Huawei President Strikes US Politicians About University Funding

HONG KONG (Reuters) – The president of Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. [HWT.UL] has criticized several US lawmakers who have claimed that the company's research funding in more than 50 US universities poses a "threat." important "for national security.

Huawei is the world's largest maker of equipment telecommunication networks and the third smartphone maker. It is a private company, but she has found herself grappling with perceptions of ties with the Chinese government, which she has denied on many occasions.

Last week, US Congressmen Marco Rubio and Jim Banks wrote a bipartisan open letter on Huawei on behalf of 24 Democratic and Republican lawmakers to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. In the letter, they said that Huawei's innovation research program posed a "significant threat to national security" by allowing China to effectively lift US research.

Legislators have stated that such programs are an essential part of "China's Toolbox for the Acquisition of Foreign Technologies".

In response, Eric Xu, Huawei's current chairman, called Rubio and Banks "closed and misinformed".

"It seems like their bodies are in the information age but their minds are still at agrarian age," Xu said, according to a transcript of Xu's remarks made Wednesday night on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress in Shanghai.

"Their behavior shows not only an ignorance of how science and innovation work today, but also their own lack of confidence" in the competitiveness of the United States, "he said. he says, in the transcript provided by Huawei.

US lawmakers, who did not call at the end of this funding, asked the secretary of education to investigate the how China is trying to collect technology from US campuses to protect the technological advantage of the country.

The letter represents the latest difficulty faced by Huawei in the US Last week, some Republican and Democratic lawmakers Americans, including Rubio, asked Google's Alphabet Inc to reconsider its work with Huawei, which they described as a security threat.

Earlier this year, an agreement with the telecom company American AT & T Inc.'s ions to sell its smartphones in the United States collapsed at the 11th hour for security reasons.

The company has been the subject of a similar review elsewhere. Earlier this month, Huawei Australia's president, John Lord, wrote a public letter refuting Australian claims that the company was likely to prohibit Huawei from participating in the introduction of telecommunications fifth generation mobile because of security fears.

On Wednesday, Lord said that Huawei's ban would be "a great political failure" for Australia because the Chinese government's accusations of interference were unfounded.