US failing in bid to strangle Huawei

That the United Kingdom is standing by its decision to allow Huawei's participation in the building of its 5G network shows the value it puts on its partnership with China, as it is remaining firm in doing business with the Chinese telecommunications company despite the United States ratcheting up the pressure in a bid to coerce it to do otherwise.

On Tuesday, when asked about the likelihood of the UK having a change of heart, Simon McDonald, head of the Diplomatic Service at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, said the decision "is not being reopened".

The UK is not the only country that Washington has been putting pressure on in a bid to get them to let it decide what companies they can do business with. Washington has been tightening the screws on many countries, its allies in particular.

But all governments know the US has not provided any evidence to back up its claims that Huawei represents a threat to national security, and they also pretty well know what the US is up to.

Senior US government officials have traipsed around the world trying to peddle the supposed risks the Chinese telecom company poses, despite countries already using Huawei's equipment and technologies in their 4G networks.

It is shameful that the US administration should persistently point an accusing finger at a successful Chinese company without evidence. Doing so has only served to highlight its paranoia about the threat it believes China's rise may possibly pose to its own hegemonic position in the world.

The US Federal Communications Commission's order for 60 or more telecom operators to remove components provided by Huawei has placed these operators in a very awkward position and some of them may go bankrupt because of the huge amounts of money they will have to pay to replace the equipment of Huawei.

The claim that these networks with Huawei equipment pose a threat to the security of military installations nearby has been made without a shred of evidence presented to back it up.

Purging Huawei at the cost of the networks serving the vast rural areas of the US only reveals how obsessed some US politicians are with the notion of a threat from China.

This obsession has robbed them of reason to such an extent that they can hardly make any rational judgment about what is business and what is politics, and what they can do within their own discretion and what they cannot do.

What they have forgotten is the fact that this globalized world is much more pluralistic and multipolarized than it used to be, and the US is not in the position to call the shots on everything any more, especially things that concern the interests of other countries.

All this explains why the US has failed to persuade other countries to help it strangle Huawei, and why it will not be able to achieve that aim.