China has accused the US of trying to suppress its tech companies, as US prosecutors reportedly investigate allegations that Huawei stole trade secrets from US businesses.

Adding to pressure on the Chinese telecoms firm, US lawmakers have proposed a ban on selling US chips or components to the company.

“The real intent of the United States is to employ its state apparatus in every conceivable way to suppress and block out China’s high-tech companies,” said Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for the foreign affairs ministry, at a regular news briefing on Thursday.

She said the reported investigation would be not only “a violation of free and fair business competition but a violation rule of law.”

The state-run Global Times called the latest pressure on Huawei a form of “technological McCarthyism” aimed at politicising and blocking Chinese businesses. Hu Xijin, the editor of the paper, said he believed US attitudes toward China had reached a level of “hysteria”.

“By escalating its crackdown on Huawei, the US sets a bad precedent of applying McCarthyism in high-tech fields. It deprives a high-tech company of the rights to stay away from politics, focus on technology and market. It is imposing a political label on a Chinese company,” Hu wrote on Twitter.

According to the Wall Street Journal, which cited anonymous sources, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) is in the advanced stages of a criminal inquiry that could result in an indictment of Huawei.

The newspaper said the DoJ was looking into allegations of theft of trade secrets from Huawei’s US business partners, including a T-Mobile robotic device used to test smartphones.

Huawei and the DoJ declined to comment directly on the report.

Huawei said: “Huawei and T-Mobile settled their disputes in 2017 following a US jury verdict finding neither damage, unjust enrichment nor wilful and malicious conduct by Huawei in T-Mobile’s trade secret claim.”

The move would further escalate tensions between the US and China after the arrest last year in Canada of Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of the company’s founder.

The case of Meng, under house arrest awaiting proceedings, has inflamed US-China and Canada-China relations.

Two Canadians have been detained in China since Meng’s arrest and a third has been sentenced to death on drug trafficking charges – moves observers have seen as attempts by Beijing to pressure Ottawa over her case.

China appears to have briefly detained a third Canadian on Wednesday. Ti-Anna Wang was detained at the Beijing airport as she transited from Seoul to Toronto. Chinese police boarded the plane and removed Wang, her husband and infant daughter.

“It was a shocking, terrifying and senseless ordeal with no purpose but to bully, punish and intimidate me and my family,” she told The Globe and Mail. She was reportedly separated from her family for two hours.

Wang was sent back to Seoul by Chinese authorities, unable to complete her journey home to Toronto. Previously, Wang had been denied entry into China last week, despite having a visa, as she sought to visit her father, a jailed political dissident.

‘A threat to all countries’

Only months ago, Canada and China were eagerly discussing the prospects of a free trade deal.

On Wednesday, following a high-level meeting of cabinet ministers and ambassadors, Canada’s minister of foreign affairs Chrystia Freeland once again rebuked China, calling its behaviour “a threat to all countries”.

Canada has sought to recruit allies in its fight to win both the release of two detained Canadians and clemency for a third citizen currently facing the death penalty.

“Our government has been energetically reaching out to our allies and explaining that the arbitrary detentions of Canadians are not just about Canada. They represent a way of behaving which is a threat to all countries,” said Freeland.

China’s vice-premier and economic czar, Liu He, will be traveling to the US on 30 and 31 January for the next round of trade talks between the two countries, the ministry of commerce has said.

Huawei, the second-largest global smartphone maker and biggest producer of telecommunications equipment, has for years been under scrutiny in the US over purported links to the Chinese government.

Huawei’s reclusive founder Ren Zhengfei, in a rare media interview on Tuesday, forcefully denied accusations that his firm engaged in espionage on behalf of the Chinese government.

The tensions came against a backdrop of Donald Trump’s efforts to get more manufacturing on US soil and apply hefty tariffs on Chinese goods for what the US president has claimed are unfair trade practices by Beijing.

In a related move, US politicians introduced a bill to ban the export of American parts and components to Chinese telecoms companies that were in violation of US export control or sanctions laws – with Huawei and ZTE the likely targets.

The Republican senator Tom Cotton, one of the bill’s sponsors, said: “Huawei is effectively an intelligence-gathering arm of the Chinese Communist party whose founder and CEO was an engineer for the People’s Liberation Army.”

The Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen said in the same statement: “Huawei and ZTE are two sides of the same coin. Both companies have repeatedly violated US laws, represent a significant risk to American national security interests and need to be held accountable.”

Last year Trump reached a deal with ZTE that eased tough financial penalties on the firm for helping Iran and North Korea evade American sanctions. Trump said his decision in May to spare ZTE came following an appeal by China’s president, Xi Jinping, to help save Chinese jobs.