Germany has made new progress in suppressing Chinese equipment in the field of 5G, according to the global network citing Reuters, the Germany government has reached a preliminary agreement with the country's mobile network operators to remove components made by Huawei, ZTE and other Chinese companies from the country's 5G core network from 2026 at the latest, and plans to completely remove them in 2029.
Germany's focus on China's 5G equipment starts in 2020, when United States President Trump in order to suppress China in the field of 5G, has been constantly pressuring United States' allies, asking them to exclude Huawei equipment from the purchase list for the construction of 5G networks, even if Huawei equipment has been installed, it must be gradually replaced, at first, then Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel withstood United States pressure and expressed a willingness to put forward security requirements for all suppliers. However, with the coming to power of Scholz, Germany has become more and more obvious to United States, and even lost its independence in the formulation of foreign policy, especially China policy, so it began to shout to learn from the attitude of the United States and Britain towards Huawei, and put the exclusion of Huawei and other Chinese enterprise equipment on the agenda, and the key components to be replaced include antennas, transmission lines and tower components.
(Biden & Scholz)
It is worth mentioning that this latest agreement has delayed the time by four years compared to Germany's previous expectation of completely removing all Huawei equipment by 2025, and it can only be said that the German government is not ready to completely abandon Huawei components.
First of all, for Germany, this is a difficult task, Germany's more than 80,000 communication stations, half of which are equipped with technology from Chinese companies such as Huawei, to replace them will require about 3 billion euros (about 23.7 billion yuan), plus the cost of manpower and time, may overwhelm Germany's mobile network operators.
Second, the reason why Huawei and other Chinese companies' 5G technology and related equipment will become a thorn in the eyes of the West is because they have a clear lead, which means that if Germany is determined to cut with Chinese enterprise equipment regardless of the cost, it may not be able to find a suitable replacement for a while, and some projects that were originally under construction or have been completed may also face stagnation or reorganization, to put it mildly, this is likely to affect Germany's 5G network construction.
In fact, it is not only Germany that cannot do without Huawei equipment, the United States Department of Defense is also facing the same dilemma, just recently, Pentagon officials are still showdown with the United States Congress, saying that they simply cannot get rid of their dependence on Huawei, hoping that Congress can exempt the "Pentagon from signing contracts with any entity that uses Huawei equipment".
(Pentagon)
In fact, whether it is United States or Germany, the policy adopted against Huawei is to impose unilateral sanctions in the name of safeguarding national security, which is essentially an attempt to politicize economic and trade issues, and it is impossible for us to accept all of them.
As early as last year, our ambassador to Germany reminded Germany that if they decide to exclude Huawei's 5G technology equipment, but cannot produce substantial evidence to prove that Huawei poses "security risks", then China will definitely not stand idly by and will take necessary measures to safeguard the legitimate interests of Chinese enterprises.
After Germany made the latest decision, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs gave a new round of advice, spokesman Lin Jian said that Huawei and other Chinese communications companies have been operating in Europe for many years, bringing more jobs and taxes to the local area, higher quality communication infrastructure, and did not cause any security risks, hoping that Germany will respect facts and make rational decisions, and provide a fair, transparent, open and non-discriminatory market environment for Chinese enterprises.
China is clearly telling Germany that the decisions it makes should be in line with its own interests and international rules, and if Germany is bent on being led by the nose by the United States, then China will definitely take countermeasures, and Germany will only pay a greater price at that time.