Last month, Borje Ekholm, the chief executive of Swedish telecoms firm Ericsson, told the Financial Times he opposed the ban, arguing that it undermined competition.

In response to the appeals court upholding the ban, Beijing’s ambassador to Stockholm, Gui Congyou, said he still hoped Sweden would provide a “non-discriminatory” business environment for Chinese companies, and dismissed Sweden’s security concerns.

“We urge the Swedish side to immediately correct this unfounded wrong decision,” Gui said in an interview with Swedish newspaper Expressen. “We should not talk about democracy, justice and the rule of law, but aim at others instead of ourselves.”

But democracy and human rights are the most pressing issues for Swedish citizens in their country’s relations with China, according to the most recent polling data.

China warns of blowback over Sweden’s Huawei ban

In a poll in September and October, 82 per cent favoured advancing human rights and democratic reform in China as the highest policy priority. Only 20 per cent said China should be involved in building Sweden’s 5G infrastructure.

Part of a 13-nation survey of Europe by research institutes across the continent, Sweden’s results were published last month by the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI).

Björn Jerdén, head of the Asia programme at UI and co-author of the report, said the Chinese government would need to show movement on issues that mattered to Swedes before opinion would begin to shift.

“Even if bilateral relations improved on economic issues, we should still expect views to be quite negative,” he said.

“The irony is that on the issues that are most important to Swedes, like democracy and human rights, China is the least likely to budge.”