To be fair, the old guard probably did the same before (post 2nd world war). Lucent (US), Nortel (Canada), Siemens (Germany), Alcatel (France) were all too happy to put their equipments in South America, Asia and Africa. It is a fair game, nothing to do with demonizing China. One would expect China to not accept Lucent equipments in its core telco network for the exact same reasons.
Nobody really cared when western countries were spying after the 2nd world war (it was mostly phone calls and network security was a joke). Now, it is digital, and our footprint is way larger. Spying on telco network brings way more information now, than before. It is taken more seriously. Either intentionally (e.g. room 641A: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A) or not, tapping on telco networks is the great way to spy at scale.
Nobody really cared when western countries were spying after the 2nd world war (it was mostly phone calls and network security was a joke). Now, it is digital, and our footprint is way larger. Spying on telco network brings way more information now, than before. It is taken more seriously. Either intentionally (e.g. room 641A: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A) or not, tapping on telco networks is the great way to spy at scale.