Despite Washington’s move to clamp down on Huawei’s 5G drive, the company will be able to resolve the issue by either boosting its own chip supply or finding alternatives, the tech giant’s founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei, told Bloomberg.
When asked how quickly Huawei can tackle the situation, he said that it will depend on “how fast our repairmen are able to fix the plane”.
“No matter what materials they use, be it metal, cloth or paper, the aim is to keep the plane in the sky”, he added.
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Commenting on US President Donald Trump’s recent remarks that Huawei could be part of a future trade deal between Beijing and Washington, Ren said that he is not a politician.
“It’s a big joke. How are we related to China-US trade?” he noted.
The latest round of Sino-US trade talks stalled last Friday, but the sides pledged to continue working toward a trade agreement in order to solve the bilateral trade dispute which has been simmering since June 2018, when Trump slapped hefty tariffs on Chinese goods in a move that prompted Beijing to retaliate.
Ren went on to say that if Trump calls him, “I will ignore him, then to whom can he negotiate with? If he calls me, I may not answer. But he doesn’t have my number”.
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He described Trump’s tweets as “laughable” and “self-contradictory”, wondering how the US president became “a master of the art of the deal”.
Ren also claimed that Huawei had managed to steal “the American technologies from tomorrow” and that the US “doesn’t even have those technologies.
“We are ahead of the US. If we were behind, there would be no need for Trump to strenuously attack us”, he pointed out.
At the same time, he said he would be against Beijing’s possible move to ban the US’ Apple Corporation from the Chinese market in retaliation.
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“That will not happen, first of all. And second of all, if that happens, I’ll be the first to protest. Apple is my teacher, it’s in the lead. As a student, why go against my teacher? Never”, he stressed.
The response was preceded by the US Department of Commerce placing Huawei Technologies and around 70 of its affiliates on a blacklist early last week, also banning them from buying equipment from US partners without a government go-ahead.
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The move prodded several US corporations, such as Google and Microsoft as well as major semiconductor makers, including Intel, Qualcomm, Xilinx and Broadcom, to follow suit and cut ties with Huawei.
The Chinese tech giant has repeatedly denied US intelligence agencies’ accusations that it allegedly installs “backdoor” access in its devices at the behest of the Chinese government, something that may help Beijing spy on the users of such devices.
