The relationships between the two telecommunications equipment makers and the Chinese government as well as their alleged capacity to conduct electronic espionage for China raised objections to the use of ZTE and Huawei’s products in a certain number of countries. In fact, the US House of Representatives' Intelligence Committee published on 12 October 2012 a scathing report presenting both companies as a national threat. Besides, an internal European Union report circulated last year recommended that the European commission should take action against ZTE and Huawei as these companies may benefit from state subsidies and sell their products below cost. The latest disclosures indicate that EU officials now have evidence of Chinese subsidies.

In France, concerns were first brought up in the Senate report on Cyberdefense published on 12 July 2012 in which Senator Jean-Marie Bockel advocated the “complete ban of Chinese network routers and other sensitive IT equipments on the European territory” for national security reasons. According to an interview of Mr. Lin Cheng, ZTE Vice President, published in the daily newspaper “Les Echos” on 11 April 2013, it seems that the French government is considering this issue very seriously at the moment. Indeed, authorities had requested in late 2012 that the company take off equipments from its commercial partners networks in some French overseas territories. As a matter of fact, article R.226-3 of the French criminal code provides that the manufacture, import, supply, rental or sale of certain devices including network routers is subject to prior authorization to be given by the Prime Minister after having consulted the ANSSI (Agence Nationale de la Sécurité des Systèmes d’Information). ZTE is thus accused of having sold core network deviceswithout having obtained the prescribed authorisation and is now requested to dismantle them. The consequences for ZTE at a commercial scale appear to be disastrous.

If French and European authorities seem to get tougher against ZTE and Huawei, it is however unlikely, for political and economic reasons, that they will shut the two Chinese companies out of the EU market as the United States and Australia did on their territories.