Following China’s relentless misadventures in 2020- the COVID-19 Pandemic coverup, and its border and maritime aggression, the world has drawn first blood. High costs are being imposed on China as for its expansionism and invasiveness, it is going to pay with its largest private company and prized jewel, Huawei.
Huawei is the fifteenth largest company of the Communist country, while all other top Chinese companies are public, State-owned. Today, Huawei’s survival is at stake. The free world led by the United States has been leading a global crusade against the telecom giant for the past one year. Huawei became a prestige battle of sorts between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. But we clearly know who had the last laugh.
With 123 billion US Dollars of revenue last year, the telecom giant was emerging as the pride of China. Huawei is to China what conglomerates like Tata are to India- a popular brand name with a global footprint. The telecom equipment-maker in fact managed to become the only Chinese company to feature among the Forbes most valuable brands in the year 2018.
Anyway, the telecom giant is facing a survival crisis now. The Trump administration has put restrictions on the US semiconductor (chip) exports to the company. Semi-conductors are the most essential part of any consumer electronic commodity. And Guo Ping, rotating Chairman at Huawei’s annual analyst conference himself said, “We will now work hard to figure out how to survive.”
Beijing has just 12 months to save the telecom giant now since its stockpile won’t last for more than a year.
Huawei had started facing backlash in 2019 itself amidst the US-China trade war. The US blacklisting on account of espionage allegations against the telecom giant led to a 12 billion US Dollars shortfall.
The fact remains that no private Chinese company is wholly private, as everyone bears allegiance to the CCP, and this the world has realised. Huawei is therefore seen with suspicion especially because it is a telecom company, and with all the 5G contracts that it was negotiating with the world, China would have been able to snoop at will.
In fact, China is using Huawei’s surveillance tech in the far Western province of Xinjiang for tormenting Uyghur Muslims. Things get shady with Huawei in more ways than one. The Chief Financial Officer of the telecom giant- Meng Wanzhou, for example, is accused of secretly evading sanctions on Iran which is why she was arrested in Canada.
In this sense, China’s relentless backing of Huawei becomes all the more suspicious. The world knows that Huawei is the biggest player that Beijing doesn’t want to lose. Huawei also had its tentacles spreading to all other parts of the world not very long ago.
This is the reason why governments openly targeted Huawei, while tons of Chinese apps like TikTok and CamScanner haven’t really been targeted. The idea is to end Huawei and obliterate the telecom giant from the face of the earth.
It is actually happening with Malaysia, India, Singapore, Canada, Norway and the United Kingdom rejecting Huawei. Australia was, of course, one of the first countries to ban Huawei over espionage fears. European telecom providers, Nokia and Ericsson suddenly find themselves in the thick of things with countries like Singapore awarding 5G licenses to them instead of Huawei.
The message of the world to Huawei is loud and clear- its prized asset will be taken out. China has been trying to bully others with aggression, and therefore all like-minded countries that believe in playing by rules of international engagement are hell-bent on bringing down this Chinese giant. China is being made to pay the cost of expansionism and violent revisionism with its most prized company, Huawei.