Photo by Toby Melville/ Reuters

Dr. John Gong is a professor at the University of International Business and Economics and a research fellow at the Academy of China Open Economy Studies at UIBE

British Primer Minister Boris Johnson’s decision to ban Huawei’s 5G telecom equipment, after intense lobbying from U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, betrayed the country’s lack of independence in its foreign policy. In order to comply with the ban, British mobile operators must not buy any new Huawei 5G components by the end of this year and must remove all Huawei 5G kit from their networks by 2027.

The fallout from the politically motivated ban is clear. Not only UK consumers will see their bills going up because of the more expensive equipment from other suppliers such as Ericsson and Nokia, but also they will see the deployment of 5G networks in their neighborhood years later.

Furthermore, in spite of America’s hype on more secure communications for intelligence sharing among the 5-eye countries, the ban actually makes British government communications even more susceptible to U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) intrusion, whose eavesdropping behavior of an espionage empire can be traced back to a Swiss telecom encryption company Crypto AG under the control of CIA and NSA since 1970.

The debate over whether Huawei is engaged or has the capability to be engaged in espionage is long over. After years of scrutiny and close monitoring, including NSA’s own breaking into Huawei’s internal corporate network, not a shred of evidence has been discovered so far. The whole idea of this unsubstantiated, unjustified and totally unfair accusation still lingering against Huawei is entirely based on a hypothetical theory owing to America’s own experience of spooking against everyone including its own allies.

In the UK case, the examination of Huawei’s equipment and software is even more thorough. For nine years, Huawei has been running a research facility in the UK under the name Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Center (HCSEC) in collaboration with the UK’s National Cyber Security Center (NCSC), which is the equivalent to Washington’s NSA. Both organizations are the world’s most sophisticated spy agencies. HCSEC is tasked with assessing and mitigating security risks associated with Huawei equipment. It assesses Huawei equipment’s exposure to malicious cyber hacking in a way to protect British telecom networks. Through that process, it also develops a deeper understanding of Huawei’s equipment, particularly its product development and software engineering process. This makes Huawei equipment more transparent to government agencies, particularly with respect to refuting theories, hypotheses or claims of installed backdoors.

HCSEC released a report in March last year, saying “NCSC continues to believe that the UK mitigation strategy, which includes HCSEC performing technical work and the Oversight Board providing assurance as two components, is the best way to manage the risk of Huawei’s involvement in the UK telecommunications sector.” In addition to that conclusion, more importantly the last sentence in the main body of that report decidedly concludes “NCSC does not believe that the defects identified are a result of Chinese state interference.”

Very much as a result of that report, the Johnson administration made the decision last year to allow Huawei equipment to be used by British Telecom and other carriers for up to 35% of their network content. But now under American pressure, London finally caved in, and it caved in disgracefully.

Three days ago while commenting on Johnson’s decision, China’s ambassador Liu Xiaoming told the press: “We are not asking you to take sides between China and the United States. We are just asking you to take the right side of the argument. Britain can only be Great Britain when it has an independent foreign policy.”

Ambassador Liu was obviously referring to Great Britain’s noted history of keeping an independent foreign policy, as epitomized by the famous saying by Canadian politician George Eulas Foster in 1896, “In these somewhat troublesome days when the great Mother Empire stands splendidly isolated in Europe.” UK’s tradition of splendid isolation in the days of Foster refers to its minimal involvement in European affairs at that time. Today, even though we are indeed living in troublesome days, China and the United States are not engaged in the kind of rivalry as in pre-World War One Europe. But through this Huawei decision, it is abundantly clear that UK is neither isolated nor splendid anymore.

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