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US defence bill includes 5G rules to pressure Huawei, ZTE

  • Congress plans to require the Defence Department to reconsider sending military equipment or troops to a country if it uses Chinese 5G technology
  • Trump administration has spent months trying to put pressure on American allies to stay away from Chinese 5G technology

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A rule, tucked more than a thousand pages into the final draft of the annual national defence bill, appears designed to put even more pressure on China’s telecommunications giants Huawei and ZTE. Photo: AP
Jacob Fromerin Washington
US Congress plans to require the Defence Department to reconsider sending military equipment or troops to a country if it uses Chinese 5G communications technology.
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The rule, tucked more than a thousand pages into the final draft of the annual national defence bill, appears designed to put even more pressure on China’s telecommunications giants Huawei Technologies Co. and ZTE, which produce the networking and communications technology known as 5G.

The idea comes as the Trump administration has spent months trying to put pressure on American allies to stay away from Chinese 5G technology, saying it is a risk to security and would allow Beijing to easily intercept sensitive communications.

The defence bill was made public shortly after Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe took the rare step of publicly labelling a specific foreign country – China – as the No 1 threat to the US, and listed Huawei among his reasons why.

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UK bans Huawei from 5G network after US sanctions

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“I have personally told US allies that using such Chinese-owned technology will severely limit America’s ability to share vital intelligence with them,” he wrote in an essay published in The Wall Street Journal on Thursday.

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