We Can Stand Up To China By Embracing Hong Kong's Talent

‘Nothing would bolster our prosperity more than influx of entrepreneurs’

- Stephen Pollard

If you want to understand why an ever-growing number of MPs are demanding the Government provides a legally-binding date by which Chinese company Huawei is stripped from the UK’s 5G network, think back to the Cold War.

Imagine if, at the height of the conflict, we had let a Soviet outfit install and run our phone network. Imagine further that, when there was widespread astonishment at the decision, the response was that it was fine because it was entirely separate from the Soviet state. It just happened its head was previously a senior telecoms engineer in the Red Army.

You can’t imagine it, can you? Because the very notion is ludicrous. Yes, there was Soviet infiltration. But it was covert and unwelcome. We didn’t willingly hand ourselves over to USSR front institutions and ask them to get on with it.

And yet that is what we have done in approving Huawei to deliver the implementation of our 5G network, vital to the future of the economy.

BUT the issue goes a lot further and deeper than Huawei or 5G. For years we have, entirely voluntarily, made ourselves ever more dependent on Chinese companies and investment.