East is East: The possibility of Chinese 5G technology undermining Indian security should not be taken lightly by New Delhi. Image: Sanjay Kanojia/Getty Images

Bangalore, India

Will Huawei Technologies build India’s 5G wireless networks? In the technological cold war between the U.S. and China, India—the world’s second-largest wireless market by number of users—may be the biggest prize up for grabs. Washington wants India to reject Huawei and instead choose one of its Western rivals, Sweden’s Ericsson or Finland’s Nokia. Beijing, needless to say, is batting for its flagship technology firm.

The call New Delhi ultimately makes will help decide whether China will dominate the future of the internet. India’s mobile market is dwarfed only by the Chinese market itself. Rush Doshi, an expert on Chinese strategy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, says: “5G will be the backbone of the digital economy, and the digital economy is increasingly the backbone of the world economy. It’s important to get this right early.”

India’s rollout of 5G technology is still at least a year away. But the U.S. has already made its concerns about Huawei known. On a visit to New Delhi in early October, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross warned that India may “inadvertently subject itself to untoward security risk” by not heeding U.S. warnings about Huawei.

In this newspaper on Wednesday, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai warned that letting Chinese equipment into 5G wireless networks “would open the door to censorship, surveillance, espionage and other harms.” Mr. Pai’s message wasn’t aimed at India, but it captures some of Washington’s worries about the Chinese firm.


Because of 5G’s large bandwidth and high speeds—between 10 and 100 times as fast as mobile connections today—the technology could transform everything from industrial robots and security cameras to drones, driverless cars and telemedicine.

Its likely ubiquity makes the risk of Beijing snooping and committing sabotage far more consequential than it is now. The U.S. firms that led 4G innovation—including Apple, Google and Facebook —were private companies with legal recourse to defend their users’ privacy under U.S. law. If Beijing brings 5G to the world, the security risks won’t be confined to using Huawei wireless. Analysts argue that by building the next generation of wireless infrastructure, China would give its own firms a decisive edge over competitors. Chinese tech could end up dominating the world.

For India, Huawei—like China itself—represents both an opportunity and a threat. Chinese tech firms are already deeply embedded in India’s economy. Billboards for Chinese smartphones dot the streets of Bangalore, India’s technology capital. For many of India’s approximately 500 million smartphone users, drawn to the internet by some of the world’s lowest mobile-data prices, the choice isn’t between global brands like Apple and Samsung, but between low-cost Chinese competitors such as Vivo, Oppo and Xiaomi.

This isn’t confined to hardware. The Chinese video app TikTok has developed a vast Indian user base. Chinese investors such as the Alibaba Group and Tencent have stakes in some of India’s most prominent startups, including the e-commerce payment system PayTM and the ride-share firm Ola.


Huawei has had an office in Bangalore since the 1990s. In 2015 it opened a 20-acre research-and-development center on the outskirts of the city. Indian mobile carriers Airtel and Vodafone have used Huawei gear to build out some of India’s current wireless infrastructure.

As in much of Asia and Africa, Huawei is hoping its combination of cutting-edge technology and cut-rate prices will make it irresistible to India. Brutal competition combined with erratic regulatory policy and whimsical court judgments has saddled several Indian telecom firms with large amounts of debt. They would welcome the Chinese state-owned bank financing that Huawei brings to the table.

“As the only vendor with end-to-end 5G technology and on-ground deployment experience across countries and continents, Huawei is best placed to bring world-class tech especially customised for India,” says Jay Chen, Huawei India CEO, in an emailed statement. He is confident that the government of India will “take an informed and independent call on 5G based on scientific facts, standards, and policies.”

In the end, though, India’s decision will likely depend more on geopolitical and national-security concerns than on purely economic factors. India’s strategic elites are wary of growing Chinese influence, and New Delhi has pushed back against elements of Beijing’s economic expansionism. India is the most prominent Asian country to give the cold shoulder to Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative. The odds of its embracing Huawei 5G are slim.


If India rejects Huawei, either explicitly or by framing regulations that effectively exclude it, it will join skeptics in Asia, including Australia, Japan and Vietnam. On the other side are most countries in South and Southeast Asia.

It’ll cost India to turn down Huawei, but choosing Beijing could prove more expensive. Mr. Doshi says India would give up some of its vaunted strategic autonomy: “The more leverage you give China, the more trouble you’ll get yourself in when your political interests clash with theirs.”