The founder of China’s Huawei technologies Ren Zhengfei appeared before journalists of Chinese media outlets on Thursday in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, and stressed that his tech company has not stolen trade secrets.
Huawei has been facing severe growing pressure from the Western countries, especially the United States, since the arrest of the Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou in Canada over the request of the US to extradite her.
Ren noted: “The few US politicians who make noise do not represent US society. I believe US industries, enterprises and technology sectors firmly support us and seek greater cooperation with us.”
While commenting over his military background and also being a party member, Ren asked not to confuse the business model with ideologies. He expressed gratitude towards the Chinese government for giving consular protecting to Chinese citizens.
According to the Global Times news reports, at an interview with multiple Chinese media outlets on Thursday in South China, Ren told the Global Times that Meng “is very strong”, referring to Meng’s detention by the Canadian authority.
Ren said: “We anticipated the problems that Huawei might encounter a dozen years ago. We are not totally unprepared for the current situation.” Ren also reiterated that his company Huawei absolutely respects the intellectual property rights of others.
He said: “Huawei now has 87,805 patents, of which 11,152 core patents were granted in the US, and our technology patents are valuable to the information society of the US.”
On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the federal prosecutors are pursuing a criminal probe of Huawei for allegedly stealing trade secrets from the US business partners as well as local carries T-Mobile.
The media reports said: “The jury determined that T-Mobile should be awarded $4.8 million in damages because Huawei had breached a handset supply contract with T-Mobile but it did not award any damages from the trade secret claim.”
A research fellow at Chinese Academy of international trade and economic cooperation Huo Jianguo told the Global Times on Thursday: “The US side is likely to be unsatisfied with the ongoing China-US trade negotiations, so it needs to seek different ways of suppressing China.”
He added: “Apparently, Huawei has been growing into a tech giant that could challenge other foreign players in the telecoms sector, which motivated the US government to curb its further growth.”