On Wednesday, December 18th, officials at a Polish airport announced that for safety reasons, the Warsaw Chopin Airport in Poland will discontinue the use of security scanners manufactured by China’s Nuctech.
According to Reuters, Piotr Rudzki, the head of the airport’s communications department, stated that this decision was based on an analysis by the Civil Aviation Authority, which raised security concerns.
“Similar to the Ministry of Infrastructure’s subsequent stance, their recommendation was that these devices might be unsafe, therefore suggesting not to use them,” Rudzki told Reuters.
Attempts to reach Nuctech for comment by Reuters were unsuccessful.
Rudzki mentioned that the four large Nuctech scanners at Warsaw Chopin Airport (used for scanning checked luggage) will be replaced by equipment produced by the Polish consortium Dimark-Anglosec in March 2025.
On February 17, 2021, Lithuania announced the ban on cooperation between China’s largest security equipment manufacturer, Nuctech, and Lithuanian airports.
In 2022, concerns arose when Strasbourg Airport purchased luggage scanning equipment manufactured by Nuctech, raising alarms among some European lawmakers. They called for the contract to be revoked pending an independent investigation to review whether Nuctech’s technology poses any espionage risks.
Nuctech was added to the U.S. government’s blacklist in 2020, with the U.S. government indicating that companies on the blacklist pose security threats.
Founded in 1997 and stemming from Tsinghua University, Nuctech was led by Hu Haifeng, the son of former Chinese President Hu Jintao, for much of the 2000s until 2008. Nuctech is a company controlled by the Chinese government. In 2019, a unit of the central state-owned enterprise China National Nuclear Corporation became the controlling shareholder of Nuctech’s parent company.
Nuctech’s screening systems for goods, luggage, and passengers are widely used in European ports, transit points, and airports. Systems used for screening cargo at ports and inspecting passengers’ luggage at airports and train stations are increasingly linked to databases containing cargo manifests and passenger information (including passports, fingerprints, and other details).
On May 26, 2020, the U.S. State Department expressed concerns in a memorandum that Nuctech might transfer such data to the Chinese authorities. The memo also outlined U.S. deterrence activities in Europe, warning allied countries that Nuctech’s control over European infrastructure nodes poses security threats to civil and military transportation among NATO member countries.
According to a memo seen by The Wall Street Journal, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) of the United States effectively banned Nuctech from most U.S. airport markets in 2014 following a review. The content of the TSA review remains confidential, so the specifics are unknown.