British plans to crack down on the use of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei and other “high-risk” equipment run the risk of economic retaliation, according to senior Chinese officials.
“In light of this, significant concerns have been raised over the openness and fairness of the British market as well as the security of foreign investment in the United Kingdom,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Wednesday.
That complaint raises the prospect that China will cut off economic investment in the U.K. in retaliation for the ban — a now-familiar tactic that Beijing used repeatedly in the past year, most notably in political disputes with Australia. The diplomat’s allusion to the retaliation comes in the wake of Huawei officials calling for London to change course following the defeat of President Trump in the 2020 presidential elections.
“The decision was a political one motivated by U.S. perceptions of Huawei and not those of the U.K.,” Huawei Vice President Victor Zhang said last week. “This is not really motivated by security but about a trade war between the U.S. and China.”
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government decided “to stop using new effected Huawei equipment to build the U.K.’s future 5G networks” in July, citing suspicions about the company’s obligations to cooperate with Chinese intelligence services. That policy marked a major reversal from his position in January, when Johnson rebuffed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s warnings in an effort to balance security risks against “the interests of our economy,” as his backers put it.
Zhao echoed that complaint Wednesday after British lawmakers moved to impose steep fines on companies that flout the ban on the use of Huawei equipment for 5G wireless technology, which takes effect in 2027. The U.K.’s new Telecommunications Security Bill contemplates a penalty for violators that could run to more than £100,000 a day — or more than $130,000.
“Without any concrete evidence, the United Kingdom, in collaboration with the United States, has been discriminating and suppressing Chinese companies citing nonexistent ‘security risks,’” Zhao said. “It blatantly violates the principles of market economy and free trade rules, severely undermines the interests of Chinese companies, and continually erodes mutual trust with China, which is the basis for bilateral cooperation.”
Yet British lawmakers have a growing distrust of China, intensified by the anger over Beijing’s suppression of early warnings about the coronavirus pandemic.
“This groundbreaking bill will give the U.K. one of the toughest telecoms security regimes in the world and allow us to take the action necessary to protect our networks,” British Digital Secretary Oliver Dowden said Tuesday.
