Huawei. Photo: VCG
As a European Union(EU) executive branch on Friday urged member countries to diversify 5G suppliers, a move set to shrink Huawei's presence in Europe, a British telecoms multinational said that the UK's unwise Huawei ban should not be "extrapolated" to the rest of the Europe, showing a growing rift between European politicians and businesses over the Chinese 5G giant under mounting US pressure.
European countries' wavering attitude toward Huawei despite harming their own businesses' interests and dragging 5G network progress behind shows that Chinese companies should be wary of the potential dire external circumstances due to Western countries' hostile attitude toward China's technology development, especially before the US presidential election in November, Chinese experts warned.
Pedestrians walk past a store of Vodafone Espana in Madrid, Spain. (Xinhua/Guo Qiuda)
Vodafone's Chief Executive Nick Read on Friday said that Britain's decision to ban China's Huawei from its 5G network should not be extrapolated to the rest of Europe because there were different geopolitics at play in other countries, according to Reuters.
The Vodafone executive said the company was talking to the government about easing the burden of removing Huawei from its UK network, the report said.
On the same day, the European Commission (EC) urged EU countries to urgently make "progress to mitigate the risk of dependency on high-risk suppliers," a move the Reuters said is set to shrink Huawei's presence in Europe.
Following the UK's Huawei ban, France is reportedly making a U-turn against the World No. 1 telecoms equipment supplier and 5G front runner. France is also adopting a de facto ban on Huawei, French media outlets reported on Thursday, less than 48 hours after French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire's "no discrimination, no ban" note on the company.
The EC's urge and European countries' wavering attitude toward Huawei is hardly a surprise, as Western countries have clearly let a new Cold War mindset dominate their decision making, Zhao Junjie, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of European Studies told the Global Times on Saturday.
"Choosing to follow the US' lead in suppressing Chinese tech companies shows their strategic aim of suppressing China's development in technology," Zhao said adding that such politically-motivated decisions are causing high costs for their own businesses.
While doubt remains on whether EU countries will soon form an agreement bending to US' pressure to ban Huawei from their 5G networks, experts warned that Chinese tech companies should be wary that dire external circumstances may occur in the next several months as the Trump administration is expected to further escalate China-US tensions to assist his reelection bid.
"Chinese tech companies should be prepared for an extremely severe situation before the US election in November, the US is bound to put pressure on its allies," Xiang Ligang, director-general of the Beijing-based Information Consumption Alliance, told the Global Times.
"We can't think of the Huawei issue solely from an economic perspective anymore. Driven by anxiety and fear towards China's rise, politicians in Western countries may put containing China first, even if it causes great losses," Zhao added.