Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei (pictured) said there is “no way the US can crush” Huawei and there will be larger investments into the UK as attention shifts away from The US.
In an interview with the BBC, Ren made a pledge that Huawei will continue to invest in the UK and increase its investment “on an even bigger scale”, as suspicions from the US continues to rise.
The US is pursuing criminal charges against Huawei and Ren’s daughter and Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou, including money laundering, bank fraud and stealing trade secrets.
He said: “We will continue to invest in the UK. We still trust in the UK and hope that the UK will trust us even more. We will invest even more in the UK. Because if The US won’t trust us then we will shift our investment from the US to the UK on an even bigger scale”
“We are more advanced”
Commenting on the situation with the US, Ren said: “There’s no way the US can crush us. 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.”
“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.”
“Not acceptable”
Ren labelled the arrest of his daughter and CFO Meng move as politically motivated and “not acceptable”.
“The US likes to sanction others, whenever there’s an issue, they’ll use such combative methods”.
“We object to this. But now that we’ve gone down this path, we’ll let the courts settle it”, he added
The US and China are currently engaged in a ‘trade war’ disputing tariffs placed on goods traded between them.
Last week US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned US allies against using Huawei technology, stating that it wold be difficult for the US to “partner alongside them”.
Australia, New Zealand and the US have already implemented bans on Huawei. Canada and the UK are currently reviewing the company’s security threat, although UK intelligence agency National Cyber Security Centre has played down Huawei’s threat according to reports.
Shut down Huawei
According to Chinese law, companies have to “support, co-operate with and collaborate in national intelligence work”.
Ren vehemently denied any spying activity within Huawei and promises to shut down Huawei if the such activities were discovered.
He said: “The Chinese government has already clearly said that it won’t install any backdoors. And we won’t install backdoors either.
“We’re not going to risk the disgust of our country and of our customers all over the world, because of something like this.
“Our company will never undertake any spying activities. If we have any such actions, then I’ll shut the company down.”
