In the wake of the US Election results, VP Victor Zhang has recommended that the UK Government reconsider its ban of Huawei.

Mr. Zhang is urging politicians in the UK to allow Huawei to participate in the 5G rollout, alongside Ericsson 5G RAN and EE. The Huawei executive believes that the initial ban was spurred by pressures from the USA under the Trump administration. He has told reporters from The Guardian that the ban was ‘motivated by US perceptions of Huawei and not those of the UK’, which was not ‘motivated by security, but by a trade war between the US and China’.

Moreover, Zhang adds that Huawei’s removal will greatly hamper the UK’s efficacy in combatting COVID-19 and the Brexit crisis. He states that the ban will ‘widen the north-south divide’, and hopes that the UK Government will ‘look to see if there is a better way forward’. BT and Vodafone concurred with Zhang, stating that removing Huawei hardware could lead to a loss of phone coverage across several networks.

The UK initially banned Huawei’s hardware from being deployed by mobile network structures earlier this year. Despite not having seen ‘specific evidence’ of malicious code or backdoors, the UK’s National Cybersecurity Centre chose to make 5G purchases from Huawei illegal by December 2020. Additionally, the UK’s Defense Committee has urged an outright ban of Huawei infrastructure across the four nations by 2025.

The War between Huawei and the USA

The USA formally banned the implementation of Huawei’s 5G kit in September this year. Contractors shipping Huawei product were required from that date to produce licenses from the US Commerce Department in order to maintain business with the Chinese tech giant.

Former President Trump stated that the ban was spurred by ‘national security concerns’, as Huawei was a ‘big concern for [the] military and intelligence agencies’. Huawei’s ties with the Communist Party and People’s Liberation party are suspected to be core motivators for the US ban. In particular, their ability to intercept data from individuals, corporations and governments was cause for concern for Trump’s administration. Allowing Huawei technology to be implemented was seen to potentiate threats like intellectual property theft and cyber espionage: further expanding Chinese integration and influence into Western projects. This would give China the upper hand in any future cyber wars.

Huawei’s response to nationwide bans

The Chinese company has consistently denied that its 5G components pose any risks. In addition, Beijing has warned that it will retaliate against any unfair treatment should the company be shut out by Western governments.

Huawei and the rest of Europe

Other countries, including France, Sweden and other EU states have followed suit in banning Huawei. The Swedish Post and Telecom authority said in a statement that the ‘influence of China’s one-party state over the country’s private sector brings with it strong incentives for privately owned companies to act in accordance with state goals and the communist party’s national strategies’.

Contrastingly, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel has resisted the full Huawei ban. She has remained a stronghold for the Chinese tech company against Berlin officials, during final negotiations for keeping German’s 5G networks secure.

While regulations posed by the international community reveal concerns about the Chinese supplier, Merkel has refused to compromise on her core position that Germany must not discriminate against Huawei with a targeted ban.

This will leave Germany with looser rules than the UK and France, in which the latter has devised rules to make it riskier for network operators to use Huawei’s 5G kit.

Potential Consequences of banning Huawei in the West

In what some have compared to the Cold War antagonism with the USSR, the West’s anxiety over 5G dominance could define geopolitics for the foreseeable future. Huawei has said that the implications of the US ban is not yet clear, but it marks a milestone in America’s prevention of Chinese technological supremacy.

As Brexit looms over the UK, angering China by banning Huawei would put the country firmly on the side of its closest ally – the USA. It would mark the end of what former Prime Minister David Cameron called the ‘golden era’ of Sino-British diplomacy.

Decisions regarding the UK’s total ban of Huawei is yet to be decided by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his cabinet.