The Escalating U.S.-China Cyber Trade War

On Oct. 8, the House Select Intelligence Committee released a report on the cybersecurity threat posed by China's Huawei and ZTE, the world's second- and fourth-largest telecommunications suppliers. The report, which described the companies as potential espionage risks and asked the U.S. government and U.S. firms to refrain from doing business with them, drew an angry response from Chinese media: Xinhua, China's state news agency, called its conclusions "totally groundless" and arising out of "protectionism"; the nationalistic tabloid Global Times said the United States is becoming an "unreasonable country"; and the state-run English language newspaper China Daily labeled the accusations "unreasonable and unjustifiable." But the fear of vulnerability from foreign technology, whether reasonable or not, is as present in China as it is in the United States -- now more than ever.