British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Jeremy Hunt has urged caution over the role of China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) in the UK, saying that the government should think carefully before opening its doors to the technology giant to develop next-generation 5G mobile networks.
His comments come after British Prime Minister Theresa May conditionally allowed Huawei to build the UK 5G network, the media reported last week.
The final decision is to be announced in June, a government spokesman said.
Photo: AFP
Huawei faces pushback in some Western markets over fears that Beijing could spy on communications and gain access to critical infrastructure.
“We are right to have a degree of caution about the role of large Chinese companies, because of the degree of control that the Chinese state is able to exercise over them in the way that would not be possible if they were large Western companies,” Hunt told the Daily Telegraph yesterday.
“That doesn’t mean to say that their role is automatically malign, but there are things like the 2017 law that requires all Chinese companies, whatever their ownership, to cooperate with Chinese intelligence services on any occasion,” Hunt said. “Obviously, as we come to our decision, we have to weigh those considerations very carefully.”
Chinese Ambassador to Britain Liu Xiaoming (劉曉明) told the Sunday Telegraph that security concerns were “understandable,” but he said that the UK should make “the right decision independently, based on its national interests.”
He said that “5G, as a representative of an entirely new generation of communications technology, is not perfect and does still need improvements.”
“The risks should be taken seriously, but risks must not be allowed to incite fear. They can be managed, provided that countries and companies work together,” Liu added.
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