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.