Copyright bbc
It was less about using it to spy - and more the fact that a relationship of dependency on another country for technology on which daily life depends opens the way to influence and even coercion. If you do something or say something Beijing does not like, could it cut you off? In the end, technology from Huawei - which always denied it was a security risk - was excluded from 5G. But it was only the first Chinese company to go global and now there are many more. So, does it matter if China builds new nuclear reactors? Or becomes the main supplier of green technology? And what about if people depend on the Chinese-originated social media platform TikTok for their news and information? This is the area where the tension with the economic growth agenda become clearest. China is the second largest economy in the world, an important export market and source of investment. If we want to secure the benefits of this relationship then it becomes much harder to exclude Chinese companies from the UK market. Any kind of blanket ban on Chinese technology or companies would be absurd. But just how much should we open ourselves?
