Huawei News: Will The UK Defy Trump Administration On Chinese Telecom Giant?

The United Kingdom will announce Tuesday whether to allow Chinese telecommunication giant Huawei to participate in its 5G rollout. The United States has pushed for the U.K. to reject Huawei, as Washington believes that the company provides a backdoor for the Chinese government to spy on U.S. assets abroad and obtain confidential information.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has signaled a moderate approach on the issue.

“The way forward for us clearly is to have a system that delivers for people in this country the kind of consumer benefits that they want through 5G technology or whatever, but does not in any way compromise our critical national infrastructure, our security or jeopardize our ability to work together with other intelligence powers around the world,” Johnson said Monday. “We are going to come up with a solution that enables us to achieve both those objectives and that’s the way forward.”

U.S. officials visited London earlier this month in order to give a presentation about the risks of Huawei and 5G technology. Johnson had previously stated that opponents of Huawei should suggest an “alternative” to the Chinese telecom giant.

Huawei has said that it is confident that the U.K. will assess the evidence before making a decision.

"We are confident that the UK government will make a decision based upon evidence, as opposed to unsubstantiated allegations," Victor Zhang, the vice president of Huawei, said in a statement earlier this month.

Other European countries have also struggled to decide on the Huawei issue. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has stood against a ban on the company but members of her Christian Democrat party are taking a firmer stance against Huawei.

Some telecom operators have said that a ban on Huawei would delay Germany’s 5G rollout by years and make the implementation process more expensive.