Thanks to Trump, China's Huawei Is Dying
by Gordon G. Chang • October 10, 2020 at 5:00 am
Vice President Biden may say he will be tougher on China than Trump, but his supporters have signaled that he will not. Max Baucus, who served as ambassador to China in the Obama years, predicted that, with a Biden win, there would be a "reset" in U.S.-China relations.
So, expect chip companies to lobby a President Biden to restart the flow of chips to Huawei Technologies. The sound of a pen gliding over the signature line on a waiver is music to the ears of one Shenzhen-based threat to the United States—as well as its masters in Beijing.
By cutting off the supply of semiconductors, the Trump administration is severely undermining the viability of China's Huawei Technologies, currently the world's leading manufacturer of both telecom networking gear and smartphones.
And as goes Huawei, so goes China's ambitions of dominating global communications.
Washington has accused Huawei of persistent theft of U.S. intellectual property. In addition, the current administration believes the company poses a national security threat because Beijing uses its equipment to surreptitiously take data flowing through its servers and other networking gear.
At the beginning of this year, it was a sure bet that the Shenzhen-based Huawei, already in more than 170 countries, would dominate 5G, the fifth generation of wireless communications, for years.
