The Infamous Date That Looms Over the Hong Kong Protests

The demonstrations have parallels to the Tiananmen Square protests, but the legacy of another event on June 4, 1989, could shape Hong Kong’s future.

By JEFFREY WASSERSTROM
Riot police prepare to throw tear gas at protesters in Hong Kong.

The Beijing massacre was not the only important thing that happened in the world on June 4, 1989.
To be sure, the news dominated the front page of the following day’s edition of The New York Times—“Beijing Death Toll at Least 300” ran across the top, accompanied by a photograph of bloodied bodies and crushed bicycles. 

Below that image, however, was a story bearing the headline “Big Solidarity Victory Seen in Poland,” illustrated with a photograph of Lech Wałęsa, the dock worker turned political prisoner who against all odds was about to ascend to national power. 

Oh, and Iran had named a new supreme religious leader.
As eventful as that early June was, for most members of the crowd I joined at Hong Kong’s Victoria Park this month for a candlelight vigil to honor the 30th anniversary of Tiananmen, only one thing that happened in late spring of 1989 seemed important. 

The iconic Tank Man image seemed to be everywhere, on T-shirts and banners, and even turned into commemorative figurines.
Yet in spite of the powerful place Tiananmen holds in the imaginations of many Hong Kong residents, I am convinced that local activists would do well to keep in mind another thing that happened on June 4, 1989. 

At a time when a dramatic struggle over the city’s future is under way, centering on a proposed extradition law that large numbers of Hong Kong residents fear would sound the death knell for their ability to enjoy legal protections lacking on the mainland, the Tiananmen tragedy is worth remembering. 

So, too, though, is the unlikely victory of Solidarity.
The value of drawing connections between Beijing in 1989 and Hong Kong’s recent struggles is obvious: It was a key moment of political awakening, and last weekend’s march has been described as the biggest held in Hong Kong since one staged 30 years earlier to express anger at the June 4th massacre. 

To some protest leaders in Hong Kong, such as Joshua Wong, their Umbrella Movement—the name for demonstrations that erupted in 2014—carried forward a tradition that can be traced back all the way to student rallies in 1919 and was revived in 1989.
What, then—given how much further in geography and culture Hong Kong is from Warsaw than it is from Beijing—is the point of looking back to Solidarity?
For one, there are some parallels associated with the protesters themselves. 

For example, religious beliefs and organizations did not play a central role in the Tiananmen struggle, but Wong sometimes describes his activism as rooted in his faith.

One of the most important senior figures in the Umbrella Movement was Reverend Chu Yiu-ming, and Christian organizations have played significant roles in various recent Hong Kong struggles. These things all call to mind, despite important differences, the central role the Catholic Church played in Solidarity.
Another connection has to do with targets of protest. 

The people Solidarity challenged and ultimately bested were power-holders who claimed to be serving local people but were actually beholden to, and backed by the might of, a distant capital. 

This description does not fit the leaders that the Tiananmen protesters challenged, but it does apply to Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam—and in this case, the distant capital is Beijing rather than Moscow.
Looking back to Solidarity’s electoral victory is certainly a more hopeful thing to do than focusing on the time that soldiers killed civilians in Beijing. 

It is worth remembering, though, that Solidarity’s fortunes were tied to developments in the Soviet Union as well as in Poland, and that its rise went in tandem with Mikhail Gorbachev’s softening of Moscow’s line toward states operating in its shadow.
Standing in Victoria Park on June 4, holding up a candle, I felt transported by a sense of being in step with a giant crowd engaged in a collective activity. 

Adam Michnik

As I let my mind wander, though, I began thinking more about Adam Michnik, a journalist who played key roles in the Solidarity story, than about the Tank Man.
He was on my mind in part because of a conversation we had early in the 2000s, when I was teaching at Indiana University and we hosted him for a visit. 

He had just seen a documentary about Tiananmen, The Gate of Heavenly Peace, for which I had been a consultant. 

When I asked him what he thought of it, he replied: “I knew everyone in the film.” 

This was not to say that he had a lot of Chinese friends—as he watched the movie, he kept thinking of counterparts within Solidarity and felt a shock of familiarity hearing Tiananmen activists debate, just as he and his colleagues had, the relative value of different strategies for challenging authoritarian rule, some urging caution and others pushing for more radical actions. 

Would Michnik feel the same way at Hong Kong mass actions like the one I attended? 

Would he think he “knew everyone” at the scene?
Many of the protest leaders in Hong Kong have similarities with Michnik. 

As Nina Witoszek relates in her book The Origins of Anti-Authoritarianism, Michnik began his career as an activist by forming a study society at the tender age of 15. 

Wong, who was similarly in his mid-teens in 2012 when he helped lead a successful drive to block the Hong Kong government from bringing mainland-style patriotic education into the territory, was, Witoszek concluded, a “living alter ego” of Michnik—each had even fallen afoul of a Communist Party and spent time behind bars as a prisoner of conscience. (Wong was, in fact, serving his second stint in jail at the time of the recent Victoria Park vigil.)
There are other, perhaps even more apt, successors to Michnik in the city, such as the singer turned activist Denise Ho. 

Wong is still only 21, while Michnik was in his late 30s when he wrote his book Letters From Prison and Other Essays. 

Ho, now in her early 40s, has long been vocal on LGBTQ issues and began taking daring political stances on democracy five years ago. 

She saw her songs banned from all mainland streaming services and lost all chances to tour Chinese cities, and a subsidiary of the French cosmetics firm L’Oréal canceled a concert featuring her. 

More recently, she has been playing a prominent role in the fight against the extradition law, speaking at protests, giving interviews, and publishing an op-ed in The Washington Post. 

Many of her phrases bring Michnik to mind. 

While Solidarity was in the opposition, he was known for, among other things, calling for Poles to remain open to as wide a range of tactics of struggle as possible and not be too quick to assume that setbacks are failures from which there can be no return. 

Ho has struck all the same chords. 

Michnik’s writings, like Ho’s speeches, convey a passion for a beloved community and an admiration for the people struggling to protect it, flawed as their actions sometimes are, that are so poignant as to be heartrending.
Among the items I picked up on my last visit to Hong Kong was Unfree Speech, Wong’s writings during an earlier period of incarceration. 

It was not easy to find—more and more bookstores have fallen under the control of pro-Beijing companies, and even some of those that have not are wary about stocking titles that directly criticize the local political status quo and the Chinese Communist Party. 

It is a beautiful object to behold, with an elegantly designed cover that can be manipulated by hand to show the author’s face behind bars and then free, as well as some facsimile pages inside showing prison diary entries in his own hand.
I will treasure this copy of Unfree Speech, but it is not the only souvenir of the trip that means a lot to me. 

Even more precious is something my friend Jeffrey Ngo, who often co-writes op-eds with Wong, gave me on the afternoon of June 6, right after visiting his co-author in prison: the only Tank Man figurine left among those that the opposition group he and Wong belong to had brought to their booth near Victoria Park, the rest sold to help fundraise for their organization.
I can’t help but wonder, when I look at this pair of objects on my desk right now, whether Wong will ever, as Michnik did in the 1990s, be able to write an upbeat follow-up to his book. 

The Polish intellectual’s sequel was called Letters From Freedom, with the third word in the title referring to not just his being out of jail but his country being liberated from Communist Party rule.
The figurine of the Tank Man is a reminder of how hard it is to imagine the time coming when Wong will be able to write a comparable book, presumably titled Free Speech, in an era when not only is he personally at liberty but he feels sanguine about the state of the community he loves. 

Thirty years on from the June 4th massacre, after all, the People’s Republic of China remains under one-party rule and Tiananmen and the Tank Man are still taboo topics in all parts of the country, save Hong Kong and the former Portuguese colony of Macau. 

Beyond this, the shadow Beijing casts is lengthening rather than lightening under a leader more bent on controlling all under his domain than China has seen in decades.
And yet, one thing that the histories of Poland and Hong Kong alike remind us is that completely unexpected things can happen. 

Not so long ago, one conventional wisdom about Hong Kong was that its people did not care deeply about politics, yet the city has been the site of extraordinary bursts of activism. 

In the wake of Poland’s June 4th, it seemed likely that Wałęsa would be remembered as a great national hero, but the 30th anniversary of that event finds him a contested figure. 

Right-wing populists are in charge in Warsaw and, though in some cases they began their own political careers with Solidarity, they view him with disdain. 

His reputation has also suffered since 1989 even among those with no time for the populists.
Equally or even more unexpected is how quickly things changed in Poland and other parts of the Soviet bloc after Letters From Prison was published in the mid-1980s. 

In a glowing review of the book that ran in The New York Times on October 9, 1986, Walter Goodman refers to the centenary of the Statue of Liberty being marked in the United States that year, while “the nations of Eastern and Central Europe have been ending their fourth decade under Soviet control.” 

He doubted that the people of those Communist Party–controlled lands would “have much to celebrate” when the “semicentennial” of the Cold War’s start arrived in 1996. 

But just three years later, the Berlin Wall fell.
Only a fool would predict a happy ending to the Hong Kong story, but it is also foolish to assume that history will follow a predictable course. 

And just as Michnik’s most famous statement in Letters From Prison was that Poles should practice acting “as if they were free” even while living in an unfree land, there is much to be said for the people of Hong Kong now acting, despite all the logical reasons to feel hopeless, as if there is hope.
As I watch the inspiring images coming out of the city right now, that seems to be just what they are doing.

Belt and Road forum: China's 'project of the century' hits tough times

Raft of countries including Turkey have refused to attend latest summit amid growing concern about debt trap diplomacy
By Lily Kuo in Beijing

Workers perfect a decoration in the shape of a train for the 2019 Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, China. 

As China fetes its Belt and Road initiative at a summit this week, Chinese officials will be working hard to defend the flagship project from growing international criticism.
The three-day forum starting on Thursday is meant to promote Chinese dictator Xi Jinping’s “project of the century”, a foreign policy initiative launched in 2013 to revive ancient trading routes between Asia and Europe, as well as build new links in the Middle East, Africa, and South America.
But in contrast to its first summit two years ago, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) takes place in a much less welcoming environment. 

Critics say the initiative is an effort to cement Chinese influence around the world by financially binding countries to Beijing by way of “debt trap diplomacy”.

This week’s event is especially important for Beijing, which uses the forum as a way to convince the international community, as well as its own citizens, of the success of the project.
Beijing is likely to laud the memoranda of understanding signed at the event, which will conclude with a joint communique.

The China-funded Lotus Tower in central Colombo. 

“The overall purpose of the Belt and Road initiative is to generate legitimacy for the Chinese leadership and the Chinese Communist Party more broadly,” said Thomas Eder, a research associate at the Mercator Institute for Chinese Studies.
“Such prestige is bolstered by every government signing a BRI memorandum of understanding and every head of government attending a grand BRI summit in Beijing. These countries allow Xi Jinping to then tell Chinese citizens that the entire world is endorsing his policies and that he is the one to have put China firmly back at the centre of the global stage,” Eder said.
The event is to be attended by 37 leaders, including Vladimir Putin, Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte, UK chancellor Philip Hammond, Pakistan’s prime minister Imran Khan and the heads of state of the 10 Asean (Association of South-east Asian Nation) states. 

The US is sending low-level delegates, and India is not attending.
Countries that previously attended but have chosen not to come this year include Turkey, which has publicly criticised China over is treatment of the Uighurs, a Muslim minority, Poland, Spain, Fiji, Sri Lanka, and Argentina, according to the Eurasia Group, citing geopolitical issues as a possible reason.

Books on Chinese dictator Xi Jinping are seen displayed in the media centre for the second Belt and Road Forum.

Critics have also called for China to institutionalise the Belt and Road initiative, so that the project is not seen as entirely Chinese-led. 

Others have cited environmental concerns, as Chinese companies build coal power projects around the world. 

Coal projects accounted for as much as 42% of China’s overseas investment in 2018, according to the China Global Energy Finance database.
“For the sake of the planet, for people who could be breathing in pollutants from coal plants and for the long-term economic health of many developing countries, let’s hope BRI quits coal,” said Wawa Wang, senior adviser at VedvarendeEnergi in Denmark.

Ahead of the forum, China has scored some key wins for the project. 

Italy is now the first G7 country to endorse the initiative, after signing up for Belt and Road in March, despite criticism from the US. 

This month, Malaysia agreed to continue a $10.7bn rail project, previously cancelled.
So far, China has signed more than 170 agreements with 125 countries, according to Chinese state media. 

Between 2013 and 2018, these deals totalled more than $90bn in Chinese investment.
Beijing has also begun to take some steps to soothe concerns. 

Officials are reportedly drafting rules on which projects can be called “Belt and Road”, to prevent the initiative’s brand from being diluted by unsuccessful projects. 

Chinese ambassadors in Kenya and Mexico have published editorials in local media defending the initiative.
On Friday, Xi will give a keynote address, where he is likely to strike a similar tone. 

“The Belt and Road is an initiative for economic cooperation, instead of a geopolitical alliance or military league, and it is an open and inclusive process rather than an exclusive bloc or ‘China club’,” Xi said in remarks given at a symposium in August.

America Pushes Allies to Fight Huawei in New Arms Race With China

Whichever country dominates 5G will gain an economic, intelligence and military edge for much of this century

By David E. Sanger, Julian E. Barnes, Raymond Zhong and Marc Santora

Huawei’s offices in Warsaw. Polish officials recently came under pressure from the United States to bar Huawei from building its 5G communications network.

Jeremy Hunt, the British foreign minister, arrived in Washington last week for a whirlwind of meetings dominated by a critical question: Should Britain risk its relationship with Beijing and agree to the Trump administration’s request to ban Huawei, China’s leading telecommunications producer, from building its next-generation computer and phone networks?
Britain is not the only American ally feeling the heat.

In Poland, officials are also under pressure from the United States to bar Huawei from building its fifth generation, or 5G, network. 

Trump officials suggested that future deployments of American troops — including the prospect of a permanent base labeled “Fort Trump” — could hinge on Poland’s decision.
And a delegation of American officials showed up last spring in Germany, where most of Europe’s giant fiber-optic lines connect and Huawei wants to build the switches that make the system hum. Their message: Any economic benefit of using cheaper Chinese telecom equipment is outweighed by the security threat to the NATO alliance.
Over the past year, the United States has embarked on a stealthy global campaign to prevent Huawei and other Chinese firms from participating in the most dramatic remaking of the plumbing that controls the internet since it sputtered into being, in pieces, 35 years ago.
The administration contends that the world is engaged in a new arms race — one that involves technology, rather than conventional weaponry, but poses just as much danger to America’s national security.
In an age when the most powerful weapons, short of nuclear arms, are cyber-controlled, whichever country dominates 5G will gain an economic, intelligence and military edge for much of this century.

The transition to 5G — already beginning in prototype systems in cities from Dallas to Atlanta — is likely to be more revolutionary than evolutionary. 

What consumers will notice first is that the network is faster — data should download almost instantly, even over cellphone networks.
It is the first network built to serve the sensors, robots, autonomous vehicles and other devices that will continuously feed each other vast amounts of data, allowing factories, construction sites and even whole cities to be run with less moment-to-moment human intervention. 

It will also enable greater use of virtual reality and artificial intelligence tools.
But what is good for consumers is also good for intelligence services and cyberattackers. 

The 5G system is a physical network of switches and routers. 

But it is more reliant on layers of complex software that are far more adaptable, and constantly updating, in ways invisible to users — much as an iPhone automatically updates while charging overnight. 

That means whoever controls the networks controls the information flow — and is able to change, reroute or copy data without users’ knowledge.
In interviews with current and former senior American government officials, intelligence officers and top telecommunications executives, it is clear that the potential of 5G has created a zero-sum calculus in the Trump White House — a conviction that there must be a single winner in this arms race, and the loser must be banished. 

For months, the White House has been drafting an executive order, expected in the coming weeks, that would effectively ban United States companies from using Chinese-origin equipment in critical telecommunications networks. 

That goes far beyond the existing rules, which ban such equipment only from government networks.
Nervousness about Chinese technology has long existed in the United States, fueled by the fear that the Chinese could insert a “back door” into telecom and computing networks that would allow Chinese security services to intercept military, government and corporate communications. 

And Chinese cyberintrusions of American companies and government entities have occurred daily, including by hackers working on behalf of China’s Ministry of State Security.
But the concern has taken on more urgency as countries around the world begin deciding which equipment providers will build their 5G networks.
American officials say the old process of looking for “back doors” in equipment and software made by Chinese companies is the wrong approach, as is searching for ties between specific executives and the Chinese government. 

The bigger issue is the increasingly authoritarian nature of the Chinese government, the fading line between independent business and the state and new laws that will give Beijing the power to look into and take over networks that companies like Huawei have helped build and maintain.
“It’s important to remember that Chinese company relationships with the Chinese government aren’t like private sector company relationships with governments in the West,” said William R. Evanina, the director of America’s National Counterintelligence and Security Center. 

“China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law requires Chinese companies to support, provide assistance and cooperate in China’s national intelligence work, wherever they operate.”
The White House’s focus on Huawei coincides with the Trump administration’s broader crackdown on China, which has involved sweeping tariffs on Chinese goods, investment restrictions and the indictments of several Chinese nationals accused of hacking and cyberespionage. 

President Trump has accused China of “ripping off our country” and plotting to grow stronger at America’s expense.
President Trump’s views have prompted some countries to question whether America’s campaign is really about national security or if it is aimed at preventing China from gaining a competitive edge.
Administration officials see little distinction in those goals.
“President Trump has identified overcoming this economic problem as critical, not simply to right the balance economically, to make China play by the rules everybody else plays by, but to prevent an imbalance in political/military power in the future as well,” John R. Bolton, President Trump’s national security adviser, told The Washington Times on Friday. 

“The two aspects are very closely tied together in his mind.”
The administration is warning allies that the next six months are critical. 

Countries are beginning to auction off radio spectrum for new, 5G cellphone networks and decide on multibillion-dollar contracts to build the underlying switching systems. 

This past week, the Federal Communications Commission announced that it had concluded its first high-band 5G spectrum auction.
The Chinese government sees this moment as its chance to wire the world — especially European, Asian and African nations that find themselves increasingly beholden to Chinese economic power.
“This will be almost more important than electricity,” said Chris Lane, a telecom analyst in Hong Kong for Sanford C. Bernstein. 

“Everything will be connected, and the central nervous system of these smart cities will be your 5G network.”

Both the United States and China believe that whichever country dominates 5G will gain an economic, intelligence and military edge for much of this century.

A New Red Scare

American officials whisper that classified reports implicate Huawei in Chinese espionage but have produced none publicly. 

Others familiar with the secret case against the company say there is just a heightened concern about the firm’s rising technological dominance and the new Chinese laws that require Huawei to submit to requests from Beijing.

Australia last year banned Huawei and another Chinese manufacturer, ZTE, from supplying 5G equipment. 

Other nations are wrestling with whether to follow suit and risk inflaming China, which could hamper their access to the growing Chinese market and deprive them of cheaper Huawei products.
Government officials in places like Britain note that Huawei has already invested heavily in older-style networks.

And they argue that Huawei isn’t going away — it will run the networks of half the world, or more, and will have to be connected, in some way, to the networks of the United States and its allies.
Yet BT Group, the British telecom giant, has plans to rip out part of Huawei’s existing network. 

The company says that was part of its plans after acquiring a firm that used existing Huawei equipment; American officials say it came after Britain’s intelligence services warned of growing risks. 

And Vodafone Group, which is based in London, said on Friday that it would temporarily stop buying Huawei equipment for parts of its 5G network.
Nations have watched warily as China has retaliated against countries that cross it. 

In December, Canada arrested a top Huawei executive, Meng Wanzhou, at the request of the United States. 

Meng, who is Ren’s daughter, has been accused of defrauding banks to help Huawei’s business evade sanctions against Iran. 

Since her arrest, China has detained two Canadian citizens and sentenced to death a third Canadian, who had previously been given 15 years in prison for drug smuggling.
“Europe is fascinating because they have to take sides,” said Philippe Le Corre, nonresident senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 

“They are in the middle. All these governments, they need to make decisions. Huawei is everywhere.”

A Huawei store in Warsaw. This month, the Polish government made two high-profile espionage arrests, including an employee of Huawei.

Growing Suspicions
This month, the Polish government made two high-profile espionage arrests: a former intelligence official, Piotr Durbajlo, and Wang Weijing, an employee of Huawei. 

The arrests are the strongest evidence so far that links Huawei with spying activities.
Wang has been accused of working for Chinese intelligence agencies, said a top former Polish intelligence official. 

Wang was the handler of Durbajlo, who has helped the Chinese penetrate the Polish government’s most secure communications network.
The case was a prime example of how the Chinese government plants intelligence operatives inside Huawei’s vast global network. 

Those operatives have access to overseas communications networks and conduct espionage that the affected companies are not aware of, the official said.
Wang’s lawyer, Bartlomiej Jankowski, says his client has been caught up in a geopolitical tug of war between the United States and China.
American and British officials had already grown concerned about Huawei’s abilities after cybersecurity experts, combing through the company’s source code to look for back doors, determined that Huawei could remotely access and control networks from the company’s Shenzhen headquarters.
On careful examination, the code that Huawei had installed in its network-control software did not appear to be malicious. 

Nor was it hidden. 

It appeared to be part of a system to update remote networks and diagnose trouble. 

But it could also route traffic around corporate data centers — where firms monitor and control their networks — and its mere existence is now cited as evidence that hackers and Chinese intelligence use Huawei equipment to penetrate millions of networks.
Chinese telecommunications companies have also hijacked parts of the internet, rerouting basic traffic from the United States and Canada to China.
One academic paper, co-written by Chris C. Demchak, a Naval War College professor, outlined how traffic from Canada meant for South Korea was redirected to China for six months. 

That 2016 attack has been repeated and provides opportunity for espionage.
Last year, AT&T and Verizon stopped selling Huawei phones in their stores after Huawei begin equipping the devices with its own sets of computer chips — rather than relying on American or European manufacturers. 

The National Security Agency quietly raised alarms that with Huawei supplying its own parts, the Chinese company would control every major element of its networks. 

The N.S.A. feared it would no longer be able to rely on American and European providers to warn of any evidence of malware, spying or other covert action.

An assembly line at Huawei’s cellphone plant in Dongguan, China. The company has already surpassed Apple as the world’s second biggest cellphone provider.

The Rise of Huawei
In three decades, Huawei has transformed itself from a small reseller of low-end phone equipment into a global giant with a dominant position in one of the crucial technologies of the new century.
Last year, Huawei edged out Apple as the second-biggest provider of cellphones around the world. Richard Yu, who heads the company’s consumer business, said in Beijing several days ago that “even without the U.S. market we will be No. 1 in the world,” by the end of this year or sometime in 2020.
The company was founded in 1987 by Ren, a former People’s Liberation Army engineer who has become one of China’s most successful entrepreneurs.
The company started through imitation and theft of American technology. 

Cisco Systems sued Huawei in 2003, saying it had illegally copied the American company’s source code. 

The two companies settled out of court.
Huawei opened research centers (including one in California) and built alliances with leading universities around the world. 

Last year, it generated $100 billion in revenue, twice as much as Cisco and significantly more than IBM. 

Its ability to deliver well-made equipment at a lower cost than Western firms drove once-dominant players like Motorola and Lucent out of the telecom-equipment industry.
While American officials refuse to discuss it, the government snooping was a two-way street. 

As early as 2010, the N.S.A. secretly broke into Huawei’s headquarters, in an operation code-named “Shotgiant,” a discovery revealed by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor now living in exile in Moscow.
Documents show that the N.S.A. was looking to prove that Huawei was controlled by the People’s Liberation Army — and that Ren never really left the powerful army unit. 

But the Snowden documents also show that the N.S.A. had another goal: to better understand Huawei’s technology and look for potential back doors. 

This way, when the company sold equipment to American adversaries, the N.S.A. would be able to target those nations’ computer and telephone networks to conduct surveillance and, if necessary, offensive cyberoperations.

President Trump met with Andrzej Duda, his Polish counterpart, last year. Mr. Duda has suggested that the United States build a $2 billion base and training area, which Mr. Duda only half-jokingly called “Fort Trump.”

A Global Campaign
After an uproar in 2013 about Huawei’s growing dominance in Britain, the country’s powerful Intelligence and Security Committee, a parliamentary body, argued for banning Huawei, partly because of Chinese cyberattacks aimed at the British government. 

It was overruled, but Britain created a system to require that Huawei make its hardware and source code available to GCHQ, the country’s famous code-breaking agency.
In July, Britain’s National Cyber Security Center for the first time said publicly that questions about Huawei’s current practices and the complexity and dynamism of the new 5G networks meant it would be difficult to find vulnerabilities.
At roughly the same time, the N.S.A., at a series of classified meetings with telecommunications executives, had to decide whether to let Huawei bid for parts of the American 5G networks. 

AT&T and Verizon argued there was value in letting Huawei set up a “test bed” in the United States since it would have to reveal the source code for its networking software. 

Allowing Huawei to bid would also drive the price of building the networks down, they argued.
The director of the N.S.A. at the time, Adm. Michael S. Rogers, never approved the move and Huawei was blocked.
In July 2018, with these decisions swirling, Britain, the United States and other members of the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing alliance met for their annual meeting in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where Chinese telecommunications companies, Huawei and 5G networks were at the top of the agenda. They decided on joint action to try to block the company from building new networks in the West.
American officials are trying to make clear with allies around the world that the war with China is not just about trade but a battle to protect the national security of the world’s leading democracies and key NATO members.
On Tuesday, the heads of American intelligence agencies will appear before the Senate to deliver their annual threat assessment, and they are expected to cite 5G investments by Chinese telecom companies, including Huawei, as a threat.
In Poland, the message has quietly been delivered that countries that use Chinese telecommunications networks would be unsafe for American troops.
That has gotten Poland’s attention, given that its president, Andrzej Duda, visited the White House in September and presented a plan to build a $2 billion base and training area, which Mr. Duda only half-jokingly called “Fort Trump.”
Col. Grzegorz Malecki, now retired, who was the head of the Foreign Intelligence Agency in Poland, said it was understandable that the United States would want to avoid potentially compromising its troops.
“And control over the 5G network is such a potentially dangerous tool,” said Mr. Malecki, now board president of the Institute of Security and Strategy. 

“From Poland’s perspective, securing this troop presence outweighs all other concerns.”