UK to suppress Huawei harms others without benefiting itself: FM

"Driven by selfish political gains, certain individuals and forces in the UK have fawned upon a certain country and overstretched the concept of national security to suppress a specific Chinese company at the cost of their own people's access to 5G technology," Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Zhao Lijian said on Monday.

Zhao made the remarks at a regular press conference stressing that such acts harm others without benefiting itself.

"I also noted that British media recently commented that the decision to ban Huawei will seriously stall UK's 5G rollout targets," Zhao said. "Oliver Dowden, Minister without Portfolio and former Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, said the decision to remove Huawei has led to 'a cumulative delay to 5G rollout of two to three years'."

"A survey by Oxford Economics shows that restricting a key supplier of 5G infrastructure like Huawei from helping to build UK's network would increase that country's 5G investment costs by between 9% and 29% over the next decade,' he added.