China accuses U.S. of tech bullying
Foreign Ministry says Washington is using ‘political means’ to suppress industrial development.
China’s government on Monday accused the United States of trying to block its industrial development by alleging that Chinese mobile network gear poses a cybersecurity threat to countries rolling out new internet systems.
And in a potential blow to the U.S. effort to rally its allies on the issue, British media reported that the country’s intelligence agencies had found it’s possible to limit the security risks of using Chinese equipment in so-called 5G networks.
The U.S. argues that Beijing might use Chinese tech companies to gather intelligence about foreign countries. The Trump administration has been putting pressure on allies to shun networks supplied by Huawei Technologies, threatening the company’s access to markets for nextgeneration wireless gear.
The company, the biggest global maker of switching gear for phone and internet companies, denies accusations it facilitates Chinese spying and says it would reject any government demands to disclose confidential information about foreign customers.
The U.S. government is trying to “fabricate an excuse for suppressing the legitimate development” of Chinese enterprises, said the spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Geng Shuang. He accused the United States of using “political means” to interfere in economic activity, “which is hypocritical, immoral and unfair bullying.”
Vice President Mike Pence, speaking last weekend in Germany, urged European allies to take seriously “the threat” he said was posed by Huawei as they looked for partners to build the new 5G mobile networks.
The 5G technology is meant to vastly expand the reach of networks to support internet-linked medical equipment, factory machines, self-driving cars and other devices. That makes it more politically sensitive and raises the potential cost of security failures.
Pence said Huawei and other Chinese telecom equipment makers provided Beijing with “access to any data that touches their network or equipment.” He appealed to European governments to “reject any enterprise that would compromise the integrity of our communications technology or our national security systems.”
In what could amount to a turning point for the U.S. effort to isolate Huawei, Britain’s National Cyber Security Center has found that the risk of using its networks is manageable, according to the Financial Times and several other British news outlets.
The reports cited anonymous sources as saying there were ways to limit cybersecurity risks, and that the U.K.’s decision would carry weight with European allies that were also evaluating the safety of their networks.
Huawei said in a statement Monday that it’s open to dialogue and that “cybersecurity is an issue which needs to be addressed across the whole industry.”