The US Cannot Crush Us, Says Huawei Founder (bbc.com)

The founder of Huawei has said there is "no way the US can crush" the company, in an interview with the BBC. From the report: Ren Zhengfei, founder and president of Huawei, described the arrest of his daughter Meng Wanzhou, the company's chief financial officer, as politically motivated. The US is pursuing criminal charges against Huawei and Ms Meng, including money laundering, bank fraud and stealing trade secrets. Huawei denies any wrongdoing.

Mr Ren spoke to the BBC's Karishma Vaswani in his first international broadcast interview since Ms Meng was arrested -- and dismissed the pressure from the US. "There's no way the US can crush us," he said. "The world cannot leave us because we are more advanced. Even if they persuade more countries not to use us temporarily, we can always scale things down a bit." However, he acknowledged that the potential loss of custom could have a significant impact. [...] Mr Ren warned that "the world cannot leave us because we are more advanced". "If the lights go out in the West, the East will still shine. And if the North goes dark, there is still the South. America doesn't represent the world. America only represents a portion of the world."

Comments

Ain't tryin' to crush you buddy

[SuperKendall]

Just want you to follow the law.

You can do business any way you like within those confines. Not our problem if you can't hack it without hacking others.

Re: Ain't tryin' to crush you buddy

[Tablizer]

In China the law is a little different, it's hard for them to understand Western law.

Canadian officials said something similar when China asked to have the accused Huawei executive handed back to China immediately.

Canadian officials kept emphasizing their separation of powers requires that the courts finish their job, barring some national emergency. In the Chinese system, if the leader(s) say "do X" you do X, no questions asked. Business hierarchies there are similar, I hear, at least more so than the USA.

Re:Ain't tryin' to crush you buddy

[Xylantiel]

Yeah, Chinese executives seem to just betray the fact that they don't understand the rule of law and how an actual functional justice system works. Instead of saying that they will prevail in court against the charges, they say things that seem to imply that the CFO should be let off for entirely political reasons. That may be the norm in China, but in non-authoritarian countries that isn't how it works.