What this all boils down to – when you distill out all the water vapour – is the ability of the United Kingdom to go into armed conflict with the People's Republic of China. The South China Sea is an extremely fissile area. The Chinese constructed man-made islands a decade or so ago, then put missile launchers on them and airstrips. They have now declared that they're Chinese sovereign territory and the surrounding sea is out of bounds to foreigners, despite them being international waters and shipping lanes. As a result, various Western countries are running 'freedom of navigation' operations, sailing close past these to reassert international law. The Chinese PLN rammed a US destroyer recently for doing just this, and is thus becoming increasingly belligerent. China is slowly trying to close off one of the biggest trade routes to Asia-Pacific to everyone but itself. One day the US, Australia or Japan will shoot back, and we'll see a naval conflict between China and our closest allies. If the Chinese have control of our 5G network, they will be able to switch it off and destroy our economy if we enter the fight. Having their infrastructure effectively takes us off the chessboard, and weakens our allies and international law with it. That's why our security services are so against it – as are our allies... I speak as someone who has spent many years in Japan and China – May is insane.