[pototo666]

In China, Huawei is known for offering competitive salaries but also demands a lot from its employees. Many people tolerate the toxic work environment in exchange for financial benefits, particularly as they gradually improve their family's lifestyle with their rising income.

As a successful company, Huawei has also popularized the so-called "Wolf-like Spirit" among other Chinese firms.

The "Wolf-like Spirit" implies an expectation to work extremely hard and do whatever is necessary to achieve the company's goals.

One anecdote involves some Japanese customers who visited ZTE, a competitor of Huawei. To break the deals, Huawei allegedly sent individuals who pretended to be ZTE employees and entertained the customers with drinking and whoring for a week.

No one should trust a company like Huawei. Or any companies with deep CCP connection from China.

[chrischen]

Any company with deep financial dependency on the Chinese market (basically all Chinese companies) will have connections with the Chinese Communist party (aka the ruling government), including all Chinese citizens in the country... They will have "deep connection" with the government because all these people and entities are subject to the local laws and established interests and they don't really have an alternative. It's not like the US or the West is so immigration happy welcoming them in with open arms.

As such if the default stance is not to trust or do business with Chinese-related parties this will exclude the entire country eventually, since they aren't given any realistic alternatives to being completely blacklisted they'll likely retaliate (understandably).

What should they do? Just "cooperate"? No amount of cooperation or action from the Chinese side will get them to be trusted or viewed differently, because the fundamental issue isn't that Huawei is selling backdoored or hacked devices (which they aren't, or otherwise everything would have been ripped out instantly)... it's that they fundamentally do not trust the company, or anything from China.

[AnthonyMouse]

> As such if the default stance is not to trust or do business with Chinese-related parties this will exclude the entire country eventually, since they aren't given any realistic alternatives to being completely blacklisted they'll likely retaliate (understandably).

If a company is making ball bearings or bathroom fixtures, you don't have to worry much about their ties as long as they're not your sole supplier. How do you backdoor a manual mechanical valve?

Whereas for anything that has computer code in it, open source down to the microcode or GTFO. Countries will (and should) want to stick to suppliers in the local and allied countries if a foreign one isn't willing to provide that, and have no objections if a country they're doing that to wants to do the same to them.

[paganel]

> If a company is making ball bearings

I know it was an anecdotal example, but a Western company purchasing Chinese-produced ball bearings will most probably mean that Western company doing business with and empowering the Chinese military-industrial complex, seeing how ball bearings are such an integral part of military armoured materiel.

Which goes to show that splitting economic things up into civilian vs. non-civilian is an exercise in futility at the end of it all, and this goes for the West, too.

[AnthonyMouse]

> a Western company purchasing Chinese-produced ball bearings will most probably mean that Western company doing business with and empowering the Chinese military-industrial complex, seeing how ball bearings are such an integral part of military armoured materiel.

It's not about that. You could say that about doing business with them on anything whatsoever. If you buy their plastic toys they could use the profits to build tanks.

The problem here is that they're giving you a device you're putting in a sensitive place containing opaque binary computer code that could be doing anything, which customers can't feasibly replace with their own or audit because they don't have the source code.

[chrischen]

Open source does nothing if you can't verify the shipped code is actually running that. Plus after the whole Supermicro controversy we'd have to check what appear to be ball bearings for embedded spying circuitry.

[seanmcdirmid]

It is funny, because even foreign experts working in China are expected to join the trade union, although they can’t vote in its elections (not a huge loss). Huawei’s connection to the PLA stands out among Chinese companies, but you are correct that every company in China will have strong ties to the CPC and could have strong involvement by the PLA. They mostly don’t, however, the government isn’t that well organized outside if just governing, and China’s corporate scene is very chaotic. A lot of it is just a hyper competitive market that turns them a certain way.

[mytailorisrich]

Well, Nortel had a former US Navy Admiral as CEO at some point.

Deep links between government and large companies exist in every country whether acknowledged or not.

In Huawei's case, frankly the issue was that it was the first time a company not in the West's control became a major player in a strategic industry. Alleged CCP/PLA links are just part of the narrative built against them but the issue was more general.

[seanmcdirmid]

I think it’s related to Huawei’s PLA roots. Its founder spent an 11 year career in the PLA. It is not clear about huawei’s ownership structure outside that it is kind of owned by employees, but not really.

[powerapple]

PLA in the past is basically a career choice for people from rural area. You get sponsored for education, and will get a job in the city after you quit the army. Most of my childhood friends served in the army before they got their jobs, because they sucked in school. That was the only choice for them.

[seanmcdirmid]

He wasn’t really rural though, and he was drafted/conscripted anyways.

[powerapple]

Sure. He is older than me, I don't know what was the policy then.

My friends weren't from villages, their parents work in state owned entities, in order to get a position in these big state companies, you have to either have good education or being offered a job after military. In the past, the government must offer a job to people out of military. The most common reason for people to go into military is to have a job in the future. This applies to both city and villages. However, with the reduction of the army, this has changed. Now you get paid a good salary while in military, but you don't automatically get a job.

If you study well, but you cannot afford school, you can also go to military universities, where your expenses is paid, but you will have to work in the military for a fix number of years afterward.

[ExoticPearTree]

Wait until the world finds out that most Israeli tech founders have roots in Unit 8200 ;) And a lot of US companies were founded through known CIA fronts.

Military roots or no, in the end every company must obey the laws of the country they’re founded first and foremost, and then try not to break the laws of the countries they operate in. This is the reality. Just like AT&T can be compelled to spy on X, Y; so can any other company be compelled by their government.

And this idea that western spying is good and Chinese spying is bad… its ludricuous. Spying is just bad.

[seanmcdirmid]

It isn’t that Chinese spying is somehow less virtuous than American spying, it’s more why take the chance? The only reason China ever bothered with Cisco or Nortell at all was to copy their tech, but China wouldn’t let an overseas tech come in today to drive their cellphone network today. They would think that’s just stupid. But when America does the same they cry bloody murder.

[ExoticPearTree]

Well, US has zero domestic 5G equipment manufacturers. So it is not really a question of China managing US mobile networks.

And Nokia/Ericsson/Samsung could have won the 5G core bids if the pricing structure and/or features were better than Huawei’s.

Not defending Huawei, but considering how the US market works… they won pretty fairly.

In the end customers will pay the price of “China bad”. And most likely tax payers for all the subsidies governments will telcos to remove Huawei equipment from their networks.

[anotheruser13]

Reminds me of this incident: https://www.npr.org/2019/01/29/689663720/a-robot-named-tappy...

The article refers to T-Mobile US, which is majority owned by Deutsche Telekom.

[seanmcdirmid]

Isn’t Qualcomm American? Also, Cisco, HPE, etc…

[severino]

> No one should trust a company like Huawei. Or any companies with deep CCP connection from China.

No one should trust any company. Period.