This is explained in a Ted Talk-styled video clip featuring a prominent internet researcher in Putonghua. He terms 5G mankind's "7th information revolution", transiting from (1st) word of mouth, (2nd) the written word, (3rd) printing, (4th) wired telephone, (5th) television, and (6th) the internet. A world apart from previous technologies, 5G is considered the battleground (including the military) for global dominance in the 21st century.
The history of mobile communication technologies bears witness to rivalry for global standard-setting. The US dominated 1G driven by American giants such as Motorola and AT&T. For 2G, the Europeans pushed back by wooing China to embrace GSM as the leading standard. This helped ascendance of European multinationals like Ericsson, Nokia and Alcatel.
For 3G, the Americans turned the table by partnering with China, dividing global standards between TD-SCDMA (Chinese), WCDMA (US) and CDMA2000 (European). For 4G, the Europeans fought back by wooing China again, winning the commanding heights between TD-LTE (Chinese) and FDD-LTE (European).
For 5G, thanks to Huawei, by perfecting technology and chips and quietly winning over telecom infrastructure in 160 countries worldwide, China is now by far the technology and market leader.
5G is an epochal game-changer in six distinct areas: (1) super-fast, (2) ubiquitous, (3) energy-lite, (4) virtually no time lag, (5) highly secured and (6) connectivity of everything (IoT). Every car, personal device and home appliance including clothing, shoes and toilet bowls promises to be connected. This makes possible completely autonomous self-driving taxis, instantaneous personal health monitoring and alerts, ubiquitous PM2.5 monitoring etc. The list is as fertile as human imagination. It is set to change businesses, economics, politics, the military, peoples, societies, and cultures.
Throughout the development, China has built a massive homeland internet infrastructure. Compared with 300,000 internet stations in the United States, China has 6.1 million. With 1.5 billion mobile phones now in use, by 2025, China is likely to have 10 billion 5G "terminals", including personal accessories, home appliances and domestic facilities.
Panicked by China's burgeoning 5G dominance, the Trump administration resorts to wracking Huawei through a global smearing campaign, banning Huawei products in the United States and allies, and leveraging the long arm of US laws.
Nevertheless, through demonstrations of professional integrity, quality and secure infrastructure, Huawei seems to be winning over some key US allies, including UK, Germany, France and Italy. While sharing US security concerns, absent concrete evidence, they have ruled out outright ban of Huawei infrastructure and products, subject to further safeguards and scrutiny.
Meanwhile, it seems that the US is quietly preparing to use tariffs against car and other imports from Europe and Japan. It seems that India may soon be added to the list of Trump's global America First trade war. If so, this would represent a new opportunity for China as the other powers hedge their bets.
