China puts pressure on the Faroe Islands: Salmon export free trade will be stopped without Huawei contract

by
editorial staff

“We are being used as chess pieces in a strategic game”. Secret recording shows Chinese ambassador threatening to pull lucrative Faroese salmon access – worth USD 118 million in 2018 – to Chinese market.

The Danish major newspaper Berlingske Tidende is reporting on a startling case in which the Chinese ambassador to Denmark, Feng Tie, is said to have directly threatened the top echelons of the Faroese government to secure a strategically important contract for Chinese telecom giant Huawei.

If the company did not get the contract, the Chinese government would drop a free trade agreement with the Faroe Islands, the newspaper reported.

The reveal, based on a secret recording, is the first to show how Chinese authorities are linking access to the giant Chinese market with Huawei’s European contracts on 5G networks.

“The great powers have an incredible interest in the Faroe Islands. We are the gateway to the Arctic, which has become strategically interesting due to climate change,” said Høgni Hoydal, leader of the Republican Party, to Politiken.

“We are being used as chess pieces in a strategic game,” he added

The undisputed most important export product of the Faroe Islands to the Chinese market is farmed salmon. The country’s aquaculture production is dominated by salmon famers Bakkafrost, Luna/HiddenFjord and Mowi.

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