[5] China Unicom was among six state-owned companies that built the communications infrastructure and assisted in financing the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's Connecting Every Village Project, which began in 2004.

[6]: 25 China Unicom has operated a CDMA network in Macau since October 18, 2006[7] and internet services in North Korea since 2010.

[citation needed] On July 11, 2020, China Unicom joined hands with LuHan to launch the "FuLu Companion Card", which sounded the forward number for the further development of 5G.

[citation needed] In July 2009, China Unicom signed a $700 million deal with infrastructure vendor Ericsson to upgrade the company's GSM network.

[20] In January 2011, the two partners agreed a further US$500 million tie-up in each other, which following completion in late 2011, Telefónica will hold a 9.7% shares in China Unicom (H.K.

[26]: 62 In 2017 China Unicom became one of the pilot projects of the mixed-ownership reform of the Chinese state-owned enterprise, which saw a decrease in the Government's ownership.

'Tencent–Cinda Limited Partnership') that was owned by China Cinda Asset Management and a company related to Tencent,[nb 2] a private equity fund partially owned by Baidu[nb 3] and Industrial Bank (Chinese: 百度鹏寰投资合伙企业), a private equity fund that related to JD.com (Chinese: 京东三弘企业管理中心; lit.

[39][40] In October 2020, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requested the United States Department of Justice report whether China Unicom poses a "national security risk".

[41] In November 2020, the U.S. President issued an executive order prohibiting U.S. companies and individuals owning stocks that the United States Department of Defense deemed to have links to the People's Liberation Army - which included China Unicom.

[44] In March 2021, the FCC initiated proceedings to revoke China Unicom's authorization to operate in the U.S. due to "national security" concerns.

[45] In January 2022, the FCC revoked China Unicom's authorization to operate in the United States, giving it 60 days to cease providing telecommunications services.

[47] In December 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected China Unicom's challenge of the 2022 FCC revocation of its authorization to operate in the U.S.[48][49] In December 2020, The Guardian reported that a security researcher identified evidence of surveillance campaign against Americans by China Unicom via Caribbean mobile networks, Cable & Wireless Communications and BTC.