Washington accused of suppressing China firms

China on Thursday called on Washington to drop efforts to expel three state-owned Chinese telecommunications companies from the United States in a new clash over technology and security.

The Federal Communications Commission voted on Wednesday to begin revoking the companies' US licenses, saying they pose "security risks."

Chinese foreign ministry accused Washington of misusing security complaints to hurt Chinese commercial competitors.

The United States should "stop the wrong practice of generalizing the concept of national security and politicizing economic issues" and "stop abusing state power to unreasonably suppress Chinese enterprises," said a ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian.

Zhao said China will "take necessary measures to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese enterprises."

The latest action targets China Unicom Americas, a unit of China Unicom; Pacific Networks Corp and its wholly-owned subsidiary ComNet (USA) LLC. They sell international voice and data service.

The companies were ordered to explain their ownership and operations, and "failed to address the serious national security threats posed by their continued operation in the US," said Commissioner Brendan Car in a statement.

In a statement following Wednesday's ruling, China Unicom, one of the world's largest carriers, insisted that it has never acted illegally and expected a "thorough, fair and fact-based review of the company's conduct by the FCC," Bloomberg reported.

The regulator opened a similar proceeding in December to begin revoking the authorization of China Telecom, which has had US authorization for nearly 20 years.

In May 2019, the FCC voted unanimously to deny another state-owned Chinese telecommunications company, China Mobile, the right to provide US services, citing security risks.

Meanwhile, the US Commerce Department said on Wednesday that it has served subpoenas on multiple Chinese companies that provide information and communications technology services in the United States to see if they pose a national security risk.

The statement did not name any companies. China's Huawei Technologies and ZTE Corp were targeted by the administration of Donald Trump for removal from the US telecoms infrastructure.