Framing Huawei: from the target of national debate to the site of international conflict in Canada’s mainstream online newspaper

2.1 The concept of framing and framing of China

News framing is the central organizing principle of news stories (Entman 1993; Gamson and Lasch 1983; Gamson and Modigliani 1989; Pan and Kosicki 1993). To frame is “to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described” (Entman 1993: 52). The media frame is “a central organizing idea for news content that supplies a context and suggests what the issue is through the use of selection, emphasis, exclusion, and elaboration” (Tankard 2001). When covering a news event, journalists decide which elements to include or exclude in a story. Therefore, a single news event can be framed in various ways, producing different versions containing different attributes. These frames then influence the audience’s understanding of news stories.

Entman (1991) stated that frames provide mentally stored principles for information processing, characteristics of the news text, and describe attributes of the news itself. He also pointed out that an “event-specific-schema” is an understanding of the reported event that “guides individuals’ interpretation of initial information and their processing of all succeeding information about it” (1991: 7). He concluded that the frame can make opposing information more difficult for the typical inexpert audience member to discern and employ in developing an independent interpretation. As a result, the media greatly influences the majority’s view of policy or politics. Similar ideas are echoed by other scholars (e.g., Saleem 2007) in the area of foreign affairs and policies. Since the audience typically does not have first-hand information about the issues being reported, it primarily relies on the media to provide details and event-specific-schema. Hence, the audience view is even more likely to be significantly shaped by the media when it comes to foreign affairs and other countries.

When looking specifically at China, research general finds that, notwithstanding China’s tremendous economic growth, the Western media still frame China as “a country characterized by low wages, heavy pollution, political repression, human rights abuses, decaying social services, and social unrest” (Chen and Gunser 2019: 3; Goodrum et al. 2011; Ooi and D’arcangelis 2017; Tilt and Xiao 2010). Stravo (2014: 172) adds that Western media characterizes the Chinese as “secretive, unreliable, and authoritarian – bad global citizens”. Chen and Gunster (2019) noted that this trend is especially evident in the U.S. media. Lams (2016) writes that this is also true in European media reporting on China as in Belgium and the Netherlands media reporting is also consistently negative. In fact, “China is consistently portrayed by the [SIC] Western media with frames that focus on human rights, political containment, and economic trade” (Willnat and Luo 2011: 259).

As indicated above, Western media reporting tends to focus on the Chinese government (Huang and Leung 2006; Lams 2016) and hence is heavily event-driven and context dependent (De Swert and Wouters 2011; Lams 2016). In global television news, for instance, the representation of China is unidimensional with little attention given to cultural and social achievements (Willnat and Luo 2011). In the European transnational media, the rise of China is discussed primarily in economic, trade, finance and business reports, and caution is expressed with respect to the country’s rising global status (Zhang 2010). Goodrum et al.’s (2011) comparison of China-related news at national and local levels found that while the national Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) focuses on negative political stories concerning China, the Toronto Star and the Chinese language newspaper Ming Pao publish business- and culture related stories, thereby presenting a more comprehensive picture of China.

Chen and Gunster (2019) studied the representation of China by Canada’s alternative media, focusing on report on energy and environmental issues in the province of British Columbia. They found that China’s image within British Columbia’s alternative public sphere is characterized by the tension between two conflicting images – a negative frame of a powerful, foreign entity that unduly influences Canada’s economic policies and a positive frame as a global leader in renewable energy and, increasingly, in global climate negotiations. Nevertheless, the negative image was significantly more prominent than the positive one. They argued that readers of these news sources would view the Chinese government as a fearful foreign power aggressively expanding its influence in Canada. In many respects, such representations echo the anti-China and anti-communism rhetoric in the mainstream media. Goodrum et al. (2011) studied Canadian media at national, local and hyper-local levels and found that although China has a great economic impact on Canada, it was covered only as a marginal content in the Canadian international news mix. They concluded that in most cases, the coverage served to reinforce Canadian national identity and depicted China in a negative manner.

Coverage of Chinese enterprises has also been predominantly negative (Zhang et al. 2015). This is especially the case in the current environment of increased anti-globalization and protectionism (Chazan 2017; Mullen 2017; Stratmann 2017). The strained Sino-US relationship spills over and influences media coverage and will probably do so for the foreseeable future, especially during a firm’s initial establishment phase in Western markets. This striking contrast between the fast advancement of Chinese firms’ overseas operations and the negative Western media reports about China and Chinese firms certainly deserves increased academic attention (Fang and Chimenson 2017).

We strongly support this call for increased academic scrutiny and believe it is particularly applicable to the understanding of media coverage of Huawei’s international expansion. We focus on the Canadian mainstream national media report and predict that the tone would be largely negative, given the fact that Canada’s influential southern neighbor, the United States, has taken an antagonistic stance to China in general and to Huawei in particular. We are also interested, however, in the Canadian government’s reaction to Huawei’s operations and how the media and the stated government positions differ. In addition, we will look at Canada’s non-administration elites and the popular public opinion. According to Entman’s (2003) cascading activation model, all four elements (the government, other social and political elites, the media and the public opinion) play a role in the public sphere when it comes to foreign policy issues, with the elites wielding the most power. Hence, it would be relevant to look at all these players’ attitudes and views towards Huawei through the lenses of the media, whose frames are readily available for scrutiny.

2.2 Indexing hypothesis and the cascading activation model

According to Althaus et al. (1996), indexing hypothesis provides valuable insight for understanding media foreign policy coverage in democratic countries. Journalists seek to maintain balance by reporting opposing ideas as well as official governmental positions. While the press reports governmental information regarding policy stances and decision, the press is also supposed to be a guarantee for democracy and thus has an obligation to investigate governmental policies and to provide a platform for public debate. The press is supposed to strike a balance between these two requirements in its news reporting. As a result, in both news coverage and editorials, news professionals ‘index’ a wide range of viewpoints on issues which percolate in the news (Bennett 1990).

Hence, “indexing hypothesis applies most centrally to the question of how the range of positive, legitimate, or otherwise ‘credible’ news sources is established by journalists” (Bennett 1990: 107). Arguably, prestigious national news organizations carry more influence in this indexing process. Bennett (1990: 122) adds that the indexing process might be expected to operate most consistently in covering the issues of “military decisions, foreign affairs, trade and macroeconomic policy”. In the case of Huawei, Canada’s foreign policy was ambiguous. At the same time, many other sources have voiced their views. Ideally, the media’s role is to candidly report this national debate and index all voices from different sources, although, in reality, it often favors certain sides over others. Under this assumption, we expect that frames in Huawei reporting would be distributed along both positive and negative sides, with some emphasis on the negative given the findings from previous studies and the media traditions.

Entman (2003) builds on the indexing hypothesis to propose the cascading activation model, which states that newsworthy ideas typically flow from the government to other political elite, then the news media pick up them and quickly pass them on to the public. While this process can be reversed, when that occurs, it takes much more energy due to the layered structure of the cascading. In spreading ideas from the public up to where they influence the thinking of elites and governmental officials, the main road is again through the media. Entman (2003) added that at all levels of the process there are mixed motives, varying level of competence, and a great degree of uncertainty and pressure. The public is not always a passive receiver and can, on occasion, influence its construction through the media, reversing the flow of the cascading activation.

Entman (2003) argues that when it comes to foreign affairs and policies, the public will most likely rely on the media to tell them what to think and how to act because the media is mostly likely their only source of information. However, in today’s new media era, the public have more sources of information on foreign affairs and policies, and thus have more power to perform the “pumping effect” to reverse the cascading. Still, Ha et al. (2022) compared the U.S. and Chinese news media on the trade war between the two countries and found that the cascading activation model can be applied to both the U.S. and Chinese news media. They concluded that in international conflicts, the influence of the government on the news media, including both the traditional and new media they investigated, irrespective of their political tendencies, is stronger because national interests can unite the government and the news media. The media rely on their national government as the main source of news.

In the case of Huawei, it is still not clear which of these influences is more significant. Does the Canada administration have a significant influence on the media and resulting public opinion, or do the three entities (administration, elites and the media) work hand in hand to strengthen each other? In addition, how do foreign sources influence the dynamic of the cascading? When the media expresses concern about government policies it may turn to foreign sources for support (Althaus et al. 1996). In this case, the media finds ample support due to the US government’s decision to ban Huawei involvement in 5G network development in the US and its pressure on the Canadian government to do the same.

Both the indexing hypothesis and the cascading model were derived in the context of the US media, but they have also been applied in other countries’ media contexts even though scarcely. For example, Valenzano (2009) used the model to study Canadian newspapers’ report of the US foreign policy over the war on terror. Smith et al. (2010) adopted the model to study both the US and the world media outlets on the financial crisis. So did Justus and Hess (2006) who applied the model in the US and the world media outlets to study the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the war on terror.

Because we are interested in whether cascading activation model can be applied in media contexts other than the US and specifically in our case, we propose a hypothesis based on the theory as follow: The newspaper’s main frames of Huawei will be mostly from government officials and other political and social elites. We expect that our findings would contribute to test and enrich the theories.

2.3 An event driven model

Although both the indexing hypothesis and the cascading activation model provide significant insight, some scholars argue that they are too centered on the influence of elites. They add that dramatic events may undermine official narratives, influence news coverage and therefore must also be considered (e.g., Baum and Groeling 2009; Bennett and Lawrence 1995; Lawrence 2000; Wolfsfeld 1997). Thus, while they accept the influence of political elites on coverage, dramatic events may shape the way that the news media cover issues and thus potentially disrupt the control of political elites. Such events are non-routine, affect a large number of people, and involve conflict, all qualities that resonate with journalists’ perceptions of newsworthiness (Lawrence 2000; Oliver and Myers 1999).

Dramatic events provide “news icons,” vivid images or descriptions that “evoke larger cultural themes” (Bennett and Lawrence 1995: 22), which then shape the media’s presentation of subsequent events. Wolfsfeld (1997) goes even further, arguing that unexpected events can disrupt the control of political elites and provide opportunities for less powerful groups to shape media framing. Such events may serve to illustrate or strengthen the claims of less powerful groups and thus spur journalists to include their frames in news coverage (Wolfsfeld 1997: 45).

Studies have been carried out on the influence of such dramatic events on media coverage and framing. Speer (2017) carried out a content analysis study comparing New York Times coverage of the Iraq war before and after the Samarra bombing. His findings suggested that dramatic events encourage journalists to promote particular frames over others rather than simply mirroring official viewpoints. He concluded that his findings provided support both for Entman’s (2004) ‘cascading activation model’ and a more event-driven model of news coverage (e.g., Lawrence 2000). However, his findings did not refute the indexing hypothesis but suggested “a more nuanced version of it would be more appropriate, because coverage was not tightly indexed to the range of views amongst officials” (Lawrence 2000: 298).

Lams (2016: 154) argues, “Deconstructing the framing process is a way to resist stereotypical imaginaries of fixed identities in terms of us/them polarities, imaginaries of fear and conflict and manipulation of simplistic ideas.” We want to know how the Canadian media frames Huawei, a giant IT company from China, and deconstruct the framing process by not only presenting the statistical results but also analyzing the actual text.

Hence, the following research questions are proposed:

3.1 Data

We chose The Globe and Mail (called The G & M hereinafter) as our major data source because it is the most influential national newspaper in Canada, thus fitting one of the conditions of the indexing hypothesis. The Globe and Mail has a weekly readership of 6 million in 2024 and is Canada’s most read newspaper on weekdays and Saturdays. It is regarded by some as Canada’s “newspaper of record”^[1] (Encyclopaedia Britannica 2009). 332 articles containing the word “Huawei” were found on the official The G & M website between the date of Jan. 1st, 2018 and the date of March 30th, 2019. These articles include news articles, opinion articles, editor’s letters, and readers’ letters. Then, we found that there were only 53 items containing the word “Huawei” before Dec. 6th, 2018, the day when The G & M reported the arrest of Meng Wanzhou by Canadian government, and 279 articles turned up between Dec. 6th, 2018, the report of the arrest of Meng Wanzhou and March 30th, 2019, the end of our sampled period. The authors then read all the articles of the sample period in order to filter out those whose main topics were unrelated to Huawei but merely mentioned Huawei peripherally. We also filtered out editor and reader letters. Our final sample of 118 articles were news reports. Twenty-eight were from before the arrest of Meng Wanzhou and 90 were published after the arrest. The trend of frequency of the filtered Huawei news articles during the 15 months’ period on a monthly basis is shown in Figure 1. The trend of frequency of the unfiltered news article on Huawei by year from 2018 to 2024 is shown in Figure 2. Both trends show that the media’s interest in Huawei peaked in 2019 when the 5G debate was heated and when Meng Wanzhou was arrested.

Figure 1:

Selected Huawei news article frequency by month during the sample period.

Figure 2:

Unfiltered Huawei news article frequency by year from 2018 to 2024.

3.2 Discourse analysis

Discourse, in general terms, refers to actual practices of talking and writing (Woodilla 1998). Discourse analysis explores the relationships between a text, its production and the context in which it is produced (Philips and Hardy 2002) and is a natural for the purposes of our study. We use discourse analysis to examine the Huawei frames in The G & M articles. We look at the content of the frames, how certain frames are emphasized over other frames, the positive or negative tone of the frames, the socio-cultural implications associated with the frames, and the potential impact they may have on their readers. Specifically, we tried to look at how the journalists use language to inform the public opinion on the national debate whether Huawei should be accepted as a major contractor in Canada’s 5G technology development. Both micro-level (e.g., linguistic features) and macro-level (e.g., meanings and underlying assumptions) were analyzed. Examples of representative adaptations are given to explain the major frames. In doing so, we provide a detailed understanding of the media discourse that constructed the frames of Huawei which supplements the initial content analysis.

4.1 Frequencies of frames before and after the critical event

Research question one asked what frames and tones in general (positive or negative) were adopted in Canadian media’s coverage of Huawei during the selected timeframe. Analysis of the 118 selected articles in The G & M identified frames – National Security Threat (NST), Intellectual Property Seeker (IPS), Agent of China Dominance (ACD), Valued Partner (VP), Pride of China (PC), and Center of the Sino-West conflict (CC). From frequency analysis, our result shows that the main frames are NST (>80 %), CC (=50 %), and VP (>36 %). Table 3 summaries how often these frames appear over the entire time frame sampled as well as before and after the critical event. All of these frames take a negative to neutral view of Huawei’s influence in Canada except for one – the Valued Partner frame.

Research question two asked how the Canadian media coverage of Huawei reflect the attitudes and view of government officials and those of other political and social elites. We coded all sources that the journalists quoted in the articles. Seven source categories were identified: Canadian government officials (CGO), other Canadian social and political elites (CSE), American government officials (AGO), journalists (JOUR), Huawei Management (HM), Chinese government officials (ChGO), and other sources (OtherS). Table 4 presents the total source frequency as well as source frequency before and after the arrest.

Research question three asked how the critical event of the arrest of Meng Wanzhou influenced Huawei news reports. Significant changes were found in both framing and news sources as indicated in Tables 3 and 4. The following bar charts (Figures 3 and 4) helps to compare the frequency of frames and sources before and after the arrest.

Figure 3:

Comparing the frequency of frames before and after the arrest.

Figure 4:

Comparing the frequency of frame sources before and after the arrest.

Two frames – “Pride of China” and “Center of Sino-West Conflict” – increased after the critical event of the arrest of Huawei’s chief financial officer. The frames of “National Security Threat” and “Valued Partner” declined almost 20 %. The frames of “Intellectual Property Seeker” and “Agent of Chinese Dominance” remained almost unchanged. Before the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, four sources including Canadian government, Canadian social and political elites, American government officials, and The G & M Journalists are the most quoted sources. After the event, the G & M journalist source rose significantly to be found in 90.91 % of the articles while the rest three sources decreased significantly. Chinese government officials started to be cited in 10.23 % of the articles after the critical event. The Other Source category grew slightly to be found in 12.5 % of the articles (Table 4).

To summarize, we used frequency of codes to answer research questions one, two and three. The frames G & M adopted were predominately negative when talking about Huawei with “National Security Threat” being the most frequently adopted frame throughout the sample period we selected. Journalists were the predominant source in total during the whole sample period, although there were significant differences before and after the critical event. Finally, both frames and sources differ before and after the arrest of Meng Wanzhou. The major frames before the Meng Wanzhou incident are “National Security Threat” and “Valued Partner.” After the arrest, while “National Security Threat” remained the most frequent, the frame “Center of Sino-West Conflict” rose to be prominent as well. Comparing before and after the Meng Wanzhou event, journalists rose sharply from 53.57 % to 90.91 %. Although the American government officials (67.86 %) were the most cited sources before the Meng Wanzhou incident among all the sources identified, they dropped sharply after the incident (27.27 %). Both Canadian government officials (46.43 %) as well as Canadian social and political elites (46.43 %) were important sources for GM’s Huawei articles before the incident but reliance on these sources dropped after the incident (22.72 % and 20.45 %). Both Huawei management (18.97 %) and Chinese government officials (7.76 %) were minor sources during the sampled period in total, with Huawei management being somewhat important before the incident (32.14 %). The Chinese government was not quoted before the arrest and was only in 10.23 % of the articles after the arrest.

Our preliminary analysis of the number of articles concerning Huawei during the sampled periods (see Table 3) shows that there were infrequent direct reports about Huawei before Meng’s arrest. These reports mainly centered on the national debate about whether Huawei should be allowed to participate in Canada’s 5G infrastructure construction. Immediately after the event, the quantity of reports concerning Huawei skyrocketed. Most of these articles focused either on the event itself or on the strained relationship among China, the US and Canada because of the arrest. These articles framed Huawei as the Center of Sino-West Conflict. This frame was present even in articles which did not primarily focus on Huawei as a critical element which contributed to the Sino-West conflict.

4.2 The relationship between frames and sources

The debate over Huawei led to most articles containing multiple frames as journalists sought to index opposing views. We coded all frames identified in each article. Similarly, we identified all the sources quoted to create these frames. We present correlations between sources and frames (Table 5). Note that correlation between frames and sources does not signify that certain source tended to provide certain frame(s), but rather that they tended to appear together. Frames do not have a one-on-one correspondence to the sources identified in a single article. Frames that are positively correlated, however, indicates that they are either connected at a significant level by their connotation or that they are the counter-arguments of each other and thus generally appeared as a pair.

NST is positively correlated with the sources of Canadian government officials (p = 0.01), American government officials (p = 0.01) and Huawei Management (p = 0.01). VP is positively correlated with the sources of Canadian government officials (p = 0.01), other social and political elites (p = 0.01), Huawei Management (p = 0.01), and American government officials (p = 0.05). CC is positively correlated with the sources of journalists (p = 0.01) and Chinese government officials (p = 0.01).

Huawei management was quoted to claim that Huawei is a valued and long-term partner (VP frame) of Canada as a counter argument against the NST frame often associated with American government officials and Canadian government officials, and the two frames are indeed highly correlated with each other. However, VP frame appeared in only 36.21 % of the articles while NST frame appeared in 80.12 % of the articles, which indicates that the latter is the dominant frame and the tone of all the sampled articles is generally negative.

The G & M journalists reported the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s CFO, and the cause of the event. That Huawei became the center of the conflict between China and the West, especially the U.S., appeared in 65.91 % of the articles published after the event. Chinese government officials were given voices even though only appeared in 10.23 % of the articles published after the event. The journalists framed Huawei as the pride of China (PC frame) to explain why the Chinese government reacted so strongly, not only criticizing and threatening but also retaliating the Canadian government by detaining two Canadians in China.

The topics covered after the critical event of Meng’s arrest were diverse and include Canada’s foreign policy towards China, business between China and Canada, Sino-US relations and trade talks, as well as the FVEY intelligence alliance’s (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States) attitudes and actions towards Huawei. The number of Huawei frames used by The G & M also increased compared with the frames before the arrest. The old frames of National Security Threat, Valued Partner, Intellectual Property Pursuer and Agent of China Dominance were joined by the new frames of Center of Sino-West Conflict and the Pride of China. This increase in frames indicates the Event-driven model may be the best fitting model to explain the changes that happened after the arrest.

Journalists focused on analysing the situation as a result of the arrest of Meng Wanzhou and quoted more diverse sources. In this case, the journalists themselves became the most prominent source, appearing in about 91 % of the articles after the arrest. This stands in contrast to their appearance as a source in 54 % of the articles before the arrest. The NST frame, although decreased from before the arrest, still exist in about 74 % of the articles published after the arrest. A new frame of Center of Sino-West Conflict, rose to appear in about 66 % of the sampled articles after the arrest to focus on the international relations. To conclude, more factors were taken into consideration in this national debate whether Huawei should be banned from contributing to Canada’s 5G construction. Discussions were focused on the relational consequences which Canada needs to face and what foreign policies and business strategies Canada needs to take after the arrest was carried out.

4.3 Evidence from discourse analysis supporting major frames

Numbers are cold and impersonal and often oversimplify the data. Therefore, we looked at actual texts of the sampled news articles, using discourse analysis to interpret the texts given the socio-cultural context in which they were written and to identify how frames were constructed and how some were more prominent than others. We focused on the two frames with the highest frequency counts before the critical event: National Security Threat and Valued Partner. Excerpts from the text were presented to make a point.

4.4 The public opinion

How did the public react to Huawei media reports in our sampled time frame? According to the cascading activation model, the public is at the very bottom of the hierarchy and does not have much power. In general, the public accepts the media reports. This is particularly true in matters of foreign affairs and policy. In this case, in the midst of a national debate on Huawei’s participation in Canada’s 5G construction, a critical event occurred when Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, was arrested. When China retaliated with the arrest of two Canadian men, the stakes were greatly heightened. At this point, the attitudes and opinions of the Canadian government and those of most other Canadian social and political elites diverged on the debate. According to our analysis, the media sided with the social and political elites, as well as the US and the FVEY allies. The media plays a major role in shaping the public’s impression about another country (e.g., Entman 2003; Saleem 2007), and in our case, a company from that country.

Which party, the Canadian government or the media, will have more influence on the Canadian public? The G & M took the initiative to commission Nanos, a research company to conduct polls during our sampled period. These polls give us an idea of the Canadian public opinion. A poll of 1,000 randomly chosen Canadians across the country was taken between Aug. 23 and 27, 2018. The G & M reported this poll on September 7th, 2018, “more than half of Canadians believed Canada should block Huawei from its 5G network. Only 16 per cent of people surveyed favour allowing Huawei to participate.”(The Globe and Mail Nanos 2018) The G & M concluded that most of Canadians appear to be against Huawei. In addition, the poll indicated that “most respondents also did not agree with China’s assertions that a ban would be discriminatory and hurt Canadian consumers.”

After the arrest of Meng took place The G & M reported another two Nanos polls with a six-month interval, each conducted among 1,000 randomly sampled Canadians between Dec. 30, 2018 and Jan. 5, 2019, and between May 31 and June 4, 2019 respectively. The first poll was reported to show “56 % of Canadians surveyed think the arrest of Meng is ‘primarily a justice issue’ and Canada p acted properly in detaining her for possible extradition to the United States on allegations of fraud relating to U.S. sanctions against Iran.”(The Globe and Mail Nanos 2019) Both Nanos polls found 53 % of Canadians thought Ottawa should bar Huawei from providing 5G equipment while 18 % and 20 % respectively felt this was an overreaction and Canada should allow Huawei to sell its 5G technology to domestic wireless firms.

The G & M quoted Mr. Nanos, “The key message here for the government or for any politician is that you should be extremely careful in your relations with China from a political perspective,” and “Canadians’ perspectives of China tend to be negative. They have concerns related to security and it is a political risk to being ameliorating [relations] or overly friendly to China.”

Then, an Angus Reid online poll was reported on Dec. 11, 2019. The result showed 69 % of the sampled Canadians were against Huawei’s involvement in Canada’s 5G construction. The article reporting this on-line poll said, “The poll comes as the United States continues long-standing efforts to convince its allies such as Canada to bar Huawei as a threat to national security because of the influence of the Chinese government.” However, there seemed to be a divide on the issue concerning the arrest of Meng Wanzhou. The article reported, “51 % of respondents in the latest poll said Canada should have resisted the U.S. request to arrest the Huawei executive, while 49 % said it made the right decision.”

The results of these polls show a strong tendency of the Canadians’ public opinion. It is highly in tune with the media’s predominantly negative view and attitudes towards Huawei. Comparing the poll results, one finds a stable con-position among over half of the surveyed Canadians on the national debate whether Huawei should be allowed to contribute to Canada’s 5G construction. The G & M has conveyed a strong message to the government – the predominantly negative view on Huawei – by quoting Canada’s social and political elites, the US officials, most of the other FVEY allies and the public opinions since the beginning of 2018, the starting point of our sampled period.