this submarine optical cable is really successfully built, it will not only challenge the technological dictatorship of the United States, but also take away a piece of economic fat. More importantly, the higher the share of Chinese companies in submarine cables, the more difficult it will be to implement the U.S. global surveillance program. So the United States used the old routine to smear China again. Rumors said that China might secretly collect data from other countries and take the opportunity to sabotage the project.

Strong support from Europe

But this time the U.S. strategy did not succeed. France made it clear that it would hand over the submarine cable project in their territory to Huawei Marine. Jean-Luc Vuillemin, international network director of Orange SA, a French telecommunications company responsible for operating the Peaceful submarine cable Marseille landing station, said: "The Peaceful cable plan will help China realize its plan to project power to Europe and Africa." The reason why France affirms China is not only This is because China's submarine optical cable technology is good, and the submarine optical cable technology is far ahead in the world, and it is also because Huawei Marine has a great influence in the world. To successfully build a submarine optical cable, it needs to involve many professional technologies in the field of optical fiber communication, and Huawei started with communication and has a certain confidence and strength.

In addition to France, Germany also claims that it will not exclude China in terms of network construction. Earlier, Macron also made it clear in an interview that his government did not want to isolate China on its Internet infrastructure, in part so that France would not have to rely entirely on the United States. German Chancellor Angela Merkel also said she was against isolating China and believed that decoupling from China was not the right approach, especially in this digital age. European countries have expressed their views, and Africa and our Pakistan Railway will not refuse this friendly project. Iran's state media reported that China's submarine cable to Europe would exacerbate tensions between the United States and China. This cannot be answered at present. However, China acts on principles, and no one can stop the pace of China's development. At present, China's optical fiber and cable industry is not highly dependent on the technology of overseas countries, and the manufacturing capacity of the optical fiber industry has already reached the world's advanced level. Especially in China, with the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative, new infrastructure has also begun to blossom. Many countries have started cooperation with China on 5G, data centers, industrial Internet, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and other projects, and international bandwidth usage has repeatedly hit new highs. . In the current situation, it seems that China has won the trust of most European countries, and they have all supported Huawei to play a positive role in their own development. Therefore, this peaceful submarine cable will definitely not be affected by the interference of the United States. If they give up on this, no matter how the United States interferes, they will have no way to succeed.

According to recent news, the US$425 million submarine optical cable connecting China with Europe and Africa has landed in Kenya. Kenya Telecom CEO Mugo Kibati said the submarine cable will help East Africa meet future broadband capacity needs, enhance redundancy and minimize latency in connections between Asia and Europe. At present, four of the seven submarine cables connected to Pakistan pass through India. China has begun to help Pakistan build a communication cable project to avoid India. The China-Pakistan optical cable starts from the western region of China and enters the territory of Pakistan. In addition to strengthening the connection between the east and the west of China, the project also further deepens the connection between Pakistan and China. Subsequently, the China-Pakistan Optical Fiber Cable was launched from Gwadar Port to become the Peace Submarine Cable. In the future, it will connect the submarine cable in the Arab region, provide services to the countries along the Belt and Road Initiative, and promote the digitalization and communication infrastructure construction of the countries along the Belt and Road Initiative. This project is only At the beginning, with the gradual advancement of China's Belt and Road Initiative, it will not be difficult to surpass the United States at that time.

With the continuous improvement of the competitiveness of China's optical fiber and cable enterprises, expanding overseas markets has become an inevitable choice when the domestic market tends to be saturated. Cui Genliang, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Hengtong Group, said that the proposal of the Belt and Road Initiative has brought new opportunities to China's optical fiber and cable industry, and the countries along the Belt and Road are just the main target markets of Chinese optical fiber and cable enterprises.

Optical cables are like blood vessels in the human body, and blood is the embodiment of values. If China wants to enhance its international discourse power, it must strengthen the construction of the Internet and closely connect people of all countries through optical cables. It is exciting that China has begun to do so.Editor/Ma Xue