Philosophically speaking, I wonder ceaselessly what the truth is and my mind never stops asking questions. The real trick is knowing which questions to ask, especially when as in philosophical conversations, we are inclined to make comparisons between concepts like good & evil, like right & wrong, or like economics & politics. Most recently, I wrote an article about civic duty & sacrifice as a place where all countries and their people could meet in the middle without argument as to what we need to do in response to the current global pandemic which is upon us.
More focused on the business and practical concerns of daily life, I had recently purchased a new mobile phone. I am a bit clumsy you see, dropping and shattering mobile screens far more often than the average guy. And so, for this reason I always buy a high performing mid-priced device. I won't buy a $1000-$1500 device knowing full well that I'm a bit clumsy. The other consideration is that I have a big hand and I like a bigger screen if possible. This left me with choosing literally the only 7" screen available on the market, a Huawei Honor Note10. Priced at only 1700RMB, a terrific device.
Oops. Did he just say Huawei? That's on someone's dirty words list these days and its not George Carlin. Yes, and that's when I became curious once again.
Talking with a savvy 5G/tech industry think tank friend about my new device and its rather controversial brand, it was pointed out to me that the three primary players in the tech/5G space are Nokia, Huawei and Ericsson. I went on doing some fascinating research to bring myself up to speed, now also aware after reviewing dozens of articles, reports and interviews on the controversial topic of Huawei, Once again as mischievous boys in another neighborhood game of hide ‘n seek, someone seems to be burying the lead and writing a different headline.
Well, of course, they are doing much worse than that. Over the past few weeks, even right in the middle of the world's worst humanitarian crisis, we saw the execution in mid-March of a right wing coordinated attack led by Fox News to destroy and vilify all things China. Make no mistake, that's exactly what it was, never mind the attacks were filled with lies and distortions that intelligent, observing viewers like you and me are sick of and can see through from a mile away. Thus, I was reminded of last year's poignant accusations against Huawei and even the arrest of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei's daughter, Meng Wanzhou.
Now to be fair with respect to most recent developments between the U.S. and China, I want to point out that the President offered up some conciliatory remarks recently when he also stopped using the phrase "Chinese virus". Well, that was nice of him and let's hope such a conciliatory attitude continues leading to more cooperation. We now know because President Trump told us directly that his use of the phrase was his direct retaliation after China PR spokesperson Zhao Li Jian, who had sent out his tweet asking legitimate questions about the origins of the virus. But let's be honest, Zhao Li Jian's tweet was as we say in Chinese "过分了“，guofen le, which means "over the line". His tweet was no better than one of Trump's emotional 3AM tweets and in that sense Zhao Li Jian acted a bit childish too, with him and Trump taking an apparent break from hide ‘n seek and to slinging mud at one another in the school playground. And Trump, being Trump, threw some mud back.
Now that we are past these unfortunate childish moments in the middle of a humanitarian crisis, let's not forget that at their very root is the aggressive, intentional anti-China attacks we see coming from specific U.S. govt officials and legacy media. It's all out there in plain sight for everyone to see, from Mike Pompeo and Tucker Carlson to Steve Bannon and the ever-wrong Gordon Chang; the theme to destroy China at this year's annual CPAC gathering in Washington, it is a soap opera extraordinaire for drama-loving Americans.
So now, I'm back to wondering about that trio of tech/5G giants and the similarly nasty attacks and accusations against Huawei. It's almost as if Huawei itself is a proxy for all things China. Of course we all know that the U.S. has made gargantuan spying accusations against Huawei and even came up with a legal charge to arrest the founder's daughter up in Canada. I'll leave it to you to Google that one if you would like to know more. What's more on my mind are these questions:
Did you know that Huawei, in response to accusations, handed over its entire system code to let everyone review with a computer geek's fine toothed comb? They did that.
Did you know that Nokia and Ericsson won't hand over their system code? Huawei has said all along that their system, their equipment, their code has no more than the same vulnerabilities as all such telecom vendors in the tech space.
And if we pause to ponder in terms of the U.S. tech companies, we have no less than a soap opera's laundry list of egregious privacy, hacking, spying and cybersecurity offenses for which many of them have been found guilty and even been fined billions. CIA Director John Brennan committed perjury before the U.S. Congress when asked about it. The detailed stories and cases fill the pages of published non-fiction books serving as content that award-winning Hollywood script writers could only dream of.
It didn't take much time reading for me to also learn that Huawei's founder has plainly stated that Huawei will gladly sign a "Mutual No Backdoor" pact. Did you know that?
No other vendor or institution has. That "Mutual No Back Door" pact is an offer sitting on the table with all parties, government bodies and other vendors who are supposedly "nervous" about doing business with Huawei. And that offer continues sitting on the table. Because, did you know that not one single party, not one vendor, has agreed to signing that "No Backdoor" pact? So I will go ahead and guess that word "mutual" is where the truth bubbles to the surface.
So you see why I'm wondering and now you're wondering, too. As we should be, we are wondering as bystanders, as consumers, as pawns in the political game of chess being played in U.S. China relations and I am genuinely compelled ask; Just what the heck is really going on? I'm afraid we are never going to know the final full truth and you knew that, too. So here we are, just bystanders after all.
The drama continues as this recent Reuters article on a fresh crackdown on Huawei’s chip supply resources reveals. As the article states, one of the sources said the rule-change required chipmakers to obtain a U.S. license is aimed at curbing sales of chips to Huawei by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, a major producer of chips for Huawei’s HiSilicon unit, as well as the world’s largest contract maker.
It is unclear if President Donald Trump, who appeared to push back against the proposal last month, will sign off on the rule change. But if finalized, it could deal a blow to Huawei and TSMC, hurting U.S. companies as well, sources said. This is going to have a far more negative impact on U.S. companies than it will on Huawei, because Huawei will develop their own supply chain,” trade lawyer Doug Jacobson said, “Ultimately, Huawei will find alternatives.”
Fascinating. Yet I sense there's a certain street wise billionaire New York real estate mogul who himself knows how much nonsense this is: President Trump himself. The story continues by indicating that even last month Trump expressed disagreement. With the situation "...fueling frustration among China hawks in the administration and prompting a push to toughen up export rules for the company....The hawks’ efforts appeared in jeopardy last month when Trump reacted strongly against the proposed crackdown.
President Trump stated,“I want our companies to be allowed to do business. I mean, things are put on my desk that have nothing to do with national security, including with chipmakers and various others. So we’re going to give it up, and what will happen? They’ll make those chips in a different country or they’ll make them in China or someplace else.”
Nevertheless, I find myself resigned to this endlessly disappointing reality, bashing Huawei, discrediting and blaming China from above, below and side to side. So I turn my attention away from politics and towards something far more important and urgent; the current coronavirus crisis the world faces and a societal value which I wrote about in a previous article. It is called civic duty, and sacrifice goes right along with it. Xi Jinping called the virus battle China’s war time stance and it is appropriate to find that aggressive sentiment recently echoed by the Trump administration as well. A world crisis serves as the moment for leaders to lead and as in wartime, for a country's citizens rise up to their civic duty and the sacrifices required. Otherwise frankly, you wouldn't have a country or a society within which to live, to thrive, to hopefully prosper in pursuit of happiness.
According to a fresh CGTN Opinion article by political analyst Tom Fowdy, the irrational conflict highlights sharp analytical problems, “The overwhelming focus on discrediting the government deprives the Chinese people and the population at large any praise for how they individually tackled the coronavirus. While this praise is offered to other Asian societies, ideological biases lead Western voices to deprive the Chinese people of agency, initiative and independent thought and completely deny the notion that they could be successful.” In other words, remarkable civic duty and sacrifice by 1.4 billion Chinese people, real moms, dads, elderly and kids, is mostly ignored and dare not be recognized or praised.
These situations all seem to smack of similar hypocrisy; Do the right thing and still don’t get any credit for it. Recall what we have learned:
1..Huawei handed over its entire code for inspection. Investigating boards in the U.S., UK and Germany found nothing.
2. Huawei offered to settle the matter once and for all, offering to sign a backdoor pact. No other vendor would sign it.
3. The Chinese people did their civic duty and sacrifice for many weeks, quarantined in their homes. They were informed and ready to take no risk, even at great economic loss. Myself, my own family and hundreds of thousands of foreigners living here in China were, by the way, side by side with the Chinese households doing the exact same thing.
4. As the pandemic grew simultaneously under control in China and more severe overseas, the Chinese government does what many other countries are doing. Simply helping other countries.
In all cases, little credit and appreciation for doing the right thing. Such actions are even perversely twisted into being infused with manipulative, selfish intent.
Thusly hitting back against such malicious accusations in a Financial Times article, Huawei Deputy Chairman Guo Ping takes the matter a step further with his voice, citing that increased use of Huawei’s equipment simply puts a damper on the NSA’s lust for spying on whomever it wants. “Many of our targets communicate over Huawei-produced products”, a 2010 NSA document states. “We want to make sure that we know how to exploit these products.” Oh boy.
Civic duty, doing the right thing and the individual human sacrifice that goes with those choices is the one single societal value on which all parties, all political systems from both left and right, can meet in full agreement right in the middle. It is the perfect, appropriate middle ground to serve as a base in achieving crucial results right now. No country on the planet exemplified this more clearly in recent weeks than China, where, while tiny South Korea, Japan and Singapore have also done an effective, efficient job at bringing the virus outbreak under control, China doing so is particularly notable considering that its population rings in at a gargantuan 1.4 billion. Every family, every household here on the ground knows in their own cities that we united in civic duty, sacrifice and vigilance for weeks, resulting in achievement of the ultimate goal, no new cases. And yet too many in the world's outside media just keep reflexively spouting the “China is bad” mantra.
On a more timely note, we have today’s release of Huawei’s 2019 Annual Report. Despite any controversy revolving around U.S. pressures, the company delivered lower than originally forecast but still solid financial results, with sales revenue up 19%, consumer business up 34%, enterprise business up 8.6% and net profit up 5.6% year on year. The good news is undoubtedly rooted in the domestic Chinese market. However more importantly and even weirdly, according to Deputy Chairman Eric Xu in a fresh Financial Times’ article, spending with US suppliers was still up by 70 per cent last year, even with that nasty White House blacklist status. Deputy Chairman Xu said the company spent $18.7bn with US companies in 2019, up from $11bn in 2018. In addition, with Huawei now developing their own software, chips and apps, that Plan B has become the Plan A.
Boys in the playground. Mud. Computer code. Hide ‘n seek. Politics. A Global pandemic. Civic duty. Sacrifice. Did I miss anything?
Mario Cavolo, Shenyang, March 31, 2020
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Mario Cavolo is a professional speaker, author and media commentator living in China for 21 years. Feel free to book him as a speaker for your upcoming event.
