Pompeo's scare-mongering falls flat

At a news conference on Sunday, Geng Shuang, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, criticized US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for making false claims about Chinese telecommunications enterprise Huawei. China Daily writer Zhang Zhouxiang comments:

One remark by Geng in particular created a buzz online. He said that Huawei had obtained 46 commercial contracts for 5G networks in 30 countries worldwide by June 6, and some of the countries are allies of the United States, despite Pompeo working hard to persuade them not to use Huawei products.

Anybody with a normal mind will find it hard to understand why the world's only superpower is so afraid of a private enterprise from China that it is intent on persuading its allies to cut all business ties with the company.

Business is business, and in business there should only be commercial factors to consider. When any country, be it in Europe or anywhere else in this world, needs 5G services, all it wants are good products, good services and good prices.

Huawei offers all these. According to a report by IPlytics, a patent big data company based in Berlin, four Chinese companies own 36 percent of the world's patents necessary for 5G standards; Huawei alone has 1,554 of them.

If European countries blindly exclude Huawei from their purchasing lists as the US requires, they would have to spend an extra 428.7 billion yuan ($61.9 billion) building their 5G networks.

Therefore, it is natural for European countries to choose Chinese companies for the construction of their 5G networks. Actually, Huawei is popular among US companies and US consumers, too. Just as Nicholas Negroponte, founder of MIT Media Lab, said in an open letter in May, by banning Huawei, US authorities will force US consumers to choose not-so-good services with higher prices.

Especially, many small telecom companies use Huawei devices in their 5G networks, and if Huawei is banned, they might not be able to benefit from the new technology. US farmers need 5G networks to analyze data of their crops, while US small businesses need them to analyze and decide their purchasing lists.

It is time the US authorities reconsidered their choice: Will they choose being connected, or being out of date simply because of their prejudice against a Chinese company?