Shuli Ren, Columnist

China’s 5G Riches Are a Blocked Number for Investors

The biggest beneficiaries of the country’s push for wireless supremacy are outside the public domain.

February 11, 2019 at 10:00 PM UTC

Shuli Ren is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asian markets. A former investment banker, she was a markets reporter for Barron’s. She is a CFA charterholder.

The tastiest morsels are out of investors’ reach.
Photographer: Giulia Marchi/Bloomberg

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How can investors profit from China’s race with the U.S. for 5G supremacy? Finding the answer is as tricky as figuring out the geopolitics.

The nation’s sleepy telecom stocks came back to life after Huawei Technologies Co. CFO Meng Wanzhou was detained in Canada in early December. While the official charge was that the company had violated U.S. sanctions on Iran, many in China interpreted the action as another attempt by the American government to thwart the country’s advance in 5G. Huawei leads the world in the number of declared essential patents for next-generation wireless technology, according to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute.