Huawei has expressed its disappointment as the UK stepped up the legal processes on Thursday towards removing its equipment and services from the country's 5G networks.

The UK government extended the deadline to stop using the Chinese company's products in core network functions by 11 months to December 31, 2023, after consulting with Huawei and other telecoms operators.

The government said the deadline to remove all Huawei gear from the UK's 5G networks by the end of 2027 remained unchanged. It also extended a requirement to limit Huawei to 35 percent of the full fibre access network by October 31, 2023.

The UK's decision to ban Huawei and other vendors it deemed a high-security risk from its 5G networks in 2020 followed pressure from the U.S..

Huawei is "disappointed" that the UK government had gone down this route, pointing out it had worked closely with network operators for over 20 years to offer high-quality services for people in the UK.

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The company maintains that it has had the highest level of UK Government scrutiny in the last 10 years, indeed it was the only company to agree to UK intelligence services monitoring its equipment, and no malicious vulnerabilities were uncovered in its technology. Huawei has always rejected claims that it poses a threat to UK national security.

The ban, enshrined in law last year, required operators such as BT, Vodafone and Hutchison to switch to alternative suppliers and eventually remove Huawei equipment already installed in their networks. The U.S. authorities have expressed concerns that Huawei's 5G equipment makes countries vulnerable to data being accessed by China or having essential services turned off.

Huawei has denied being controlled by the Chinese government or posing a security threat.

The UK government pursued the legal grounding for this on Thursday by handing out notices, called designated-vendor directions, to the 35 UK telecoms network operators, under the Telecoms Security Act. The UK government said the decisions had been reached following technical security analysis from the National Cyber Security Centre which "takes into account our specific national circumstances and how the risks from the U.S. sanctions are manifested in the UK."

Huawei was issued a separate document - a designation notice - which categorizes the company as a high-risk vendor of 5G network equipment and services. It presented the reasons why they are considered a national security risk.

These claims include:

· The Huawei corporate group is headquartered in, and controlled from, China. The UK Government assesses that China and associated actors have carried out, and are expected to continue to carry out, cyber-attacks against the UK and the UK's interests.

· The UK reasons that China can require companies based in China and their employees to engage in activities which are harmful to the UK.

· The cyber security and engineering quality of Huawei's products and services give rise to a real risk of hostile exploitation and/or systemic failure.

· The Secretary of State's concerns over the quality of Huawei's products and services have been exacerbated by sanctions imposed by the U.S. against Huawei.

· Huawei has a significant market share in the UK which the UK believes creates a significant risk of national dependency.

On Tuesday, Jeremy Fleming, director of GCHQ, the UK's cyber intelligence agency, accused China of trying to "rewrite the rules of international security," saying Beijing was using its economic and technological clout to clamp down at home and exert control abroad.

A spokesperson from the Chinese embassy in the UK responded by saying that "remarks made by the head of the British intelligence agency are full of prejudice and totally baseless."

The embassy added that China's efforts to develop technology and promote international cooperation in science and technology were aimed at improving the life of the Chinese people and well-being of humanity. There have also been reports this week that the UK government would soon declare China an official threat.

Mao Ning, a spokesperson of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said at a Wednesday briefing: "China follows an independent foreign policy of peace. We hope the new UK government can view China and China-UK ties in a rational and objective manner.

"Subscribing to the obsolete mindset of 'China threat' benefits no one and will eventually backfire. Such an approach leads nowhere."