Throw away China's dangerous smartphones that impose censorship

Vilnius/Beijing – The Lithuanian government has appealed to its citizens to throw out smartphones based on China’s advanced 5G technology, as they have been found to have a censorship system. Lithuania’s Defence Ministry has made this recommendation and has advised citizens not to purchase new Chinese smartphones. The Chinese government is agitated with this new Lithuanian stand and, through its official mouthpiece, China has threatened to sever political ties with Lithuania.

In July, Taiwan announced the opening of an independent diplomatic office in the eastern European country of Lithuania. More importantly, this office will be named ‘The Taiwanese Representative Office’. Lithuania has also officially endorsed Taiwan’s proposal, signalling the opening of its diplomatic office in Taiwan. Before taking this decision regarding Taiwan, Lithuania had dropped out of China’s ’17+1′ European group.

This aggressive policy adopted by Lithuania, one of the smaller countries in the European Union, has made the Chinese government restless. Taking serious cognisance of this, China recalled its ambassador to Lithuania. At the same time, Lithuania’s ambassador to China has been expelled. Following that, China has also discontinued the cargo train operating to Lithuania and has reduced exports. However, Lithuania did not succumb to the pressure exerted by the Chinese communist regime and showed with this new decision that it was adamant on its anti-China stand.

Lithuania’s Defence Ministry has released new recommendations. In that, defects found in the smartphones made by Huawei, One Plus, and Xiaomi are mentioned. Xiaomi’s MI10T5G has a built-In censorship software, according to the report published by the National Cybersecurity Centre. It has been revealed that words like ‘Free Tibet’, ‘Long Live Taiwan Independence’, ‘Democracy Movement’ are being censored by the software. At the same time, it has come to light that phone data is being sent to a server in Singapore from Xiaomi’s smartphone.

In addition to Xiaomi, Huawei‘s smartphones have been found to have security flaws. Therefore, Lithuania’s Defence Ministry has recommended that the people of Lithuania throw away the smartphones of Chinese companies such as Xiaomi, Huawei, One Plus, and not take the phones of Chinese companies even when buying new ones. Lithuania is the second European country to object to Chinese smartphones in this manner. Earlier, Belgian intelligence agencies also had cautioned thencitizens against the use of Chinese smartphones.