US has underestimated Huawei, says founder | Hacker News Reader

US has underestimated Huawei, says founder

theguardian.com

91 pointshoward941123 comments

Good job on picking one sentence in a 150-minute interview to serve an agenda. No wonder people here say "This doesn't make any sense" -- because it doesn't.

The actual interview contains a lot more information. For example, Ren urged people to not go overly nationalistic, thanked companies in the US for working together, urged people to not blame US companies, explained his thought in detail on recent events, how to attract talents etc.

Found a transcript (in Chinese) if people are interested.

Warning: very long text -- 20,000 characters in length.

https://m.huxiu.com/article/300415.html

Is there a decent translation in English available?

I don't think there is a decently translated version.

You can try Google translate. Its result is probably good enough for understanding the most important bits.

Tongue-in-cheek: Isn't Google the exact company meant to bring Huawei down? Is there some sort of checksum for translations?

> Is there some sort of checksum for translations?

Obviously not, no translator would have a job!

You only get matching output if you get a matching input, that's a defining property of a checksum.

If you could get matching input, i.e. translated texts from different sources, that would mean that not only is translation a completely solved problem, but also that the source and target language were equivalently expressive and neither ambiguous, every word having a 1:1 mapping.

That is, they must be the same language, just at most differently different represented.

I mean it in the sense that you have the conglomerate at the centre of this storm who is forced into following government orders doing the translation.

Whose to say they couldn't give two different people varying translations into English based on the exact same article?

It would be an authoritarian governments wet dream.

Right after saying “there will be conflict”, Ren said China and the US will eventually hug each other on the “summit of technology” and make contributions to the humanity together.

I don't want to sound overly pessimistic here, but in my personal experience companies from second and third-world seem to have learned expertly how to exploit the "humanity" angle to outsiders while secretly exploiting their workers internally.

Can't say I see this in black and white necessarily, but I strongly suspect these companies (conglomerates of 2nd and 3rd world countries especially, and even their governments) realize this is the vocabulary of the 21st century and are using this to try to continue marketing themselves.

EDIT: In no way do I think first-world companies / countries are pure. I just notice this and its impact far more with respect to 2nd and 3rd world.

Not saying every word Huawei founder says can be fully trusted.

The problem is that his statements are extremely misrepresented.

Just FYI:

Huawei is one of the first companies that promoted the "996" schedule. https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU

Huawei started the trend of laying off engineers once they reach 35 years old in China.

They also recently had an internal bounty program that gave workers promotions/bonuses for any internal trade secrets/inventions they could acquire from western technology companies. That’s the spirit!

I remember several cases back from the eighties where US intelligence pilfered European trade secrets.

Only several?

Source?

Huawei and China will have a hard time finding any sympathy here, considering the companies they outright ban or block, or even just cut the legs off. Have any such US companies responded like this? It feels childish/immature to me, particularly given the circumstances & context.

I may be misinformed, but I have never heard of China specifically targeting 1 company like this. Sure, China blocks Facebook and Amazon, but its not a targeted hit. China blocks everyone. I am not claiming that this makes it fine, merely that it seems different.

Doesn't it make China worse?

US bans a company because it's problematic, not because "It's part of the evil west"

China limits all foreign companies from accessing it's market. The true reason is to provide a safe heaven to allow local companies develop it's own technology and capability before killed off by foreign companies. During 80s when China is start to open up the market, China has literally no private enterprises with good capability on it's own. Foreign companies from US and Europe have too advanced of technology and scale simply because they have been developing much longer while China was being war ravaged. These companies would easily take over the china market and kill any local enterprises. Look at the affect of the ban, China now as pretty good technology on it's own and local companies with the scale that can compete with foreign companies. Foreign companies now entering China find difficulty partly because of the regulatory environment but also because of local competition is much stronger. I would argue that Apple sales decrease in China is not mainly from regulation but competition from Huawei xiaomi and oppo. Now contrast this with Europe and Canada, especially in the tech market, no one has home grown technology companies that are big enough to compete with the US. Many homegrown companies went away because of it cannot compete with the US. Is would surely damage local economy right? I think the advantages and disadvantages to free market must be carefully balanced.

I had the impression they would do it to keep control of their citizens.

It is also duplicitous when China closes its market off. Insofar as the point that it's cutting off foreign companies is so that it can filter in the control it has over it's population. You try to dance around that fact which is why you need to reconsider your angle on all of your comments. The actual truth is that this is a move necessary on a multitude of facets: Chinese spying, Nearly cutting off American technology supplies to China implying a HUGE blockage of intellectual property as well as devices and chips, Starving the state proxy Huawei, Creates a dialogue of concessions China could make, etc. This has created a chokepoint where American interests can act more nobley to circumvent a totalitarian state. Your slant could read as anti-American but more accurately I think it is more pro-Chinese or perhaps you are just missing the bigger picture.

distinction without a difference

China has definitely done targeted hits. Did you forget the GitHub DDOS in 2015?

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/04/ddos-...

China doesn't block Amazon, FYI.

No foreign company has enough exposure in China for China to destroy them.

I agree. From another perspective, China has been a blatant power in the theft of IP from all over the world and we have been turning a blind eye to it for quite some time.

A lot of people joke about 'Chinese knockoffs' and the 'chinesium' metal alloys that permeate the knockoff/shoddy products but it has some serious problems.

This pushback is long overdue and frankly needed.

Which foreign company has China destroyed using it's foreign policies? What China is doing is limit foreign company access to it's market. The equivalent would be US saying Huawei cannot sell in the US, which is totally fine. But this case is not. Huawei is stricted from doing business with any US entity. This order is essentially designed to completely destroy Huawei and damage Huawei in other countries whom might not side with the US or shares US concern. Keep in mind that in the situation where Huawei buys a component from a company not under US control, say a chip from TSMC, if said component contains any US IP or made component, Huawei still cannot buy it. In the world of technology, this is crippling. Regardless of which political camp people are on, I think this case demonstrates regardless how much US companies sell themselves as global and trusted, they are still US companies and beholden to US politics, and can be used as weapons in advancing US political agenda. Second, this also demonstrates as digital technology becomes as fundamental as electricity, water and air in each of the world's society, a lot of it is monopolized by the US and you are under the hands of the US to use said technology. I think it's very important for each Nation to develop it's own digital technology and true open source systema(hint Android for it to be truely useful is not as open as people think). I think technology people should focus on providing every person on Earth equal access to technology to improve everyone's lives.

Did you ever do business in China? I can tell from experience that doing business in China is much much harder than doing business in for example the US or EU. First of all you cannot do business in China without a local partner. Obtaining licenses in China requires bribery and is hardly possible. Copyright and trademarks are not respected. Copycats everywhere. Chinese legal support is hardly possible without having a Chinese passport. The list is endless. It is absolutely not a fair situation for US companies in China versus the other way around.

I agree with you that China has placed restrictions on foreign company doing business in China and not Chinese companies doing business in China. This is a big issue and I think China should reflect on this. But what I am saying is China at the government layer has not targeted an existing foreign company with billion dollars sales and many employees whose livihood depends on the company and limit it in a fashion that it cannot function. Huawei employes 10000+ people and many local economy depends on the company. What if the company goes under because of US influence right now? People lose their jobs their homes and etc? Would you say that through US actions it has directly negatively affected the civilian lives of another country? I think one has to consider the severity of ones attack. It's one thing to put obstacles and roadblocks, but it's another thing to kill another all together.

Very little chance it goes under just because of the US. The US is only 4% of the world population. Facebook and Google are banned in China and are doing fine without 20% of the world.

Except good luck building a cell phone without android or various chipsets from Qualcomm, etc...

4% of the population but a ton more when weighted with economic power and control of trade secrets and technology rights.

It's a bit of a canned response considering the context of what your parent comment is saying.

Something comparable in scope would China breaking your shipping business in the UK because you can no longer maintain your fleet of US manufactured trucks since China blocked US access of an engine component.

Pelamis

I wasn't really asserting that the two were equal but that it likely will not be viewed as unequal by a layperson. Comparing just these two specific policies, maybe it is, but if you look at China's actions on a large scale, it changes the picture. The US, too.

Did you even read the interview? Yeah China blocks many companies, but that's in CHINA, one market only. It never goes out of its way to try to strangle a company, forbids Chinese company to supply a foreign company downstream. You always have the options to not enter the Chinese market. Not in this case, that's not comparable at all.

Not sure why the Guardian only picked parts to make him sound as inflammatory as possible. What about honestly reporting that his saying that his daughter uses Apple and he wants her to have the choice and people should not be too nationalistic about it. What about his profusely praising his US suppliers and consultants for helping him succeed. His overall tone is fairly noncombatative given the circumstances. Here is a transcript https://m.huxiu.com/article/300415.html

He said at one time they signed the deal to sell Huawei to a US company (Motorola, I believe) and were waiting for the buyer’s board to approve the deal. He said they wanted to succeed as a US company (“wearing cowboy hats” in his words). After the deal fell through, his younger colleagues voted to not try to find another buyer. He warned his younger colleagues then that there would be conflict with US if they succeeded too well. Interesting tidbits.

> Not sure why

really?

This doesn’t make any sense. It’s kind of funny. His statements imply that he’ll show the US by still being a powerful business... but I don’t see how that changes anything about it’s relationship with the US?

I think he’s just putting on a strongman face because otherwise this is going to substantially weaken Huawei as a company.

Not to mention that Cisco and other networking equipment vendors benefit from the Huawei ban.

Make our backdoors great again...

For the eager downvoters out there, consider that (to my knowledge) no actual case for Huawei backdoors was made so far (although we can all be pretty sure they exist). At the same time Cisco routers giving root access with a specific private key is considered a simple "could happen to anyone" bug. So yes, it's what I said above: someone will have backdoors in the infrastructure. From US perspective it better be the home team.

Actually there were several cases of Huawei backdoors, more recently found by Vodafone in Italy. I am a big fan of China but I think the problem is two fold regarding Huawei. China makes it very hard for foreign companies to enter the Chinese market and they often ignore IP. Having backdoors in networking equipment is a issue and you rightfully point out that the Chinese are not the only ones implementing such things.

What I meant was a case for a "backdoor" rather than the typical "it's a bug" that you see with every other manufacturer.

I didn't want to go into the way China does business. Just wanted to point out the hypocrisy of the justification used here.

Sure but isn't a backdoor a kind of bug that left there on purpose?

> on purpose

Then that's the case that would have to be made I guess.

Huawei seems to see the US bans as a way to bully Huawei, and perhaps a way to bully China as well. Some of the Chinese people I know think that the US wants Chinese to stay poor, that the US is jealous of the Chinese's success. The press release is basically painting the story of the underdog resisting against bullies, and thriving against all odds.

I definitely think some Americans have exactly that opinion.

There are americans that think the earth is flat. I doubt the median educated american would want a billion+ people to stay poor.

The 'median educated american' [sic] is not quite 'your average American' which is usually the demographic used for such statements.

It's all about 'winning' now I guess and for one to win all others have to lose.

I use median, because thinking of the guy in the middle of the spectrum seems to make more sense than averaging it into an amorphous person. I like math, is all.. I'm not sure what your statement about winning means, are you okay? Negative neuroplasticity is a thing, dont despair. This situation is bullshit, I'm not sure if any superorganism is really winning in the long term. Some individuals maybe.

Edit: I maybe should have used worldly, rather than educated; not quite sure of the precise word I was looking for. I didn't mean college educated.

It's not just median, it's median + educated that's a much thinner slice than Average American.

Yes, indeed. Despite having commented thus far, I feel like debating whether the average american would be sadistic isn't very useful. Absent influence in the government, we (americans) don't have agency in regards to this. Neither do the chinese. I imagine the average in both countries is inundated with propaganda as well.

Jelous? We've lost so many jobs due to free trade. They can call it any thing they want but the trade deficit cannot be explained by jelousy.

That's china's problem how?

Because it's a literal wealth transfer from the American middle class to China. Yes growth has supplied some of that wealth, but America and Europe have done the rest. And no one asked the respective populations of the lower middle class if they wanted to give millions of Chinese a better life at the expense of theirs, it just happened.

If I understand correctly, you're suggesting that the US middle class suffered as a result of trying to help the Chinese?

That would make sense if as a whole the US economy started stagnating because of trade with China but as far as I know the US GDP has still been growing.

Given that the US is still as a whole doing well, I'd argue that the reason the middle/lower class isn't doing well isn't because of China but because of the imbalance in where these profits have gone. In other words, I think it's wealth inequality that is the real issue.

And what exactly caused the wealth inequality? The CEO types closed American factories and moved production to China. This is great for the stock of said company, the CEO, the board of directors, and China. Wait a minute... this really sucks if you are were a worker in the American factory that closed! Hey at least they can buy cheap Chinese stuff at Walmart with their unemployment checks.

> And what exactly caused the wealth inequality?

I never mentioned inequality. The purchasing power (and wage) of the average American and European working has either declined or stagnated. What China has done pulling millions out of poverty is amazing, taking nothing away from that. Lets not pretend those BS 8% growth numbers year after year did that, a lot of that wealth came from the west.

> result of trying to help the Chinese?

No, I said the American and European middle class has suffered while the Chinese lower class has risen. And in a democracy, large policy decisions that affect the economy and your standard of life are voted upon.

No one ever voted for globalization.

> US GDP has still been growing.

Not at a rate high enough to sustain an increase in quality of life. Yes there are other factors, but anything below 4% is a crisis.

A huge portion of the profits China has obtained from becoming America's manufacturing base has gone directly back to America in the form of US bond purchases. This has been the case going back to its inception into the WTO in 2001 [1, ex. 6]. The American economy, and thus its middle class, have directly benefitted from this in the form of greater and cheaper capital liquidity.

In addition, this deficit you speak of (that has been characterized by Trump as "stealing" from America, a laughable notion), actually shrinks to almost nothing when adjusted for US goods sold in China [1, ex.16, 17]. This is comparing four categories of goods and services exchanged between the US and China (1: services sold through subsidiaries, 2: services imports, 3: goods through subsidiaries and 4: goods through trade). This is a much more complete and honest comparison. Trump has for some reason decided to only focus on the last point (goods sold through trade).

The US sells 67B worth of services to China through subsidiaries, 56B of services imports, 213B of goods through subsidiaries and 112B of goods through trade. In other words, adjusted for U.S sales of goods and services in China, the trade deficit actually amounts to a U.S _surplus_ of something in the ballpark 20B a year.

Where is the stealing? Where is the zero-sum "wealth transfer"?

[1] https://www.kkr.com/sites/default/files/KKR_White_Paper_51-1...

And everyday your President brags about the fact that US is back to full employment. So if these jobs were somehow back that you would need an army of Mexicans... Not sure this is the expected result, for Trump supporter.

Could this be an instance of "saving face" as people do in East Asia?

Is “saving face” an (Eastern) Asia thing? (genuine question)

Saving face is on a continuum. In some cultures it’s more important than others. In some it has more impact on day to day lives. Is some cultures it encourages people to take responsibility and resign to “save face for a company or the state” even when it’s not that person’s fault but rather the fault of the position.

So yeah I think the majority of societies practice this to lesser and greater degrees. Some have elaborate customs around it, in others it’s almost imperceptible.

I always find this distinction interesting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilt-Shame-Fear_spectrum_of_c...

No, they just do it in slightly different ways than Americans so it's framed as something exotic and weird instead of typical human behaviour.

It is an everybody thing, why else would the phrase enter popular usage.

There is a term in Chinese that means "lose face". I remember my parents saying it to me when I misbehaved. I made them lose face to their friends. Save face emerged as a way to avoid losing face: https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/lose-face.html

At it's basic level saving face is pretty close to minimizing embarrassment.

This is probably necessary for his political survival in China.

Huawei’s leadership bungled their position by overplaying their hand. Their mistakes have escalated into an international disagreement and a problem for Beijing. He needs to make sure sacrificing him is more costly than fighting Washington. Positioning himself with the public as a nationalistic martyr is one way to do that.

Someone who reads between the lines

The relationship between Huawei and the Chinese government is a little blurry: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3372669

As is the relationship between the US government and The Trump Organization...

Poor comparison. If Apple and Motorola was run by the DoD that would be better.

is it really? Donald Trump runs both for his own profit as he sees fit.

Huawei's controlling ownership structure is opaque. They might be controlled by the PLA, or maybe just the Ren family by themselves. Employees get shares, but nothing in terms of controlling ownership, and it is all cashed out when they leave.

On the other hand, even if Huawei is controlled by the PLA, so what? They are under Chinese jurisdiction anyways, so the Chinese government could already do pretty much whatever it wanted to with it. The same for an American company under American jurisdiction.

I did some research. Huawei's ownership system is so radical that probably no one in the West and few in China realized what it is. It is collective ownership in the socialist sense, or a commune. The paradox of this kind of ownership system is that the company is simultaneously owned by everyone and no one in particular, meaning all revenues and profits go back to all employees and reinvestment and no outside investors and financial capitals get anything, while nobody in particular can say I'll quit and take my share of the company - there is no 'private property' in the company.

Legally the ownership of the company is set up to be 1% for Ren Zhengfei and 99% for a owner's committee under a legally sanctioned trade union. It's a strange setup because trade unions in China are lame ducks and usually don't do anything, but Huawei's ownership is set up this way so that the trade union 'owns' 99% of the company to represent the collective ownership, which is not what trade unions were legally intended for.

It's Socialism in One Company, the leadership does not own anything but has the power to decide how to use everything, and it exploits its employee like the SU and China did in their early stage. This is unfathomable to the West so the only conclusion by the media could be opaque and government-owned.

If the employees only "own" part of the company while they're employed in good standing, that's not ownership at all. They're just leasing that share, and paying for it quite dearly with 996-ICU work, for that matter. While control and decision-making authority is definitely not held by those employees.

The employees do own permanent 'shares' and enjoy proportional dividends but they cannot liquidate the shares at market price when they quit the company. This is socialist collective ownership for you. Like I said, the employees paradoxically do not own the company in the private property sense but in the collective sense. You can say the same thing for any socialist countries. It would be naive to judge it as simple kleptocracy.

Well, to be fair to the founder, the US has already rolled back the restrictions it placed on Huawei, giving it a 90 day reprieve instead of imposing it immediately as they did earlier.

So clearly Huawei actually does have some leverage here that the US did not originally factor in.

That being said, I don’t see how it benefits Huawei for their founder to take this combative stance unless they think that the US is doing this solely to kneecap Huawei and there is no chance they will allow them to compete even if the allegations are proven untrue.

I'm not sure I would attribute that to Huawei leverage so much as US Telecoms depending on them in the short term and needing time to switch. But yeah.

I'd call that leverage

> I don’t see how it benefits Huawei for their founder to take this combative stance unless they think that the US is doing this solely to kneecap Huawei and there is no chance they will allow them to compete even if the allegations are proven untrue.

That's a strange position. Please help me understand.

The allegations are about national security threats. How does one prove his innocence in general? Huawei did what they can with the British by showing the source code and build processes, which was obviously far from enough. The US has gone out of its way to pressure its allies to ban Huawei, following a long and hard media campaign, ending with a deadly blow on Huaweis supply chain. The writing is on the wall. If the US is not doing this to cripple Huawei then what for?

Huawei is not taking a combative stance. It’s just Guardian took a few out of context quotes to make him looks like combative.

I can understand why the US wouldn't want them to build out the 5G network in the US, but it's kinda overstepping to push other countries to deny them that access. That's for other countries to decide on their own. In addition, deeming the company a national security risk is kinda ridiculous. and blocking companies in the US from selling to them or doing business with them is simply anti-competitive obviously. I feel like the result will be huawei developing their own homegrown technology and bringing even more competition to US companies. It's obviou s they're capable of developing advanced tech w/o simply copying (I mean they're ahead in 5G). And once they go down that route there's no coming back because they wouldn't wanna make the same mistake twice. can't understand the strategy by this admin., seems kinda dumb to me

Right on spot.

Who do you work for?

https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/20/18508915/cia-huawei-china...

Well that sounds like a good way to calm any national security concerns tho

Yep. Good luck, buddy.

You can reverse the situation. Would China hypothetically allow Qualcomm, Cisco deployments for their 5g networks? Even with encryption there is a lot to learn from the metadata and as we really accelerate to IoTs potential for major economic disruption.

I'm pretty sure they did in the past. Not as sure now.

Sure, after turning over any IP and source code and being installed in a few token places. Hardly any kind of real adoption, more like a forced IP transfer.

It would be ok if America would ban Huawei from building national infrastructure - it wouldn’t be very capitalistic tho.

But it is down right evil to impose extraterritorial sanctions against a company and preventing other to do business with them.

I think it is a national security argument which basically means the 5 eyes countries have to follow suit.

Sometimes it feels like the conflict is partially about the 5G technology implementation.

What does 5G technology have that is making everyone so sensitive? Will it require complete overhaul of the existing hardware (so big business opportunity)? Will it enable something extraordinary, apart from the data speed, that can not be done with the existing network technologies? I am curious...

Huawei sells 5G equipment. Think the equivalent of routers, switches but for cellular network. If they have backdoors then China can intercept and disrupt communication across many countries. That's the concern in a nutshell.

They did the same with 3G/4G, they totally outpriced Nokia Siemens Networks. Why ban it now?

The current administration sees China as a huge threat, the previous several administrations (republican and democrat) did not. Or if they did, they thought the way to deal with the threat was through economic cooperation.

China has been a threat to US interests in the Pacific for decades. Now China is the regional hegemonic power which dwarfs the weak US Pacific partnership. China's international influence will continue to grow and they will likely achieve their 100 year plan. That's not really fearmongering, China has plenty of problems but they will eventually succeed.

I like how you take an overly expansive and hegemonic definition of US interests and make it into another country's problem completely. Nice work.

Because in 5G it is demonstrably ahead technically and for the first time holds a significant number of patents. This is considered a "national security concern" because well, you know, if America isn't number one (USA! USA!) it is obviously because somebody else cheated, and America not being number one is obviously equivalent to the end of the world. /s

Yeah the nightmare scenario goes a bit like: 1) Huawei's tech gets embedded deeply in US telecoms as 5G takes over as well as everyone claims it will and includes some buried controls mandated by the Chinese government 2) tensions between US and China inevitably come to a head over something 3) the Chinese government uses that backdoor to cripple US wireless networks 4) various sorts of hell break loose depending on how much 5G has supplanted other wireless industrial control solutions.

Even something simpler as a command to shut down the equipment from remote at China's bidding.

Needs new infrastructure, so its big spend. Plus whoever builds the physical network will inevitably have backdoors

And much larger infrastructure at that. 5x or even 10x the number of current cell sites for 5G microcells.

Imagine the tracking opportunities!

I believe it is more about money and power than being a security concern.

Huawei is becoming too powerful for US interests. 5G market makes them more powerful and gives them a better reputation as a high-tech company.

Killing it will pushes China’s tech many years back.

It's a cold war, and just like the original Cold War, money and power is inextricable from security because the business of America is business.

“We can also make the same chips as the US chips, but it doesn’t mean we won’t buy them.”

Does that mean they are going to steal IP and pirate it? Yes a silly question because i don't know what chips they are and who holds the IP for them, but did he just say we don't care we will just steal your stuff and make it ourselves?

This is really a misleading interpretation. In the original context, he meant Huawei will buy products regardless if they are made by Chinese or US suppliers. One doesn’t need to trust everything Huawei claims, but taking quotes without proper context doesn’t help the discussion.

I don't understand why everybody is dismissing any chance of retaliation against for instance Apple. With this they're killing a major player outside China, that's about half of their smartphone sales ($52B revenue). I don't think China is going to take it just like that.

Because this is already framed as retaliation for "China being evil and stealing our jobs and IP".

So once the actual Chinese retaliation is gonna hit, it can be played up for full effect as "Look at what they are doing now! They never stop attacking us!" to further rile up the sentiments.

It probably won't be "retaliation" as people imagine it: the government stepping in and taking aim at Apple. Chinese consumers might decide (be encouraged) to buy more Huawei and less Apple. It can be something as indirect as making the US the devil on every possible channel or as direct as including a "patriotic" point in their scoring systems. There's a myriad of ways China could hit at Apple or other US companies without the government directly executing them.

This had already happened.

When US blocked use of Huawei network equipment they started a major PR campaign on China.

In China Huawei numbers are up, Apple is down so I guess it worked.

I for one feel like there’s actually limited play in this - America already is and has been the boogeyman for years.

Whipping up nationalistic sentiment and expecting consumers to fall in line is a transparent tactic and younger, affluent consumers are fairly cynical. It rarely has any long term effect either (see previous nationalistic anti-Japan and anti-Korea consumer boycotts).

Also don’t underestimate the power of Apple brand - it’s not like banning Google or Facebook which had very limited presence in Chinese minds. Moves to limit access to Apple products, tax them, ban them etc would not go down well.

The government could offer more subsidies to domestic companies, better credit terms or financial incentives, but then that’s just China paying for the cost of Trumps tariffs - Trump wins.

That said, Huawei and other phone makers have been taking chunks out of Apple by making better phones at competitive prices - that’s what actually moves consumers.

Retaliating against Apple hits China as well since Apple's products are manufactured/assembled there. China has a tightrope to walk here. Companies like Apple can shift their manufacturing to different countries and likely will if China comes down too harshly on them.

Retaliating against Apple would spook governments of other countries that are still planning to proceed with Huawei's 5G equipment. I think Huawei is betting that this is more political theater from Trump, and can be resolved with a token gesture that lets the Pres declare the outcome as a win for him personally.

China has a club of rich and powerful people. This guy is one of them, he is in it and obviously has friends in high places. I wouldn't be surprised if China decides to either ban or raise taxes on companies like Apple. At the end of the day, China does have some leverage on US manufacturing. This is no longer just Huawei. It's pretty much China versus USA. The challenger versus the incumbent.

It's like being hit with "national security letters" in the US. You can't talk about them and may have to spy on your customers. Huawei gets no benefit from putting surveillance features in their gear. It's something they're required to do.

It's been a long time since US telcos could build or buy switches with no surveillance features. All the way through 1ESS, no Western Electric switch had built-in surveillance. People had to go into the central office and hook up wires to listen in.

The US is doing what it does so well, acting as a bully and using its economic/military status to abuse its power.

The whole thing is total hypocrisy - the US spies/steals from other countries as a matter of policy and we spend trillions on it, but its ok because we're the 'good' guys. China is becoming a threat so any means must be used to suppress them, since we can't very well invade China like we do weaker countries.

what exactly has Huawei done which is so bad anyway? Any why should anyone trust the US govt, esp this govt?

Isn't this just the ZTE ban all over again? Trump seems to completely believe that China owns these companies, so targeting the companies becomes a legitimate strategy in his trade war. I would be surprised if any Chinese company was completely free from Party control, but that doesn't intrinsically justify the ban. I would also be surprised if any American tech company was completely free from NSA influence. I will be surprised if the ban lasts, but it has already hurt US credibility as a reasonable trade partner.

I wasn't really on board with banning Huawei until I read this article.

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