Huawei's Chinese Spy Raises Red Flags for Poland and the U.S.

Warsaw and Washington are probing deep ties Beijing has established in the strategically important country on NATO’s eastern frontier

By Bojan Pancevski and Matthew Dalton

An undated photo of Huawei executive Wang Weijing, Chinese spy arrested in Poland. Huawei Technologies Co. has 50% of the Polish telecommunications infrastructure market. 

WARSAW—Authorities in Poland and the U.S. are probing the deep ties Beijing has forged in this strategically important country on NATO’s eastern frontier in the wake of high-profile arrests of a Chinese executive and a former Polish official.
Wang Weijing, who worked in Poland for Huawei Technologies Co., and Piotr Durbajlo, a former senior Polish counterintelligence official, were detained this month and charged with spying for China. 

Wang was fired by Huawei following his arrest.

Neither Durbajlo nor his lawyer could be reached for comment.

China's spy nest: Huawei’s headquarters in Shenzhen, China. 

Part of the investigation—which officials said Poland is coordinating with the U.S.—involves events at Poland’s elite Military University of Technology, whose graduates often go on to take sensitive security and military jobs. 

Durbajlo has served as an instructor at the university.
Wang had visited the university in conjunction with a contest run by Huawei called “Seeds of the Future,” according to the university. 

In recent years, students there have been among the winners of the contest, which offers all-expenses-paid trips to China, including a week at company headquarters in Shenzhen.
The investigation—which officials said has been going on for at least two years—is forcing Polish officials to consider whether China’s growing presence has left the country vulnerable to security and intelligence breaches. 

Huawei by some estimates has nearly 50% of the Polish telecommunications infrastructure market.
“The Chinese have been very active for years,” said a senior Polish lawmaker who has been briefed on the investigation. 

“To give them so much freedom, so much space to maneuver was too much.”
One fear among both Polish and U.S. officials is that China might have accessed allied intelligence shared with Poland and passed it on to Moscow.

Poland’s Pressure on Huawei: Poland is urging its NATO allies to coordinate their response to cybersecurity challenges raised by the Chinese company. This jeopardizes a key market for Huawei. 

Senior U.S. officials say they are exploring how to roll back the deep involvement of Chinese companies such as Huawei in the economies and infrastructure of Poland and other European countries.
“We are figuring out how to deal with that,” said a senior U.S. official with detailed knowledge of the region. 

The broader telecommunications infrastructure is at risk “now that some countries have been infected.”
Huawei operates as a Trojan horse for the Chinese government. 

Chinese laws dictate that authorities can freely access information or data from companies incorporated there.
Poland was once part of the same Communist world as China. 

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Poland joined major Western institutions, such as the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
The Polish government has sought in recent years to attract Chinese investment. 

Warsaw kept the investigation into Wang and Durbajlo classified partly out of fear of provoking Chinese retaliation, said the Polish lawmaker. 

But the trial, he added, would inevitably draw attention to the case.
“The whole world will be watching this because there have been rumors about the criminal activities of Huawei but never any proof.”

A train arrived in Warsaw from Chengdu, China, in 2016. 

Polish officials are now trying to get a sense of which people who have held sensitive government positions may have ties to China, the lawmaker said.
And Polish counterintelligence is looking into some of the state institutions Durbajlo worked for, officials said.
In addition to serving as a cryptology lecturer at the military academy, Durbajlo has held senior positions at Poland’s Internal Security Service and the agency that oversees classified government communications, as well as Poland’s cybersecurity body, working in different capacities for the government until 2017. 

Since his arrest, he has been suspended from his job at Orange SA, the French telecommunications carrier, which serves about a quarter of Polish mobile phone subscribers.
A former Huawei employee described Wang, who spoke fluent Polish, as quiet and affable. 

Wang attended meetings at the Polish military university to discuss cooperation with Huawei and tout the “Seeds for the Future” contest to officials there, according to university news releases.

“Now trade is booming, but there is no [Chinese] investment,” said Witold Waszczykowski, a former Polish foreign minister. 

The recent arrests come as Poland is becoming disillusioned with China as an economic partner, said Witold Waszczykowski, a former Polish foreign minister and one of the architects of efforts to boost economic ties.
Hoped-for investments, including an airport in Warsaw and high-speed train lines, haven’t materialized, he said. 

“Now trade is booming, but there is no [Chinese] investment,” Mr. Waszczykowski said.
The most sensitive U.S. project in Poland is a missile base due to become operational by 2020 as part of a nuclear shield NATO says will protect against potential attacks by Iran but which Russia has said is really aimed at countering Moscow. 

Any intelligence about the base would be of great value to Beijing, said Fabrice Pothier, former top aide to two NATO chiefs.
“Because of the relationship with the U.S. and membership in the NATO alliance and in the EU, we are an important target,” said Krzysztof Liedel, former director of the National Security Bureau, one of Poland’s security and defense agencies. 

“We are a gate through which to gather information and data on our allies.”