Huawei seems to have changed strategy in its bid to whittle down rising mistrust over the integrity of the company’s security in the face of the control Beijing is perceived to wield over Chinese companies. Before now, the company has always insisted that it poses no risk to users’ data but Richard Yu, Huawei CEO of its consumer division, gained notoriety for his public outbursts about the US government treatment of the company. It may not be a coincidence that we hardly hear from Mr Yu and the company’s latest statement wasn’t from him but from Huawei’s highest executive who doesn’t seem to share the same exact same sentiment.
Huawei’s founder and CEO, Ren Zhengfei, granted a rare interview to the international media, aided by a translator, where he defended his company’s independence from Beijing’s control. However, quite surprising in Mr Ren’s praise of US President Trump, considering the frosty relationship China has had with the US government since Mr Trump assumed office, of which Huawei got caught in the middle. The Huawei CEO labelled Trump a “great president” according to the what his translator conveyed. He also extolled Trump’s bold moves that would be conducive for the development of industries in the US.
We doubt if Mr Trump thinks the same of the Huawei exec as Huawei came under suspicion as a result of Zhengfei’s history as a former soldier and a current member of the Communist Party. He’s adamant, though, that his political leaning has nothing to do with the way the company runs its business. The CEO assured that Huawei will always side with its customers when it comes to cybersecurity and privacy. He equally disclosed that there is currently no Chinese law that requires adding backdoors to software or hardware and neither has Huawei or himself received any request to provide customer data.
He did not rule out the possibility of the Chinese government making such obnoxious request someday since there are laws that require companies to cooperate and comply with such requests. However, Zhengfei disclosed that he is prepared to fight against any such request to hand over user data, should that day come. In Communist China, we don’t see Huawei winning such fight but chances of the Chinese government making such open request that will hurt the country’s investments overseas are very low.
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Huawei has seen its efforts in developing 5G infrastructure scuttled in some countries like the US, Japan , New Zealand and Australia. As such, Zhengfei admits the year will be a tough one for his company. Nonetheless, he expressed confidence that Huawei’s fate would be similar to ZTE which nearly went under after major sanctions from the US.
(source)
