Earlier this week India started 5G equipment trials that excluded Chinese vendors and China thinks that’s bang out of order.

While there didn’t appear to be and explicit ban on Chinese vendors at the time, the Chinese embassy in India reckons there was and is not happy. For some reason China decided to frame its public statement as a response to a question from an unnamed member of the media – presumably one of the ones controlled by the Chinese state.

“In a notification issued on May 4th by the Department of Telecommunications, Government of India, Chinese telecommunication companies are not permitted to conduct 5G trials with Indian Telecom Service Providers. What’s your comment?” went the media query.

“We noted relevant notification, and express concern and regret that Chinese telecommunications companies have not been permitted to conduct 5G trials with Indian Telecom Service Providers in India,” responded Counsellor Wang Xiaojian.

“Relevant Chinese companies have been operating in India for years, providing mass job opportunities and making contribution to India’s infrastructure construction in telecommunications. To exclude Chinese telecommunications companies from the trials will not only harm their legitimate rights and interests, but also hinder the improvement of the Indian business environment, which is not conducive to the innovation and development of related Indian industries.

“The Chinese side hopes that India could do more to enhance mutual trust and cooperation between the two countries, and provide an open, fair, just, and non-discriminatory investment and business environment for market entities from all countries, including China, to operate and invest in India.”

It’s an interesting statement. Firstly it seems like an attempt by the Chinese to make the ban more explicit than the Indians intended. Secondly it trots out the now-familiar refrain of ‘you’re only hurting yourselves’, and lastly it puts all the onus for ‘enhancing mutual trust’ onto India. It is presumably because India doesn’t trust China that the ban was implemented in the first place, so that statement seems somewhat redundant.