Time Magazine has partnered with Huawei – the controversial, Chinese Communist Party-linked telecommunication company labeled a “national security threat” by the Trump administration – to launch a Chinese-language version of its magazine oriented for children.
The partnership led to the creation of a Chinese edition of Time for Kids aimed for use in classrooms across the world.
The digital magazine rollout was “made possible by Huawei and Tan Chong International Limited,” a collaborative effort that Time for Kids editor in chief Andrea Delbanco described herself as being “thrilled” about.
Huawei, however, has extensive links to both the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army, prompting the U.S. State Department to identify it as an “arms of the state – or, more precisely, the Chinese Communist Party.”
Labeled a “national security threat” by the Trump administration and a Chinese military collaborator by the U.S. Department of Defense, Huawei routinely provides the Chinese Communist Party backdoor access to its products, networks and devices.
The U.S. State Department also noted the Chinese Communist Party uses Huawei as an “instrument not only for making money but also for pursuing the Party-State’s agenda and fulfilling its strategic objectives […] deeply enmeshed in Beijing’s system of oppression at home and its increasingly assertive strategic ambitions globally.”
Joy Tan, Senior Vice President of Public Affairs at Huawei Technologies USA, praising the deal “as part of our global inclusion vision that brings digital access to everyone around the world,” is, therefore, cause for concern.
And roughly one month after the establishment, New York-based rag inked a deal with the controversial, the U.S. State Department was imploring the West “to unite against Huawei.”
The initiative was spurred by COVID-19 and the ensuing shift to online learning, with PR Newswire describing the effort as a “continuation of [Time’s] global initiative to offer digital editions of the school-based publication in multiple languages to support teachers, families and students around the world during this period of school closures due to the coronavirus pandemic.”
In other words, due to a virus caused by the Chinese Communist Party, one of its subsidiaries inked a lucrative contract that allowed it to infiltrate the pages of a widely-circulated and influential American magazine. And beyond ostensibly allowing Huawei the ability to dictate the content of a magazine shared with countless schools, the partnership also calls into question the Chinese Communist Party’s ability to influence the editorial line of Time.
While Time has no shortage of anti-Trump content, notoriously placing the president on a cover alongside a crying child in an effort to criticize President Trump’s border policy and counting columnists such as Ian Bremmer who have attribute fake quotes to President Trump on social media, the Chinese Communist Party is actively seeking a Biden victory per U.S. Intelligence reports.
The other company listed as a partner in the arrangement, Tan Chong International Limited, is a Hong Kong-listed firm headquartered in Singapore that distributes Subaru and Nissan cars across Asia.
