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A US congressional report that accuses Chinese telecommunications companies of being linked to potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities in US telecom networks once again exposes Washington's propensity to politicize technology and cybersecurity issues, Chinese experts said on Wednesday, noting that the claims lack factual basis and violate basic understanding of how global communications operate.

Citing a person briefed on an upcoming report from the US House Select Committee on China, Bloomberg reported that US telecommunication companies may have been connected to Chinese telecommunications companies that are otherwise barred from operating in the US. Those connections established a link between US telecom companies and the infrastructure allegedly breached by the Chinese hacking group known as Salt Typhoon, the person claimed.

At issue are the US telecommunications companies' secondary connections, ones that tangentially link them to the broader information ecosystem and fall outside of federal regulators' purview, Bloomberg reported. 

The bipartisan report, which is the result of a more than a year-long investigation by the panel, concludes that US operators were not aware of cybersecurity risks posed by these connections, the report claimed. 

Chinese telecommunications experts said the report reflects Washington's practice of turning normal business and technological cooperation into a national security issue, while lacking technical understanding and factual evidence.

"Analyzing and addressing secondary connections from a cybersecurity perspective is in itself reasonable. The problem is that the report deliberately associates secondary connections with the Salt Typhoon attacks, while such a causal relationship has not been technically demonstrated," Li Yan, director of the Institute of Technology and Cybersecurity at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

The expert noted that globally recognized cybersecurity organizations, including Cisco Talos, Microsoft and Singapore's Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), have provided detailed analyses of the Salt Typhoon attack chain. These analyses showed that the hackers' initial intrusion relied on publicly known vulnerabilities in commercial equipment and stolen operational accounts, while lateral movement within networks relied on telecom operators' own routing tunnels. "No technical evidence has been found showing that Chinese telecommunications companies' related infrastructure was used as a stepping stone in the attacks," the expert said.

Li pointed out that the US report repeatedly uses ambiguous expressions such as "may," "could" and "potential," while failing to provide concrete evidence such as traffic logs, routing records or attack samples to support its claims.

"This is a subjective association and a logical leap that shifts responsibility of domestic operational vulnerabilities to external parties," the expert added.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has repeatedly responded to claims over the "Salt Typhoon" incident, with its core position being that China opposes the US' accusations without any convincing evidence and their abuse of sanctions against China. China has also urged the US to stop various types of irresponsible moves to blame the victim, stop cyberattacks globally, and stop using cybersecurity issues to vilify China. 

Telecommunications operators and equipment around the world have to be interconnected. Although the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) raised cybersecurity concerns and attempted to separate US operators from Chinese operators, this was ultimately not achieved, Ma Jihua, a veteran telecom industry analyst, told the Global Times on Wednesday. 

According to a Reuters' report in January, the FCC has proposed barring US and other telecommunications carriers operating in the US from interconnecting with China Unicom, China Mobile, China Telecom and others, claiming they pose "national security risks."

However, USTelecom, a trade group representing AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and other US‌ carriers, ⁠said in a filing it opposed revoking interconnection authority for Chinese carriers, per Reuters. 

Even with this report, the US will still be unable to achieve such separation, because the commercial interests of the two major economies make complete decoupling unrealistic, Ma said.

The House Select Committee on China itself is centered on strategic competition with China. The investigation appears to have a preset assumption that Chinese-funded telecommunications infrastructure naturally represents a security threat, some experts said. 

The upcoming report fails to distinguish between legitimate commercial activities by companies and actual cyberattack activities, while also failing to provide Chinese telecom companies with a full opportunity to present evidence or respond to the allegations, Li said.