Chinese media calls for 'pain' over UK Huawei ban as Trump claims credit

Chinese state media has foreshadowed “public and painful” retaliation against the UK over its ban of Huawei from the country’s 5G networks, as Donald Trump appeared to take credit for the decision.

Following Britain’s announcement that Huawei would be stripped out of the country’s phone networks by 2027, the state-run Global Times said in an editorial that China could not “remain passive”.

“It is necessary for China to retaliate against the UK, otherwise would we not be seen as easy to bully. Such retaliation should be public and painful for the UK,” the article said.

Ties between the UK and China have deteriorated over the past month as the UK has criticised Beijing’s imposition of a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong, a former British colony, and pledged to support fleeing pro-democracy activists and protesters. China has said it will take firm “countermeasures” in response.

Yet Chinese officials also appear to be making an effort not to escalate UK-China tensions, by blaming measures like the Huawei ban on US pressure. Earlier this month, China’s ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, said that any ban of Huawei would tarnish the UK’s reputation as independent from the US.

On Tuesday, Liu tweeted that the decision was “disappointing and wrong”. On Wednesday a foreign ministry spokeswoman said China strongly opposed the decision and said it was driven by the politicisation of commercial and technological issues and not by national security.

The Global Times editorial says: “It is not necessary to turn this into a China-UK confrontation. The UK is not the US, nor Australia, nor Canada. It is a relative ‘weak link’ in the Five Eyes. In the long run the UK has no reason to turn against China, with the Hong Kong issue fading out.”

The Global Times’ editor, Hu Xijin, tweeted that political conditions could change before the deadline: “UK can only completely remove Huawei by 2027, which indicates it’s difficult to leave Huawei. But there could be change before and after that.”

The US president claimed credit for the UK move, boasting in a press conference that no White House “has been tougher on China” than his administration.

“I did this myself, for the most part,” he said as he spoke of having worked to pressure countries to not use Huawei, adding: “If they want to do business with us, they can’t use it.

“We convinced many countries - many countries - and I did this myself, for the most part, not to use Huawei because we think it’s an unsafe security risk. It’s a big security risk,” he said.

“I talked many countries out of using it. If they want to do business with us, they can’t use it.

“Just today, I believe the UK announced that they’re not going to be using it. And that was up in the air for a long time, but they’ve decided.”

Press Association contributed to this report