Briefing | A botched hit

America’s assassination attempt on Huawei is backfiring

The company is growing stronger—and less vulnerable

An American man cutting the red Huawei flowers off their stems with a scythe.
Illustration: Julia Kuo
|SHENZHEN

Ren Zhengfei, the founder of Huawei, often talks of his firm’s clashes with America in military parlance. “It’s time to pick up the guns, mount the horses and go into battle,” he said in an internal meeting in 2018. In a memo the following year he encouraged staff to tie ropes to Huawei’s figurative tanks and help drag them onto the battlefield.

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This article appeared in the Briefing section of the print edition under the headline “Failed eradication”

The rise of Chinese science: Welcome or worrying?

From the June 15th 2024 edition

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