UK parliament committee says Huawei colludes with the Chinese state
The British parliament's defence committee said last week that it had found clear evidence that telecoms giant Huawei had colluded with the Chinese state and said Britain may need to remove all Huawei equipment earlier than planned. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in July ordered Huawei equipment to be purged from the nascent 5G network by the end of 2027, write Guy Faulconbridge and Jack Stubbs.
US President Donald Trump claimed credit for the British
decision. "The West must urgently unite to advance a counterweight to
China’s tech dominance," Tobias Ellwood, chairman of the defence
committee, said. "We must not surrender our national security for the sake
of short-term technological development."
The committee did not go into detail about the exact nature
of the ties but said it had seen clear evidence of Huawei collusion with
"the Chinese Communist Party apparatus". Huawei said the report
lacked credibility. "It is built on opinion rather than fact. We’re sure
people will see through these groundless accusations of collusion and remember
instead what Huawei has delivered for Britain over the past 20 years," a
Huawei spokesman said.
When asked about the committee's comments, Chinese foreign
ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said that some in the UK should think before
they speak, and that the legitimate interests of Chinese companies were being
damaged. "The openness and fairness of the UK market, as well as the
security of foreign investments there, is highly concerning," she said,
speaking at a daily news conference in Beijing on Friday (9 October).
Trump identifies China as the United States' main
geopolitical rival, and has accused the Communist Party-ruled state of taking
advantage over trade and not telling the truth over the novel coronavirus
outbreak, which he calls the "China plague". Washington and its
allies say Huawei technology could be used to spy for China. Huawei has
repeatedly denied this, and says the United States is simply jealous of its
success. British ministers say the rise to global dominance of Huawei, founded
in 1987 by a former People's Liberation Army engineer, has caught the West off
guard.
The defence committee said it supported Johnson's decision
to eventually purge Huawei from Britain's 5G network but noted that
"developments could necessitate this date being moved forward, potentially
to 2025" to be economically feasible.
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