Why can't the U.S. and its allies allow China's Huawei telecommunications firm to support our networks?

Well, look no further than this gem of a video from China's Global Times newspaper on a supposed U.S. conspiracy behind the Hong Kong protest movement.

When #HongKong youngsters were incited to protest on the street, ringleaders who are messing Hong Kong up were enjoying dinner with their foreign "advisors" to further scheme the Hong Hong riots. Watch the video and as they are unmasked. #香港 pic.twitter.com/bVqpwbKiHt — Global Times (@globaltimesnews) August 15, 2019

The Global Times, a propaganda outlet which reflects Xi's Jinping's thinking, would like us to believe this report is simply the product of its fastidious reporters. But it is not. It's an effort to preemptively excuse an increasingly likely military crackdown in Hong Kong, and a lesson in the synergy between the formal and informal apparatus of the Chinese state — in this case, the synergy between China's formal Ministry of State Security intelligence service and the Global Times.

Just look at the video.

Showing numerous Hongkongers and the State Department's Julie Eadeh at a dinner, the video seeks to prove a conspiracy of U.S.-separatist forces against Beijing. But what really stands out here isn't the video's foreboding music, but rather the footage. The footage reeks of China's Ministry of State Security. At least some of the camera footage appears to have been recorded from a concealed camera (perhaps inside a bag of some kind). In addition, the linkage between one of the number plates and one of the dinner attendees is not exactly standard journalism. But it is very standard intelligence work. So also is the fact that someone was even at the dinner to make the recording: How did they know the dinner was taking place?

That brings us back to Huawei.

China claims that Huawei is a private entity that would never act in fulfillment of the Chinese intelligence services. But while this is a lie proven by investigations into Huawei software, the Global Times video proves the broader point: you cannot trust a major Chinese entity to act separate from the Chinese state. While this synergy is ultimately a function of the Chinese Communist Party's essence, it has been reinforced by Xi Jinping's centralizing authoritarianism.

Therein lies the irony here.

While this video pretends to show a conspiracy against China, it actually elucidates the conspiracy at the heart of the Chinese state: the union of Beijing's formal and informal apparatus.