TWO U.S. Republican senators introduced legislation Wednesday that they would block the U.S. Government from buying or leasing telecommunications equipment from Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. or ZTE Corp., citing concern the Shenzhen-based companies would use their access to spy on U.S. officials.

The move is the latest sign of a tougher stance from Washington in trade between the world’s two largest economies.

Arkansas senator Tom Cotton accused Huawei of being “an arm of the Chinese Government, and it’s more than capable of stealing information from U.S. officials by hacking its devices,” which the company has denied.

Republicans Mike Conaway and Liz Cheney also have legislation in the House calling for similar measures against Chinese tech.

China’s official Xinhua News Agency said in a commentary Wednesday that the efforts to block Huawei and other Chinese companies showed the United States was worried about China’s rapid development, and it called into question the U.S. commitment to market economics.

“U.S. President [Donald] Trump always emphasizes ‘fair trade.’ From these cases it is clear that U.S.-style ‘fair trade’ sacrifices fairness to other countries,” Xinhua said.

The proposed legislation comes amid a growing push from the U.S. Government to cut ties with Chinese telecommunications firms.

Last month, lawmakers reportedly pushed AT&T to nix a plan to offer Huawei devices to customers. AT&T Inc. was forced to scrap a plan to offer its customers Huawei handsets after some members of Congress lobbied against the idea with federal regulators.

The U.S. Government has also blocked a string of Chinese acquisitions over national security concerns, including Ant Financial’s proposed purchase of U.S. money transfer company MoneyGram International.

The U.S. lawmakers are also advising U.S. companies that if they have ties to Huawei or telecom operator China Mobile, it could hamper their ability to do business with the U.S. Government, one aide said.

Huawei has a unique shareholding pattern — 100 percent of it is employees-held, and there are no major shareholders. The roughly 80,000 employees own almost 99 percent of the company under an “employee stock option plan.” Interestingly, the founder of the company — Ren Zhengfei — is its biggest shareholder, but he owns just 1.4 percent, according to the Financial Times.

(SD-Agencies)