On the face of it I don't think it's terribly different, no.
Anyone who wants to make a moral judgment about which is "worse" should start with moral judgments of the American and Chinese governments.
Anyone who wants to make a moral judgment about which is "worse" should start with moral judgments of the American and Chinese governments.
As an American, I expect that the US government, if it wants it enough, can obtain access to my communications (at least while using US infrastructure), assuming they're not e2e encrypted. Hopefully such access would be gated by a warrant, and I expect in most cases that's how it works, though I do expect there are abuses here and there.
The Chinese government, however, should not have any kind of access to any of my communications (unless I am visiting China, using their infrastructure; or perhaps am communicating with someone in China from abroad). In addition, if the relationship between the US and China ever sours to the point of war, presumably the Chinese would have no problem using any possible backdoors to disrupt US telecom networks.
Given this, I would much rather the US use US-built telecom infrastructure than Chinese-built infra. I think an argument over which government is more moral or trustworthy is just not useful here.
I mean, why else would you bring it up at all? No shit, governments are going to spy on people ... it's still useful and interesting to know which governments are doing the spying, and how, and who's accusing who of what (which is obviously not the same thing). It's newsworthy even without moral judgment. But the whataboutism drags morals into the picture.
I agree with your comment in the sense that it is a reasonably accurate description of reality and some notions of "should" in the (very fuzzy) [international] legal sense.
On the other hand, assuming that future people will have to live under both regimes, and given that "cyber-intrusions" are moves in a greater conflict that is likely to escalate and has profound implications for the future shape of human society and thought, I think it's quite useful to bring morals into the picture if one of our goals is to maximize good outcomes and minimize bad outcomes for other humans.
Not going to pretend the US is perfect. But in a world where the future is basically a choice between one of two super powers to throw your lot in with, imma go with the US.
As an American it's probably easy to make a choice here, but as a 3rd party I'm not so sure. The US has definitely wreaked more havoc across the globe during the past century, from overthrowing democratic governments to bombing the shit out of countries. The Chinese are reckless whenever they see someone threatening their authority, but egoistically speaking, that 99% applies to Chinese nationals or people living in China. Not my problem.
If my country would go with US equipment, I already know they will get all my data because of things like the patriot act and all the niceties Snowden revealed the NSA et al have.
The Chinese probably have the same, but we don't know anything definitive, which makes it more scary, also they are evil commies. But then again, having access to telco infra only means they get meta data, since traffic is all encrypted nowadays, while the US still gets all my content thanks to Facebook/WhatsApp, Google/Gmail, Amazon, ..., no matter what the 5G equipment is. So is it safer to then say you better buy the 5G stuff from the US so only one party can steal all your data?