The logic of confrontation, not the logic of technology, is now in charge in the U.S. showdown with China over Huawei.
In a note drafted over the holiday weekend, the telecom experts at New Street Research say China's most important tech company "Has 12 months left to live." The reason: new U.S. sanctions stopping chip fabrication companies, notably Taiwan Semiconductor, from selling chips to Huawei.
Such a blow cuts much deeper than disallowing Google apps on Huawei phones or pressuring London to ban Huawei from its wireless networks.
It leaves Huawei nowhere to turn but China's own chip makers, who lag their global counterparts by a decade, which might as well be a century in the battle for handset shoppers and equipment orders.
China Daily warns in an editorial that "The Chinese government has attached great significance to the way Huawei is treated overseas, and literally taken it increasingly as a test stone of bilateral ties."
More than a year ago, this column noted that the U.S. was positioning itself to destroy Huawei or turn it into a central bargaining chip in the U.S.-China relationship.
Huawei must now seem a more glowing target than it did then, either to slow down China's technological challenge or to wring concessions from Beijing to put the relationship on a more politically sustainable footing in the U.S. The New Street researchers throw up their hands in guessing Mr. Trump's real intent and so do I. But let's add that if a deal isn't in the cards, events would be building to the current meltdown regardless of who is president.
In a note drafted over the holiday weekend, the telecom experts at New Street Research say China's most important tech company "Has 12 months left to live." The reason: new U.S. sanctions stopping chip fabrication companies, notably Taiwan Semiconductor, from selling chips to Huawei.
Such a blow cuts much deeper than disallowing Google apps on Huawei phones or pressuring London to ban Huawei from its wireless networks.
It leaves Huawei nowhere to turn but China's own chip makers, who lag their global counterparts by a decade, which might as well be a century in the battle for handset shoppers and equipment orders.
China Daily warns in an editorial that "The Chinese government has attached great significance to the way Huawei is treated overseas, and literally taken it increasingly as a test stone of bilateral ties."
More than a year ago, this column noted that the U.S. was positioning itself to destroy Huawei or turn it into a central bargaining chip in the U.S.-China relationship.
Huawei must now seem a more glowing target than it did then, either to slow down China's technological challenge or to wring concessions from Beijing to put the relationship on a more politically sustainable footing in the U.S. The New Street researchers throw up their hands in guessing Mr. Trump's real intent and so do I. But let's add that if a deal isn't in the cards, events would be building to the current meltdown regardless of who is president.
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