Attack on Huawei is stealing from the future: China Daily editorial

It appears to be a most asymmetric battle.

On one side is telecommunications equipment provider Huawei, a private company seen as a symbol of China's technological prowess.

On the other is the world's sole superpower going all out to try to strangle its development, resorting to such means as cutting it off from all US components and software that it needs to make its products, using national security as a pretext.

But if you think the outcome is predetermined, and the weak has no other choice but to take such hard-handedness and humiliation lying down, you are wrong.

In an interview with Bloomberg on Sunday, Huawei founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei admitted that his company might miss its expected growth target due to the immense pressure it is facing from Washington. But despite the tough environment, it is still growing.

Ren's easy demeanor when talking about the difficulties Huawei is facing reveals his confidence that Huawei will emerge safely from the storm. This confidence is built on the lead Huawei has in 5G technology over its global competitors, though it must now look to itself for its chip supply or find alternatives to stay ahead in smartphones and 5G.

Since it is the 5G leader, the technological supremacy that Huawei has built up cannot have been gained by stealing the intellectual property rights of others, as some in the US have claimed. "I stole the American technologies from tomorrow," said Ren laughing off the charges.

Ren definitely has a broad perspective and higher horizons when it comes to making a company grow. He knows well that all companies are interdependent in a closely interwoven supply chain, and one company cannot thrive at the expense of another, which is why he would protest any possible retaliation by Beijing against Apple.

Goldman Sachs estimates that Apple could lose nearly one-third of its profits if China banned its products, as the US has done to Huawei.

In this sense, Ren is more like a strategist than a businessman. He believes that a country has no eternal friends or perpetual enemies, but only eternal and perpetual interests.

As the US is not the international police and cannot manage the whole world, "the rest of the world will decide whether they would work with us based on their own business interests", he said.

The US stands to see more of its own interests compromised if it continues with its mindless attack against Huawei.