Changes abound as power changes hands at the uppermost levels of the U.S. government, but the broad stroke of policies that impact telecommunications and technology will be less weighty.

The alterations that President Joe Biden’s administration intends to hoist upon 5G, technology, and the fractured state of interconnected affairs between China and the West won’t be fully known for months or years, but the general consensus is that little will change other than tone. 

It remains to be seen if the new administration will reverse course or fuel a further unraveling of global technology standards and business dealings between China and the U.S., but there is broad acceptance that differences between Biden and his predecessor in this area will be nuanced.

“I’m sure there will be a change in tone. It’ll probably be less bombastic, but I personally don’t think that there will be major changes,” Daryl Schoolar, practice leader of fixed and mobile infrastructure at Omdia, told SDxCentral.

Although the previous administration ramped up the rhetoric and increased activity in this area, the U.S. government’s restrictions on Huawei go back decades and have continued through every subsequent administration, he said.

“This is a bipartisan issue, one of the few bipartisan issues there are,” Schoolar said, adding that with everything else going on there isn’t much incentive for Biden to put political capital into this issue right now. 

“Just look at everything Biden has to deal with, including COVID, how to deal with the remnants of a possible coup of the government, massive unemployment,” he said, “Making sure Huawei is properly taken care of, I imagine it’s got to be somewhere on the bottom half of that to-do list.”

Nick McQuire, VP of enterprise research at CCS Insight, concurs with that assessment. “China should not expect any relief or immediate u-turn in direction from the Biden administration. The hard line on China in terms of trade and national security is, for the moment, a bipartisan issue, and the Biden administration will not want to appear to be softening its stance early in the presidency,” he said, adding that he too expects the new administration to be primarily focused on domestic issues until at least summer.

The Biden administration could, in the interim, start making moves that continue to impose restrictions on Chinese vendors but also allow U.S.-based chip manufacturers to get back into that market, said Chris Nicoll, service provider infrastructure analyst at Omdia.

Former President Donald Trump’s administration, during its final week in power, widened and tightened restrictions on Chinese technology companies and their suppliers, revoking several short-term licenses that allowed U.S.-based companies to continue selling components to Huawei. 

Billions of dollars, U.S. jobs, and U.S. leadership in technology is at stake, Nicoll explained. “The flip side of that is you don’t want the Chinese to become independent and then lose that market forever,” he said. 

Early comments from members of the Biden administration illustrate the complexities of working with and against China simultaneously. “China is our most serious global competitor, and this competition is going to be one fo the central challenges of this century,” Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council, said at CES 2021.

The U.S. government intends to “revitalize our alliances” and identify issues of common interest so it can convey a “clearer strategy around how to secure supply chains,” he added. An allied approach will also put the U.S. in a better position when circumstances require it to put pressure on China and hold the country accountable when it violates rules, Deese explained. 

“Part of the challenge that we've seen over the last couple of years has been the lack of a coherent strategy, and the application of tools in a way that doesn't actually add up to an approach that actually helps U.S. companies, U.S. workers, and the U.S. economy,” he said.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was even more forthcoming with the administration’s views on Huawei in particular during a recent press briefing. “Let us be clear. Telecommunications equipment made by untrusted vendors, including Huawei, is a threat to the security of the U.S. and our allies,” she said. 

“We’ll ensure that the American telecommunications networks do not use equipment from untrusted vendors, and we’ll work with allies to secure their telecommunications networks and make investments to expand the production of telecommunications equipment by trusted U.S. and allied companies,” Psaki said.

Those statements and many others make it clear the technological divisions between the U.S. and China may be irreconcilable, but a complete split on global technology standards and cooperation is something few want or expect.

“From an industry point of view, it’s critical that we hold together the global standard and not fragment that because the global standard has actually allowed the world to connect eight billion subscribers onto one uniform standard,” Ericsson CEO Börje Ekholm said in late January, remarking on the wireless frameworks established by global standards groups like 3GPP.

Chinese and Western radio access network (RAN) vendors are in agreement on this as well, according to Schoolar. “They still want the advantages of one global system,” he said. 

“It doesn’t benefit anyone to have a China-rest-of-the-world split because as you go after the rest of the markets around the world, which one do you go with?” Nicoll explained. “I think the reality is today, there’s not an East-West split yet, but if this was to continue for a few more years then I think you’d really see the impacts of that split.”

While trade tensions and “the technological cold war between East and the West will remain in focus for some time to come, they are likely to be tempered by a greater level of predictability and consistency in policies, which should mean not only a clearer picture on global trade but perhaps a more constructive environment for dialogue between Beijing and Washington under Biden as well,” McQuire said.

“Ultimately, for the broader global 5G and telecoms market, it means that the current fragmented technology climate is likely to continue for the foreseeable future and this will certainly impact early developments on global approaches to standards for 6G for instance,” he added.

Huawei is the world’s largest supplier of telecommunications technology and it remains so after a years-long campaign by the U.S. government to cripple its business through various measures. The company admits it has struggled as more political leaders and policymakers define the company as an agent for the Chinese government, but it’s been largely resilient amid allegations of espionage, trade secret theft, sanctions violations, and significant security vulnerabilities in its software.

Above all else though, the allegations of espionage, “that linkage of Huawei to the Chinese state and that being a security threat,” will be the biggest hurdle to overcome, Nicoll said. “Pandora’s box has been opened. When you accuse someone of being a security threat, there’s almost no way of proving that they’re not.”