China challenges Britain over Huawei ban after reports intelligence services found no security threat
- Beijing seizes on claims by a former Singaporean diplomat that a ‘very distinguished’ Briton had told him the UK had ‘planted people’ in the firm to investigate
- Chinese foreign ministry says it would ‘like to hear what the UK has to say’ and suggests the 5G network ban was made at the request of the US
Foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on Monday that he wanted to “listen to what the UK has to say” about the claims, made by a former Singaporean diplomat at a forum last year.
“Some people in the UK had bowed to a certain country out of political interest, falling into the whirlpool of ‘pan-securitisation’ and suppressing certain Chinese enterprises,” Zhao said.
The United States has banned Huawei over national security and urged its allies to follow suit.
Zhao was responding to a question about the comments made by Kishore Mahbubani, Singapore’s former representative to the United Nations, who said he had been told by a “very distinguished British citizen” that the UK had been investigating Huawei.
A clip from the speech, taken at a forum hosted by the German think tank the Konrad Adeneur Siftung in November last year, was published on the social media accounts of China’s state broadcaster CCTV on Saturday.
