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Showing posts with label CFO Meng Wanzhou. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CFO Meng Wanzhou. Show all posts

Thursday, December 13, 2018

Huawei founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei survived a famine, but can he weather President Trump?

https://youtu.be/rqRItBZOp5g
  • Ren Zhengfei leads Huawei Technologies, one of the world's largest manufacturer of telecommunication hardware and mobile phones.
  • Ren is the son of school teachers and grew up in a mountainous town in southern China's Guizhou Province.
  • Ren held technician posts in China's military and worked for Shenzhen South Sea Oil before establishing Huawei with the equivalent of $3,000 in 1987.
  • Huawei today does business in more than 170 countries with 180,000 employees.
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    Mr Ren Zhengfei survived Mao Zedong's great famine and went on to build a telecom giant with US$92 billion in revenue that strikes fear among some policymakers in the West.PHOTO: EPA-EFE
    HONG KONG (BLOOMBERG) - At the sprawling Huawei Technologies campus in Shenzhen, the foodcourt's walls are emblazoned with quotes from the company's billionaire founder and chief executive Ren Zhengfei.

    Then there's the research lab that resembles the White House in Washington. Perhaps the most curious thing, though, are three black swans paddling around a lake.

    For Mr Ren, a former People's Liberation Army soldier turned telecom tycoon, the elegant birds are meant as a reminder to avoid complacency and prepare for unexpected crisis. That pretty much sums up the state of affairs at Huawei, whose chief financial officer, Ms Meng Wanzhou, who's also Mr Ren's daughter, is in custody in Canada and faces extradition to the United States on charges of conspiracy to defraud banks and violate sanctions on Iran.

    The arrest places Huawei in the cross-hairs of an escalating technology rivalry between China and the US, which views the company, a critical global supplier of mobile network equipment, as a potential national security risk.

    Hardliners in President Donald Trump's administration are especially keen to prevent Huawei from supplying wireless carriers as they upgrade to 5G, a next-generation technology expected to accelerate the shift to Internet-connected devices and self-driving cars.

    Mr Ren is a legendary figure in the Chinese business world. He survived Mao Zedong's great famine and went on to build a telecom giant with US$92 billion (S$126 billion) in revenue that strikes fear among some policymakers in the West. Huawei is the No. 1 smartphone maker in China, and this year eclipsed Apple to become second maker globally, according to research firm IDC.

    Though it has a low profile compared with China's Internet giants, Huawei's revenue last year was more than Alibaba Group Holding, Tencent Holdings and and Baidu Inc combined. About half of its revenue now comes from abroad, led by Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

    The company's high-speed global expansion has come under fire for years, starting with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US' derailing of an acquisition in 2008. More recently, Australia, New Zealand and the US have blocked or limited the use of Huawei gear.

    The arrest and prosecution of Ms Meng in US courts comes amid a far bigger US-China struggle for technology dominance in the decades ahead - and could have huge, and potentially severe, consequences for Huawei. Mr Ren declined an interview request from Bloomberg News.

    "It gives Trump a bargaining chip," said Mr George Magnus, an economist at Oxford University's China Centre. "She's the daughter of the CEO, Ren Zhengfei, himself a former PLA officer, and Huawei's alleged dealings with Iran are just the latest in a string of concerns."

    An outright ban on buying American technology and components, should it come to that, would deal Huawei a crushing blow. Earlier this year, the Trump administration imposed just such a penalty on ZTE Corp, also a Chinese telecom, and threatened its very survival before backing down.

    Both Huawei and ZTE are banned from most US government procurement work.

    A full-blown, commercial ban in the US would not only apply to hardware components, but also cut off access to the software and patents of US companies, Mr Edison Lee and Mr Timothy Chau, analysts with Jefferies Securities, wrote in a report.

    "If Huawei cannot license Android from Google, or Qualcomm's patents in 4G and 5G radio access technology, it will not be able to build smartphones or 4G/5G base stations," they note.

    The company's legal troubles in the US may also spill into other markets.

    "Government telecommunication infrastructure requirements are essentially locking out the Chinese supplier in critical growth markets," noted Morningstar Research equity analyst Mark Cash in an e-mail. "Additionally, telecom providers without government imposed restrictions may start limiting their usage of Huawei equipment for their 5G network build-outs."

    If there's a Darth Vader in the minds of Chinese national security hawks in Washington worried about China's rising tech power, it's Mr Ren. In China, though, he's feted as a national hero, who rose from humble beginnings to the pinnacle of wealth and status in Chinese society.

    His grandfather was a master of curing ham in his village in Zhejiang province, which afforded Mr Ren's father the chance to become the village's first university student, according to a 2001 essay by Mr Ren about his upbringing, which was published on a website linked to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

    His father, Mr Ren Moxun, was a Communist Youth League member, who later worked as a teacher and an accountant at a military factory, but who kept up his rebel fervour under the Kuomintang by selling revolutionary books.

    After moving to rural Guizhou province, he met his wife Cheng Yuanzhao and gave birth to Mr Ren Zhengfei, the oldest of two sons and five daughters.

    The family lived on modest teaching salaries. In one of Mr Ren's speeches, he remembered how his mother read him the story of Hercules, but withheld the ending until he came home with a good report card.

    Famine Years

    During the Great Leap Forward campaign that started in the late 1950s, a famine came to his home town after Communist Party industrialisation and collectivisation policies went off the rails. Mr Ren recalled in his essay how his mother stuffed into his hand each morning a piece of corn pancake while asking about his homework. His good grades gained him entry to the Chongqing Institute of Civil Engineering and Architecture.

    After graduation, he worked in the civil engineering industry until 1974, when he joined the PLA's Engineering Corps as a soldier, and worked on a chemical fibre base in Liaoyang. Huawei says he rose to become deputy director, but did not hold military rank. He does, however, often pepper his speeches with military references.

    "Our managers and experts need to act like generals, carefully examining maps and meticulously studying problems," Mr Ren said in a speech posted on a website for Huawei employees.

    Mr Ren's Communist Party credentials aren't as deep as his father's. He attended the 12th National Congress of the Communist Party in 1982, and once cited the party's dogma of "a struggle that never ends" when defending the company's tough work hours.

    But Mr Ren was a bookworm as a child and was denied acceptance into the Communist Youth League, according to the book Huawei: Leadership, Culture And Connectivity, a book co-authored by David De Cremer, Tian Tao and Wu Chunbo.

    He didn't become a Communist Party member in the PLA until late in his military career. However, a 2012 House permanent Select Committee on Intelligence report on Huawei asked why a private company had a Communist Party Committee, which has become common among China's Internet giants.

    Mr Ren retired from the army in 1983, and joined his first wife to work at a Shenzhen company involved in the city's special economic zone. It was around then that he had to sell off everything to pay a debt related to a business partner, and lost his job at Shenzhen Nanyou Group, as well as his first marriage, according to Ren Zhengfei And Huawei by author Li Hongwen.

    Comeback Play

    After a period of sleepless nights while living with family members, Mr Ren saw an opportunity. When China began its economic opening under Deng Xiaoping, the telephone penetration rate was lower than the average rate in Africa, or 120th in the world. He founded Huawei with four partners in 1987 with 21,000 yuan in initial working capital, just above the minimum threshold required under Shenzhen rules.

    Huawei started out as a trader of telecom equipment, but the company's technicians studied up on switchboards and were soon making their own. Workers put in long hours in Shenzhen's swampy heat with only ceiling fans. Mr Ren kept up morale with subtle gestures, like offering pigtail soup to workers putting in overtime.

    The company became known for its "mattress culture" in which workers would pass out on office mattresses from exhaustion. In 2006, a 25-year-old worker Hu Xinyu, who had made a habit of working into the wee hours and then sleeping at the office, died of viral encephalitis. Some Huawei employees subsequently committed suicide.

    The deaths triggered a revision of the company policy on overtime, and the creation of a chief health and safety officer role.

    It wasn't the only move Mr Ren made to stabilise morale. He used to pay his workers only half their salaries on payday, but eventually decided to convert the other half of employee salaries and bonuses into shares. The company's 2017 report shows that he has a 1.4 per cent stake, giving him a net worth of US$2 billion.

    Wolf Culture

    Huawei struggled for market share, with foreign companies using so-called "wolf culture" of aggressive salesmanship, which sometimes materialised in the form of Huawei employees flooding sales events with several times more salespeople than competitors.

    The company ventured into international markets in the 2000s, with telecom equipment that was more affordable than products of competitors such as Cisco Systems. Huawei later admitted to copying a small portion of router code from Cisco and agreed to remove the tainted code in a settlement.

    Mr Ren since stepped up the company's research and development. Of its 180,000 employees, about 80,000 are now involved in R&D, according to the company's 2017 report, and the company has been known to recruit some of China's top talent out of universities.

    The company recently refocused on existing markets after the US government called Huawei a national security threat, and cited concerns over its possible control of 5G technologies. Mr Trump signed a Bill banning government use of Chinese tech including Huawei's, and has even contacted allies to get them to avoid using Huawei equipment.

    Collectively owned by its employees, the company is known for a culture of discipline, in which no one, Mr Ren included, has their own driver or flies first class on the company dime. Lately, Mr Ren has been warning employees against using fake numbers or profit to enhance performance. The company set up a data verification team in 2014 within the finance department, which was overseen by Mr Ren's daughter.

    In a recent speech posted on the Huawei employee network, however, he called for patience with critics, but rejected foreign intervention. "We will never give in or yield to pressure from outside," he said.

    That maxim is going to be soon put to the test by the US Department of Justice.


    Source: Bloomberg

    Related:


    Huawei CFO 'unlikely' to be extradited

    Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Chinese tech giant Huawei, who was granted a $7.5 million bail, is unlikely to be extradited to the US because she is charged for political reasons, analysts said.


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    https://youtu.be/3z58zHmz-6k https://youtu.be/17KDxqffVFI Professor Dr. Wang Former Executive of Halliburton DID HUAWEI VIOLATE .

    In custody: A profile of Meng is displayed on a computer at a Huawei store in Beijing. The Chinese government, speaking through its emb...
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    Wednesday, December 12, 2018

    Did Huawei violate Iran sanctions? No, it shows deeper US-China battle for global influence as power coming from high-tech sector

    https://youtu.be/3z58zHmz-6k

    https://youtu.be/17KDxqffVFI
    Professor Dr. Wang
    Former Executive of Halliburton

    DID HUAWEI VIOLATE IRAN SANCTIONS?

    No, they didn’t.

    CFO Meng was arrested supposedly for “violating Iran sanction”. This has to be the most grotesque distortion of justice since the US was the country who unilaterally pulled out IN VIOLATION of an agreement they had signed with multiple nations earlier !!! In other words, the guy who broke a solemn promise made, violated the agreement, then made sanction an American domestic law is now force feeding this law arbitrarily on the rest of the world by arresting someone who refuses to violate the agreement ! Is this making any sense to anybody?

    Huawei created a subsidiary to do business with Iran, and the CFO is being charged with lying about the relationship between Huawei and the subsidiary.

    This seems totally ridiculous to me since when I worked at Halliburton, we did EXACTLY the same thing ! Not only was our CEO never arrested, he was invited to join the government & became Vice President Dick Cheney !!!!!!!

    The moral of this story is for normal businesses to be extremely vigilant & recognise the true faces of America & Saudi! One tosses you in jail for breaking twisted laws they make up as they go along & the other goes after you with a bone saw. Both are gangsters, far worse than the Mafia, because the Mafia at least have the decency to commit crimes secretively, while the thugs in American & Saudi governments commit their crimes blatantly in the open, with complete disregard to the laws & sovereignty of another country, bullying their way through, trying to justify their actions by smearing the victims... then run publicity campaigns to sway public opinions while accusing others of crimes against human rights.. ??!!

    I am sure there are nice people in USA & in Saudi & i don’t want to generalise, but i have seen time & again in the States that if ever their oversized egos feel threatened, they can turn into totally evil, nefarious subhumans capable of the most despicable deeds.

    The arrest of Meng is a case in point.

    I went to the States starry eyed with high hopes & expectations, ready to learn a democratic system far superior than ours. Well, after my Ph.D and a few working years, I stand corrected.

    Life in the States has taught me to be proud of my people and my country. Grass is definitely NOT greener on the other side. America is very strong in “hypes”, they talk big but deliver little. China does the opposite. American government spends on military, lives in “now”, supports the rich, & works for re-election. The Chinese government spends on infrastructure, works for the people, eradicated poverty & follows 5-30 year plans. These are facts, not propaganda, not campaign promises.

    I can’t tell you how happy I am to be home again. Not only is the food much better, more importantly, I can finally stop worrying myself sick... about my elderly mom getting mucked, my attractive wife getting raped...my children getting bullied, drugged or shot in schools...Having to live in constant fear everyday is the ultimate violation of my human rights.

    Gosh, it’s good to be back in civilisation.

    Dr. Wang Wins Halliburton


    Huawei clash shows deeper US-China battle for global influence as power coming from high-tech sector


    Bail hearings proceeded this week after Meng Wanzhou(pic), the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies Co, was arrested in Canada on Dec 1 because of alleged violations of US sanctions against Iran. The case threatens to derail a trade truce struck the same day between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.

    HONG KONG: The Trump administration has insisted the arrest of a top Huawei executive has nothing to do with trade talks. In Beijing, it’s just the latest US move to contain China’s rise as a global power.

    Bail hearings proceeded this week after Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies Co, was arrested in Canada on Dec 1 because of alleged violations of US sanctions against Iran. The case threatens to derail a trade truce struck the same day between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.

    Even if the two leaders manage to strike a broader deal, the arrest shows that the US-China conflict goes far beyond trade. The world’s biggest economies are now engaged in a battle for global influence that will ultimately determine whether the US remains the globe’s predominant superpower, or China rises as a viable counterweight.

    “The sentiment in Washington now is not just a Trumpian mercantilism – the desire to bring back factory jobs to Wisconsin or wherever,” said Nick Bisley, a professor of international relations at La Trobe University in Melbourne who has written books on great-power politics. “It is a desire to significantly cut ties with China because of that larger perception it presents a strategic risk.”

    A bipartisan consensus has emerged in Washington that China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation hollowed out US manufacturing and allowed it to grow rich. That increased economic power is now at a point where it risks eroding key American military advantages around the globe.

    China insists it plays by the rules, and doesn’t challenge US dominance. Even so, three areas in particular worry American strategic planners: Technology, the dollar and the ability to project military power overseas.

    A year ago, the White House identified China’s growing technological prowess as a threat to US economic and military might. American companies have long argued that China forces them to transfer intellectual property and sometimes steals trade secrets – all of which Beijing denies.

    In justifying tariffs, Trump’s team has cited Beijing’s “Made in China 2025” strategy to become a global leader in state-of-the-art technologies from aerospace to robotics. So far, China has resisted those demands, arguing that doing so would crush its economic potential.

    Huawei in particular epitomises the threat. Earlier this year, Trump blocked Broadcom Inc’s US$117bil hostile takeover bid for Qualcomm Inc over concerns that Huawei would end up dominating the market for computer chips and wireless technologies.

    The fear is that wireless carriers may be forced to turn to Huawei or other Chinese companies for 5G technology, potentially giving Beijing access to critical communications. Those concerns have prompted the US to ban Huawei’s products for government procurement, and Australia, Japan and New Zealand have reportedly followed.

    China has fought back, with foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang saying this week that Huawei didn’t “force any enterprise to install forced backdoors.”

    “The competition is really focused in the areas where future strategic and economic dominance come from,” said Michael Shoebridge, director of the defense and strategy programme at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

    “The Huawei arrest is right in the middle of this because both America and China see their future global power as coming from the high-tech sector.”

    The dominance of the dollar has allowed the US to effectively control the world’s financial system, underpinning its superpower status. Yet Trump’s increased use of sanctions to assert its foreign-policy goals has prompted a wide range of nations – from China to Russia to the European Union – to look for an alternative.

    The Trump administration added nearly 1,000 entities and individuals to its sanctions list in its first year, almost 30% more than the Obama administration’s last year in office, according to law firm Gibson Dunn. The complete list now runs to more than 1,200 pages.

    Sanctions are a key tool for the US to subdue potential adversaries like North Korea, but they also can affect friends and allies. The EU, which objected to reimposing sanctions on Iran, this month unveiled plans to mitigate the so-called “exorbitant privilege” of the dollar.

    During a visit to China last month, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said the two nations were looking at ways to boost the use of their currencies through allowing the use of China’s UnionPay credit card in Russia and Russia’s Mir card in China. “No one currency should dominate the market,” he said.

    “We are potentially at the beginning of a systemic shift that may take some time to play out,” said Gregory Chin, associate professor at York University in Toronto, and a political economy specialist. “The political will is building and coalescing.” — Bloomberg

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    In custody: A profile of Meng is displayed on a computer at a Huawei store in Beijing. The Chinese government, speaking through its emb.

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    Saturday, December 8, 2018

    Huawei CFO arrest violates human rights as US takes aim at Huawei, the real trade war with China

    In custody: A profile of Meng is displayed on a computer at a Huawei store in Beijing. The Chinese government, speaking through its embassy in Canada, strenuously objected to the arrest, and demanded Meng’s immediate release. — AP

    https://youtu.be/8Uxk0mEonTA

    https://youtu.be/sAha76_6YQQ

    China urges release of Huawei executive

    - In violation of universal human rights


    Chinese officials are urging the US and Canada to clarify why Meng Wanzhou, a senior executive of Huawei Technologies, has been detained and to immediately release her, slamming the arrest as a violation of her rights.

    Experts said on Thursday that Meng's detention is a move by the US to heat up the ongoing trade war between China and the US.

    Meng, who is Huawei's chief financial officer and the daughter of Huawei's founder Ren Zhengfei, was detained as she was transferring flights in Canada, according to information provided by Huawei, one of China's tech giants.

    Meng's detention was made following a request by the US, which is seeking her extradition on as yet unspecified charges made by prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York, a Huawei spokesperson told the Global Times on Thursday.

    Meng was arrested in Vancouver on Saturday, the New York Times reported on Thursday, citing a spokesperson from Canada's Justice Department.

    "China has demanded that the US and Canada immediately clarify the reasons for Meng's detention and to release her," Geng Shuang, spokesperson of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told a daily press briefing on Thursday.

    He noted that Chinese consular officials in Canada have already provided assistance to Meng.

    Meng's detention, made without any clearly stated charges, is an obvious violation of her human rights, said Geng.

    The Chinese Embassy in Canada also said on Thursday morning that it firmly opposes and has made strong protests over the action which has seriously curtailed the rights of a Chinese citizen.

    "The Chinese side has lodged stern representations with the US and Canadian side, and urged them to immediately correct the wrongdoing and restore the personal freedom of Meng Wanzhou," the Chinese Embassy in Canada said in a statement published on its website.

    A Canadian source with knowledge of the arrest was quoted in the Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail on Thursday as saying that US law enforcement authorities allege that Huawei violated US sanctions against Iran but provided no further details.

    Although Meng's detention stems from terms of the US-Canada extradition treaty, the US should not be taking such legal action without providing concrete evidence, especially when it has been trying to restore relations with China, Hao Junbo, a Beijing-based lawyer, told the Global Times on Thursday.

    Chinese officials and experts criticized the US for its long-arm jurisdiction, which not only hurts individuals but also enterprises.

    Rising obstacles

    Huawei has been targeted by the US for many years, from patent infringement lawsuits to political pressure, Xiang Ligang, chief executive of the telecom industry news site cctime.com, told the Global Times on Thursday.

    "As the Chinese company grew stronger, it faced more obstacles in foreign markets as it is considered as a threat to local players," he said.

    Cisco Systems filed the first lawsuit against Huawei in 2003. Motorola filed a lawsuit accusing Huawei of theft of trade secrets in 2010, according to media reports. The company also faced investigation by the US Congress on security issues.

    Since at least 2016, US authorities have been probing Huawei's alleged shipping of US-origin products to Iran and other countries in violation of US export and sanctions laws, Reuters reported in April.

    The US also asked its major allies to say 'no' to Huawei equipment, as it was worried about alleged potential Chinese meddling in 5G networks, the Wall Street Journal reported on November 23.

    While the company faces rising difficulties in the US market, it has been actively exploring other markets such as the EU and Africa.

    It became the world's largest telecom equipment provider in 2017, surpassing Ericsson and ZTE, industry website telecomlead.com reported in March, citing IHS data.

    Huawei has a 28 percent market share in the global telecom infrastructure industry, followed by Ericsson and Nokia, which have 27 percent and 23 percent respectively, said the report.

    Escalating trade war

    The US will not stop countering China's rise in the technology sector and will never drop its hostility toward China's "Made in China 2025" strategy, Wang Yanhui, head of the Shanghai-based Mobile China Alliance, told the Global Times on Thursday.

    "Huawei has become another card for the US to play against China in the ongoing trade war," he said.

    China and the US announced a trade truce following a meeting between the two countries' top leaders in Buenos Aires on Saturday.

    But experts warned that China should be prepared for a long-lasting and heated trade war with the US, as it will continue to attempt to counter China's rising power.

    "The latest Huawei incident shows that we should get ready for long-term confrontation between China and the US, as the US will not ease its stance on China and the arrest of a senior executive of a major Chinese tech company is a vivid example," Mei Xinyu, a research fellow with the Beijing-based Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, told the Global Times on Thursday.

    Huawei said there is very little information about specific allegations and that the company is not aware of any misconduct by Meng.

    "The company complies with all laws and regulations in the countries in which it operates, including export control and sanctions laws applied in the UN, the US and the EU," Huawei said. - Global Times by Chen Qingqing

    Canada's treatment of Meng Wanzhou in violation of human rights

    We hope that Canadian authorities handle the case seriously and properly. We also hope that Ms Meng will be treated humanely and will be bailed out. We would like to see Meng's case being handled properly, so that she can regain her freedom as soon as possible. Chinese society has always respected Canada, and it is sincerely hoped that the way how Canadian authorities handle this matter will live up to Chinese people's expectation and impressions regarding the country.


     With executive's arrest, US wants to stifle Huawei

    The Chinese government should seriously go behind the US tendency to abuse legal procedures to suppress China's high-tech enterprises. It should increase interaction with the US and exert pressure when necessary. China has been exercising restraint, but the US cannot act recklessly. US President Donald Trump should rein in the hostile activities of some Americans who may imperil Sino-US relations.

    US takes aim at Huawei

     Arrest of telecom giant's CFO escalates US-China tech battle


    THE Trump administration’s efforts to extradite the chief financial officer of China’s Huawei Technologies Co over criminal charges mark the start of an even more aggressive phase in the technology rivalry between the United States and China and will increase pressure on Washington’s allies to shun the telecommunications company.

    Armed with a US extradition request, Canadian authorities arrested Meng Wanzhou on Dec 1, the same day as President Trump was holding a summit with Chinese counterpart President Xi Jinping. But White House officials said Trump had no advance knowledge of the arrest, indicating the action was on a separate track from trade talks currently under way between Washington and Beijing.

    Meng’s detention underscores a sense of urgency, at the Justice Department and other US agencies, to address what they see as a growing threat to national security posed by China’s ambitions to gain an edge in the tech sector. For years, Washington has alleged the Chinese government could compel Huawei, which supplies much of the world with critical cellular network equipment, to spy or to disrupt communications.

    Huawei has long said it is an employee-owned company and isn’t beholden to any government, and has never used its equipment to spy on or sabotage other countries. The Chinese government, speaking through its embassy in Canada, strenuously objected to the arrest, and demanded Meng’s immediate release.

    US prosecutors made the extradition request based on a sealed indictment for alleged violations of Iran sanctions that had been prepared for some time, people familiar with the matter said. A federally appointed US overseer, formerly charged with evaluating HSBC Holdings PLC’s anti-money-laundering and sanctions controls, relayed information about suspicious Huawei transactions to federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York, some of the people said.

    Meng, the daughter of Huawei’s founder, Ren Zhengfei, is now in custody in Vancouver, and a bail hearing has been scheduled for Friday, according to a spokesman for Canada’s justice department.

    Some worried a lack of coordination on the various strands of the Trump administration’s China initiatives could be counterproductive, especially if Trump decides to use the detention of Meng as leverage to extract concessions in the trade talks. The two sides agreed on a 90-day window from the Dec 1 summit to settle a trade dispute that has seen the two sides exchange tit-for-tat tariffs on each other’s goods.

    “I’m very concerned that that’s just going to ratchet this trade war and make negotiations much more difficult,” said Gary Locke, former US ambassador to China. “This is I think a really hot-button, almost a grenade with respect to the 90-day negotiations.”

    China has a long history of reading darker motives into US actions. “The risk is conspiracy theories in Beijing,” said China scholar Michael Pillsbury at Hudson Institute, who consults regularly with the Trump trade team. He compares the events to when China rejected US explanations that the United States had made a mistake when it bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999 during the Kosovo war.

    The arrest indicated the Justice Department had significant evidence against Meng, and that additional charges were likely, said Brian Fleming, a trade and national security lawyer at Miller & Chevalier. “This is just the tip of the iceberg,” he said.

    The arrest could also add ammunition to an extraordinary US government campaign to persuade wireless and Internet providers in allied countries to stop using telecommunications equipment from Huawei, said national security experts. US officials say they are intensifying efforts to curb Huawei because wireless carriers world-wide are about to upgrade to 5G, a new wireless technology that will connect many more items—factory parts, self-driving cars and everyday objects like wearable health monitors – to the Internet. US officials say they don’t want to give Beijing the potential to interfere with an ever-growing universe of connected devices.

    By Kate O’keeffe and Bob Davis


    Huawei reveals the real trade war with China


    Tech rivalry: The high-tech trade war shows that for all the hoopla over manufacturing jobs, steel autos and tariffs, the real competition is in the tech sector. — Reuters  
    Why China's Huawei Matters http://www.wsj.com/video/why-china-huawei-matters/C3AC2323-4E49-4176-AD53-7BC76B9635DD.html

    https://youtu.be/tpEXcW31awQ

    IF you only scan the headlines, you could be forgiven for thinking that the US-China trade war is mainly about tariffs.

    After all, the president and trade-warrior-in-chief has called himself “Tariff Man”. And the tentative trade deal between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping was mainly about tariffs, especially on items like automobiles.

    But the startling arrest in Canada of a Chinese telecom company executive should wake people up to the fact that there’s a second US-China trade war going on – a much more stealthy conflict, fought with weapons much subtler and more devastating than tariffs. And the prize in that other struggle is domination of the information-technology industry.

    The arrested executive, Wanzhou Meng, is the chief financial officer of telecom-equipment manufacturer Huawei Technologies Co (and its founder’s daughter). The official reason for her arrest is that Huawei is suspected of selling technology to Iran, in violation of US sanctions.

    It’s the second big Chinese tech company to be accused of breaching those sanctions – the first was ZTE Corp in 2017. The United States punished ZTE by forbidding it from buying American components – most importantly, telecom chips made by US-based Qualcomm Inc. Those purchasing restrictions were eventually lifted after ZTE agreed to pay a fine, and it seems certain that Huawei will also eventually escape severe punishment. But these episodes highlight Chinese companies’ dependence on critical US technology.

    The United States. still makes – or at least, designs – the best computer chips in the world. China assembles lots of electronics, but without those crucial inputs of US technology, products made by companies such as Huawei would be of much lower quality.

    Export restrictions, and threats of restrictions, are thus probably not just about sanctions – they’re about making life harder for the main competitors of US tech companies.

    Huawei just passed Apple Inc to become the world’s second-largest smartphone maker by market share (Samsung Electronics Co is first). This marks a change for China, whose companies have long been stuck doing low-value assembly while companies in rich countries do the high-value design, marketing and component manufacturing.

    US moves against Huawei and ZTE may be intended to force China to remain a cheap supplier instead of a threatening competitor.

    The subtle, far-sighted nature of this approach suggests that the impetus for the high-tech trade war goes far beyond what Trump, with his focus on tariffs and old-line manufacturing industries, would think of. It seems likely that US tech companies, as well as the military intelligence communities, are influencing policy here as well.

    In fact, more systematic efforts to block Chinese access to US components are in the works. The Export Control Reform Act, passed this summer, increased regulatory oversight of US exports of “emerging” and “foundational” technologies deemed to have national-security importance. Although national security is certainly a concern, it’s generally hard to separate high-tech industrial and corporate dominance from military dominance, so this too should be seen as part of the trade war.

    A second weapon in the high-tech trade war is investment restrictions. The Trump administration has greatly expanded its power to block Chinese investments in US technology companies, through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

    The goal of investment restrictions is to prevent Chinese companies from copying or stealing American ideas and technologies. Chinese companies can buy American companies and transfer their intellectual property overseas, or have their employees train their Chinese replacements.

    Even minority stakes can allow a Chinese investor access to industrial secrets that would otherwise be off-limits. By blocking these investors, the Trump administration hopes to preserve US technological dominance, at least for a little while longer.

    Notably, the European Union is also moving to restrict Chinese investments. The fact that Europe, which has opposed Trump’s tariffs, is copying American investment restrictions, should be a signal that the less-publicised high-tech trade war is actually the important one. The high-tech trade war shows that for all the hoopla over manufacturing jobs, steel, autos and tariffs, the real competition is in the tech sector.

    Losing the lead in the global technology race means lower profits and a disappearing military advantage. But it also means losing the powerful knowledge-industry clustering effects that have been an engine of US economic growth in the post-manufacturing age. Bluntly put, the United States can afford to lose its lead in furniture manufacturing; it can’t afford to lose its dominance in the tech sector.

    The question is whether the high-tech trade war will succeed in keeping China in second place. China has long wanted to catch up in semiconductor manufacturing, but export controls will make that goal a necessity rather than an aspiration. And investment restrictions may spur China to upgrade its own homegrown research and development capacity.

    In other words, in the age when China and the United States were economically co-dependent, China might have been content to accept lower profit margins and keep copying American technology instead of developing its own. But with the coming of the high-tech trade war, that co-dependency is coming to an end. Perhaps that was always inevitable, as China pressed forward on the technological frontier. In any case, the Trump administration’s recent moves against Chinese tech – and some similar moves by the EU – should be seen as the first shots in a long war.

     — Bloomberg by Noah Smit


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