Beijing today warned Britain that Chinese businesses could pull out of the UK after the Government banned Huawei from the nation's new...
Beijing today warned Britain that Chinese businesses could pull out of the UK after the Government banned Huawei from the nation's new 5G network.
Liu Xiaoming, China's Ambassador to the UK, said 'the way you treat Huawei will be followed very closely by other Chinese businesses' as he said the decision had 'undermined the trust between the two countries'.
Mr Liu said 'Huawei merely symbolises how you treat China' in comments which came after Beijing had earlier accused Boris Johnson of being 'America's dupe'.
China's foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Britain had excluded the tech giant 'without any concrete evidence' and had colluded with the White House to 'discriminate' against the company.
She warned the UK's actions 'must come at a cost' while the hardline state-backed Global Times publication said in an editorial it is 'necessary for China to retaliate'.
The publication said a failure to respond by Beijing would suggest China is 'too easy to bully' as it said measures taken against the UK should be 'public and painful'.
Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden announced yesterday that telecoms firms will be prohibited from buying Huawei 5G equipment from December 31 this year.
Meanwhile, all of the firm's existing 5G technology will be stripped out of the network by the end of 2027.
The move represented a massive U-turn after Number 10 gave Huawei the green light in January to participate in building the infrastructure.
It has sparked a further deterioration in relations between the UK and China, with tensions already strained over coronavirus and the imposition by Beijing of a controversial national security law on Hong Kong.
The UK Government yesterday announced it is banning Huawei from Britain's 5G network over national security concerns
China's Ambassador to the UK Liu Xiaoming said the Huawei decision will be 'followed very closely by other Chinese businesses'
The Government moved to ban Huawei from the UK's 5G network after the White House imposed sanctions on the firm which prevent it from using US technology in its 5G equipment.
The UK said the sanctions meant it can 'no longer be confident it will be able to guarantee the security of future Huawei 5G equipment'.
The US has long urged its allies not to use the company's technology because of national security concerns - concerns which have always been rejected by Huawei.
Mr Liu told a think tank event this morning that the decision to expel Huawei from the 5G network was 'disheartening' as he hinted it could prompt other Chinese firms to rethink their UK operations.
He said: 'I think it undermined the trust between the two countries. Trust, mutual trust, mutual respect are really the basics for a relationship, not only between countries but even between individuals.
'When you look at the UK decision yesterday, I tweeted… it is disappointing and the wrong decision on Huawei.
'Now I would say it is not only disappointing it is disheartening. When you see this company, good company, who have been here for 20 years, they not only invested £2 billion in this country, created 28,000 jobs and pay tax and contribute greatly to the telecoms industry of this country and to the local community, that you simply dump this company.'
He added: 'The way you treat Huawei will be followed very closely by other Chinese businesses.
'When mutual trust was undermined it would be difficult for the businesses to have confidence.'
Mr Liu said the UK Government's treatment of Huawei would be seen as 'symbolic' of its overall approach to China.
'Look at how the UK treats Huawei,' he said. 'The way they treat Huawei is, I always say Huawei is not about a private company. The big picture is about China. Huawei merely symbolises how you treat China.'
Ms Hua had earlier told reporters in Beijing that China strongly opposed the UK's decision.
She said the move was driven by political reasoning and not by national security concerns as she also said Beijing will act to safeguard its interests in the wake of the U-turn.
The Associated Press quoted her as saying: 'Without any concrete evidence, the United Kingdom took unfounded risks as an excuse and cooperated with the United States to discriminate, suppress and exclude Chinese companies.'
She said the UK's actions 'must come at a cost' but did not elaborate on how Beijing could respond. She also claimed Britain had become 'America's dupe'.
Downing Street rejected the suggestion and insisted the decision had been made following an assessment of the US sanctions by the National Cyber Security Centre.
‘As soon as the sanctions were imposed by the US the NCSC began a detailed piece of work on their impact,' the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman said.
'Once that work was concluded the NCSC reached a verdict that it could no longer guarantee the security of the Huawei equipment in the future.
‘That advice was given to ministers and following the NSC meeting yesterday they announced that no new Huawei equipment could be purchased from the end of this year and it will be removed by 2027.’
On the suggestion that China could retaliate, the PM's spokesman said: 'We remain committed to a constructive relationship with China. Yesterday’s decision does not change that.’
Downing Street today confirmed that Mr Johnson and President Xi Jinping have not spoken since March.
The US, along with Tory backbench MPs, had lobbied intensively for the UK Government to reverse the original decision it made in January.
Donald Trump appeared to claim credit for the U-turn, telling a press conference last night: 'We convinced many countries - many countries - and I did this myself, for the most part - not to use Huawei because we think it's an unsafe security risk.
'It's a big security risk. I talked many countries out of using it. If they want to do business with us, they can't use it.
'Just today, I believe that UK announced that they're not going to be using it. And that was up in the air for a long time, but they've decided.'
Health Secretary Matt Hancock sought to down play Mr Trump's comments as he said the move to ban Huawei was a 'sensible decision' based on the latest available evidence.
'We all know Donald Trump, don't we?' he told Sky News.
'All sorts of people can try to claim credit for the decision, but this was based on a technical assessment by the National Cyber Security Centre about how we can have the highest quality 5G systems in the future.
'We are looking for a good US trade deal and working very closely on that, I think that's a very important consideration.'
Meanwhile, the Global Times today took aim at Britain in its editorial as it said Beijing must now hit back.
It said: 'It's necessary for China to retaliate against UK, otherwise wouldn't we be too easy to bully?
'Such retaliation should be public and painful for the UK. But it's unnecessary to turn it into a China-UK confrontation.
'The UK is not the US, nor Australia, nor Canada. It is a relative 'weak link' in the Five Eyes.'
The decision to exclude Huawei from the UK's 5G network comes at a time when relations between the UK and China are already strained over coronavirus and Hong Kong.
China's ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, said expelling Huawei was a 'disappointing and wrong decision'.
'It has become questionable whether the UK can provide an open, fair and non-discriminatory business environment for companies from other countries,' he tweeted.
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