America’s assassination attempt on Huawei is backfiring

Ren Zhengfei, the founder of Huawei, often talks of his firm’s clashes with America in military parlance. “It’s time to pick up the guns, mount the horses and go into battle,” he said in an internal meeting in 2018. In a memo the following year he encouraged staff to tie ropes to Huawei’s figurative tanks and help drag them onto the battlefield.

The martial talk is understandable: Huawei has been under attack from America for over a decade. In 2012 the American authorities began claiming that China might use the firm for espionage. Another broadside was the indictment of the firm’s CFO (and Mr Ren’s daughter) in 2018 for violating sanctions on Iran. By 2020 America’s harrying had descended into all-out war, with most American firms barred from doing business with Huawei and foreign firms barred from selling it chips or other gear that use American technology. America also sought to dissuade other countries from using Huawei’s equipment in their mobile-phone networks.