China: US has not proved Huawei is security risk

A Chinese government spokesperson on Wednesday said that the U.S. has not proven Huawei Technologies to be a security risk, the Associated Press reports.

Huawei’s critics are conjuring up threats and misusing state power to “suppress the legitimate development rights and interests of Chinese enterprises” and are “using political means to intervene in the economy,” said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying.

“All countries should deal with relevant matters in an objective, comprehensive, rational, and correct manner, rather than fabricating excuses of all kinds for one’s own pursuit of interest at the cost of others, which is quite hypocritical, immoral, and unfair,” she continued.

{mosads}Huawei, one of the world’s largest telecommunications network providers, has been accused by the U.S. of stealing trade secrets.

Federal prosecutors filed criminal charges in January alleging that the company stole intellectual property from T-Mobile and also violated U.S. sanction orders.

The U.S. has also requested the extradition of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s chief financial officer, from Canada. Meng was arrested there in December at the request of U.S. officials for allegedly violating trade sanctions against Iran.

China has denied that Huawei infringes on intellectual property.

“We believe that this is very hypocritical, unfair and immoral,” Hua said, according to AP. All nations, she said, have an obligation to “abide by the market principle of free and fair competition and truly safeguard the market environment of fairness, justice and non-discrimination.”

While the U.S. and China battle over Huawei, they are also in the midst of trade negotiations.

Last month, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that the two “are not linked, they’re a totally separate process.” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin also said they were “separate issues.”

However, given that U.S. officials have vowed to make China’s alleged theft of trade secrets a central issue in those discussions, the charges against Huawei could impact broader trade negotiations.