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China’s political leadership is warning Swedish companies of negative economic effects after the Swedish Post and Telecommunications Agency decided to exclude Huawei and ZTE from the acquisition of the 5G network in Sweden.
“Sweden should view this in an objective and fair way and correct its mistake to avoid negative consequences for the Sino-Swedish cooperation and for Swedish companies operating in China,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said in the daily press conference for the media.
Zhao Lijian accused Sweden of using the intelligence law, which obliges all companies and citizens of China to cooperate and share information with the intelligence service, as a pretext to exclude Chinese companies and claimed that Chinese companies always follow the rules. local laws.
Huawei, which DN has requested, writes in a statement to the US newspaper The Hill that they are “surprised and disappointed” by the decision and hope that Sweden will reassess it.
At the same time, angry voices are being raised on Chinese social media. On the Weibo microblog, reminiscent of Twitter, more than 10,000 posts have been written about Sweden and Huawei. Some of them are just about the news itself. But here there are also publications calling for a boycott of Swedish companies following the decision of the Swedish Post and Telecommunications Agency. Among other things, the firm Cai Yun Xiang Jiang writes that the Chinese should stop buying Swedish brands. In connection with the publication, he has published the logo for more than a hundred Swedish companies, from H&M and KostaBoda to Ikea and Electrolux.
Other user it is formulated in a more subtle way and states that Ikea is big in China and now is the time to check the quality of its products.
Another sees that Sweden is against China and someone writes that the decision could pose a danger to companies like Ikea and Ericsson.
But not everything that is written is negative. A user is impressed that a small country like Sweden has so many internationally known companies and thinks that China should be better at developing companies that reach the world market.
This is not the first time that China has warned Swedish companies. Even when author and publisher Gui Minhai received the Tucholsky Prize for the Swedish pen, China’s ambassador to Sweden, Gui Congyou, threatened financial consequences.
China often uses threats about less access to its large market with more than a billion inhabitants to pressure countries and companies to dance to its rhythm. The broadcasts of the American basketball league NBA, for example, were pulled after general manager Daryl Morey gave his support to protesters in Hong Kong. Now Daryl Morey has resigned and the NBA is back on Chinese television.
