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Mobile networks can be considered strategic infrastructure. Normally US State Department would be working closely with US companies to push back against Huawe

Mobile networks can be considered strategic infrastructure. Normally US State Department would be working closely with US companies to push back against Huawei with all kinds of political tie-ins and perks. Except that the US is not in the market. US based mobile network infrastructure assets (Lucent Technologies and Motorola's wireless network infrastructure business) were sold to Europeans long time ago. Both of them are part of Nokia today. Nokia and Ericsson compete without government support against China backed Huawei and ZTE. Huawei is most likely government owned/controlled enterprise: Balding, Christopher and Clarke, Donald C., Who Owns Huawei? (April 17, 2019). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3372669 https://ssrn.com/abstract=3372669 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3372669 http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3372669

DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
No, there's no indication whatsoever that Huawei is government-owned. Stop spreading FUD. There are plenty of state-owned enterprises in China, but Huawei isn't one of them.
- DeonPenny 7y ago
  Theres a lot of evidence that they are state-owned. For example, a large number of board members being active in the CCP
  - DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
    That has nothing to do with being state-owned. Lots of people in China are in the party. China has SOEs. It has private companies. They operate quite differently from one another. Huawei operates like one of the latter, and legally, definitely is one of the latter.
    - DeonPenny 7y ago
      The way you explain it makes it seem like we shouldn't trust any Chinese companies to be separate from the party so not sure what you were going for but it's had the opposite effect.
      - DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
        You shouldn't trust any company anywhere to be able to act entirely independently of the national intelligence apparatus. It's been established that many American tech companies cooperate with the NSA, for example. But Huawei is a private company. It will probably have to comply if the Chinese state forces it to (just like American companies have to silently comply if handed a National Security Letter), but it's not an arm of the government.
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  That is what is some times called "Not readily believable" Huawei certainly isn't a worker coop as it claims.
  - DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
    The objection in the article is that the workers don't directly own shares. It's still a company in which workers vote and share in the profits. They just can't sell their stake on the market.
    - C1sc0cat 7y ago
      Still not a coop one member one vote is the rule
yorwba 7y ago
The paper you link doesn't show that Huawei is government-owned (as is pretty clear from the abstract) and in any case, the government is going to support private enterprises just as much. The problem for Ericsson and Nokia is rather that their countries don't have dedicated economic representatives in Uganda who could assist them. There doesn't seem to be a Swedish Chamber of Commerce in any African country [1], whereas Finland does have one, but it's only responsible for West Africa, which doesn't include Uganda [2]. On the other hand, both the USA [3] and China [4] have Chambers of Commerce that also operate in Uganda. [1] https://www.swedishchambers.se/swedish-chambers-of-commerce-abroad.htm https://www.swedishchambers.se/swedish-chambers-of-commerce-... [2] https://www.finncham.fi/africa https://www.finncham.fi/africa [3] http://www.amchamuganda.co.ug/ http://www.amchamuganda.co.ug/ [4] http://www.cgcca.org/ http://www.cgcca.org/
- CharlesColeman 7y ago
  > The paper you link doesn't show that Huawei is government-owned (as is pretty clear from the abstract) You're wrong. The paper's abstract says that Huawei is effectively government-owned, given the known facts. Read the last quoted paragraph carefully: > * The Huawei operating company is 100% owned by a holding company, which is in turn approximately 1% owned by Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei and 99% owned by an entity called a “trade union committee” for the holding company. > * We know nothing about the internal governance procedures of the trade union committee. We do not know who the committee members or other trade union leaders are, or how they are selected. > ... > * Given the public nature of trade unions in China, if the ownership stake of the trade union committee is genuine, and if the trade union and its committee function as trade unions generally function in China, then Huawei may be deemed effectively state-owned. Also, ownership is just a specific cultural form of control. It's not synonymous with control, and lack of ownership does not necessarily imply a lack of control. The issue with Huawei isn't so much who owns is but who controls it. Hair-splitting arguments about ownership just distract from the issue.
  - yorwba 7y ago
    > if the trade union and its committee function as trade unions generally function in China, then Huawei may be deemed effectively state-owned. That's the "they're Chinese, so obviously they can't be independent" argument. It not necessarily wrong, but also not terribly illuminating. As you say, a more interesting question is that of control. Given the level of disunity within the Chinese government, a useful answer to that question would really need to break it down to the personal allegiances of the decision-makers. Unfortunately, those are unlikely to be recorded in publicly available documents. In any case, Chinese government officials will extend their support even to Chinese companies they do not own, control or otherwise directly benefit from, so long as there's no competitor for whom that is the case.

DiogenesKynikos 7y ago

No, there's no indication whatsoever that Huawei is government-owned. Stop spreading FUD. There are plenty of state-owned enterprises in China, but Huawei isn't one of them.

DeonPenny 7y ago
Theres a lot of evidence that they are state-owned. For example, a large number of board members being active in the CCP
- DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
  That has nothing to do with being state-owned. Lots of people in China are in the party. China has SOEs. It has private companies. They operate quite differently from one another. Huawei operates like one of the latter, and legally, definitely is one of the latter.
  - DeonPenny 7y ago
    The way you explain it makes it seem like we shouldn't trust any Chinese companies to be separate from the party so not sure what you were going for but it's had the opposite effect.
    - DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
      You shouldn't trust any company anywhere to be able to act entirely independently of the national intelligence apparatus. It's been established that many American tech companies cooperate with the NSA, for example. But Huawei is a private company. It will probably have to comply if the Chinese state forces it to (just like American companies have to silently comply if handed a National Security Letter), but it's not an arm of the government.
C1sc0cat 7y ago
That is what is some times called "Not readily believable" Huawei certainly isn't a worker coop as it claims.
- DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
  The objection in the article is that the workers don't directly own shares. It's still a company in which workers vote and share in the profits. They just can't sell their stake on the market.
  - C1sc0cat 7y ago
    Still not a coop one member one vote is the rule

yorwba 7y ago

The paper you link doesn't show that Huawei is government-owned (as is pretty clear from the abstract) and in any case, the government is going to support private enterprises just as much. The problem for Ericsson and Nokia is rather that their countries don't have dedicated economic representatives in Uganda who could assist them. There doesn't seem to be a Swedish Chamber of Commerce in any African country [1], whereas Finland does have one, but it's only responsible for West Africa, which doesn't include Uganda [2]. On the other hand, both the USA [3] and China [4] have Chambers of Commerce that also operate in Uganda. [1] https://www.swedishchambers.se/swedish-chambers-of-commerce-abroad.htm https://www.swedishchambers.se/swedish-chambers-of-commerce-... [2] https://www.finncham.fi/africa https://www.finncham.fi/africa [3] http://www.amchamuganda.co.ug/ http://www.amchamuganda.co.ug/ [4] http://www.cgcca.org/ http://www.cgcca.org/

CharlesColeman 7y ago
> The paper you link doesn't show that Huawei is government-owned (as is pretty clear from the abstract) You're wrong. The paper's abstract says that Huawei is effectively government-owned, given the known facts. Read the last quoted paragraph carefully: > * The Huawei operating company is 100% owned by a holding company, which is in turn approximately 1% owned by Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei and 99% owned by an entity called a “trade union committee” for the holding company. > * We know nothing about the internal governance procedures of the trade union committee. We do not know who the committee members or other trade union leaders are, or how they are selected. > ... > * Given the public nature of trade unions in China, if the ownership stake of the trade union committee is genuine, and if the trade union and its committee function as trade unions generally function in China, then Huawei may be deemed effectively state-owned. Also, ownership is just a specific cultural form of control. It's not synonymous with control, and lack of ownership does not necessarily imply a lack of control. The issue with Huawei isn't so much who owns is but who controls it. Hair-splitting arguments about ownership just distract from the issue.
- yorwba 7y ago
  > if the trade union and its committee function as trade unions generally function in China, then Huawei may be deemed effectively state-owned. That's the "they're Chinese, so obviously they can't be independent" argument. It not necessarily wrong, but also not terribly illuminating. As you say, a more interesting question is that of control. Given the level of disunity within the Chinese government, a useful answer to that question would really need to break it down to the personal allegiances of the decision-makers. Unfortunately, those are unlikely to be recorded in publicly available documents. In any case, Chinese government officials will extend their support even to Chinese companies they do not own, control or otherwise directly benefit from, so long as there's no competitor for whom that is the case.