UK should rethink Huawei decision

British telecommunications companies must not install new Huawei 5G kit after September 2021, the United Kingdom government said on Monday, reaffirming its decision to exclude the Chinese telecommunications equipment giant from the building of its next-generation mobile networks.

The UK has been tightening the noose on Huawei citing security concerns since July, when it reneged on a January decision to grant Huawei a limited role in 5G networks infrastructure and announced all the company’s equipment and technology should be removed from the country’s networks by the end of 2027. Under a new law put forward last week, British telecom companies could be fined by up to 10 percent of their turnover, or 100,000 pounds ($133,140) a day, if they violate the ban on using Huawei equipment.

The moves against Huawei are absurd because the claim about the company posing a threat to the UK’s national security is nothing but an attempt to paint Chinese companies in a bad light. The alleged threat has never been substantiated with any proof. The many investigations the UK has conducted have proved the Chinese company’s innocence. Even the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre said after an investigation last year that any risk posed by involving the Chinese technology giant in UK telecom projects can be managed.

Thus the UK’s ban on Huawei has been initiated not out of consideration for its own interests, but merely as a result of political pressure from the United States government, which has gone out of its way to try to strangle Huawei and other Chinese high-tech companies globally and coerce its allies to follow suit. US President Donald Trump once said he was responsible for London’s decision in July to purge Huawei, which in a way belies the UK’s claim of policy independence.

The UK could have won some sympathy for having to dance to the tune of the US under duress. After all, Washington had threatened to end its intelligence-sharing with London if the latter refused to toe its line on Huawei. That makes it all the more inconceivable that the UK government is upping the ante in its crackdown on the Chinese company at a time when the US political scene is undergoing a major transition, despite a prevailing sense that the incoming US administration will undo many of its predecessor’s policies once it takes office in January. The UK will pay the price for its misjudgment and political shortsightedness. The ban on Huawei has already forced the UK government to earmark 250 million pounds to help operators replace the company’s equipment, costs that will be borne by taxpayers in the country.

But it is still not too late for the UK to mend its ways and bring its trade and economic ties with China back to the normal track.