US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the role China has played in the coronavirus pandemic will likely make countries rethink the use of its tech giant Huawei's 5G networks.
"I am very confident that this moment where the Chinese Communist Party failed to be transparent and open and handle data in an appropriate way will cause many, many countries rethink what they were doing with respect to their telecom architecture," Pompeo told Fox Business Network.
This comes amid a report by Reuters earlier this week, which said that Chinese tech giant Huawei had started to gradually shift the production of chips away from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC) to Shanghai-based Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), in anticipation of extra restrictions from the United States.
Previously, the US media said that new restrictions had been agreed by senior US officials requiring companies cooperating with Huawei to receive licenses before selling chips using US-made technologies.
Washington imposed sanctions against Huawei last year for the first time, accusing the tech giant of cooperating with Chinese intelligence, an allegation that the company denies. Despite US restrictions, which among other things include a ban on Google installing its Android operating system on new models of Huawei's smartphones, the Chinese tech giant reported last month that its revenues grew by more than 19% last year.
