Shrinking share: People walk outside an Apple
store in Beijing. Apple’s market share in China in the third quarter of
2018 was around 9, and has dipped from above 14 in 2015, overtaken by
local rivals like Huawei, Oppo and Vivo. — Reuters
https://youtu.be/iJfCBqPUKHQ
SHANGHAI: Apple Inc’s chief executive Tim Cook has his work cut out in China this year: the iPhone maker faces the looming threat of a court-ordered sales ban, the uncertain outcome of trade war talks and the roll-out of a new 5G network, where it finds itself behind rivals like Huawei and Samsung.
The complex outlook raises a challenge for Apple as it looks to revive its China fortunes after weakness there sparked a rare drop in its global sales forecast, knocked US$75bil from its market valuation and roiled global markets.
Cook told investors that the main drag on the firm’s performance in China had been a sharper-than-expected slowdown in the country’s economy, exacerbated by the impact of trade tensions between Washington and Beijing.
“We did not foresee the magnitude of the economic deceleration, particularly in Greater China,” he said.
Chinese shoppers told Reuters another element had been key: the high price-tag on Apple’s flagship phones.
Analysts said the firm faced a brewing storm of challenges: an economic slowdown, stronger rivals like Huawei Technologies Co Ltd bringing out comparable tech at lower prices and bubbling patriotic sentiment amid the trade war.
A Chinese court has also issued a preliminary injunction banning some Apple phones, part of a legal battle with chip maker Qualcomm Inc. This ban, potentially hitting iPhone models from the 6S through the X, has yet to be enforced.
Last Thursday a local industry body, the China Anti-Infringement and Anti-Counterfeit Innovation Strategic Alliance, called on Apple to heed the court order and not “trample the Chinese law by leveraging its super economic power and clout.” Apple declined to comment on the group’s statement but has previously said it believed its current phones complied with the Chinese court’s order.
“These are tough times for Apple in China,” said Neil Shah, research director at Counterpoint, adding the iPhone could see its market share slip to 7% this year in the face of stronger local rivals and worry about the sales ban.
Apple’s market share in the third-quarter of 2018 was around 9%, and has dipped from above 14% in 2015, overtaken by local rivals like Huawei, Oppo and Vivo.
Another question mark for Apple is its 5G strategy in China, where the US firm is not expected to have a 5G-enabled phone until 2020, behind rivals like Huawei, Xiaomi Corp and Samsung Electronics.
China is looking to push ahead with its rollout of a faster 5G network, with a pre-commercial phase this year and a commercial network in 2020.
Some are looking to make an early bet on the technology.
Huawei is planning a 5G phone mid-year, while Xiaomi is aiming for the third quarter. Samsung is expected to unveil a 5G phone in the first half of the year.
Industry insiders, however, said Apple would likely hold off until the fall of 2020 to have its own 5G-enabled phone, a strategy that would bypass the untested early period of the technology, but which could mean Chinese shoppers delay iPhone purchases or buy another brand that switched to 5G earlier.
“I’ll definitely be paying attention to 5G functionality when I buy my next phone,” said Wu Chengjun, a graduate student in Beijing who currently uses an iPhone X.
With the exception of Huawei, which makes it own 5G chips, Qualcomm is providing the technology to many of the major phone makers releasing 5G handsets this year.
“If you’re a (phone maker) looking for a ‘super cycle’ (of sales), if you don’t have 5G, your situation won’t get any better,” Cristiano Amon, Qualcomm’s president, told Reuters in an interview. ”
The carrier channel is going to be incentivised to start selling 5G phones in the second half of 2019, he said. — Reuters
5G connectivity promises faster Internet speeds and more efficiency to run complex tasks in the cloud. — 123rf.com
https://youtu.be/iJfCBqPUKHQ
https://youtu.be/6Pvp4Z07ftY
All the ways life could change with technology in 2019.
FASTER data connectivity, smartphones with a bold new look and more reasons to cheer for the national team at a sporting event? These are just some reasons we predict 2019 is going to be another exciting year in technology.
Bend and not break
We could be getting our hands on a foldable smartphone by Samsung very soon – the South Korean tech giant gave the world a glimpse of a working protoype at the Samsung Developer Conference in November.
According to Justin Denison, the senior vice-president of mobile product marketing at Samsung, the prototype measured at 18.5cm diagonally. The new design will give users the experience of having a pocket size device – with a 4.6in screen when folded – that can be unfolded to reveal a bigger tablet-sized 7.4in screen, a feature Samsung has dubbed the Infinty Flex Display.
A foldable phone by Samsung is coming our way in 2019. — AP
Sources told South Korea-based Yonhap News Agency that Samsung is planning to officially launch the device, tentatively known as the Galaxy F as Samsung has not given it an official name yet, at an event in March. Other companies looking to release a foldable smartphone include Huawei and Sony.
Samsung’s foldable device with Infinity Flex Display is a smartphone model that features a tablet-sized screen when unfolded and a smaller screen when folded like a book. — AP
Speaking of Galaxy phones, Samsung also has another highly-anticipated release in 2019 and it’s the flagship Galaxy S10. Some leaks suggest that we could be looking at a device with a bigger full screen bezel-less feature – reputable leaker UniverseIce claimed the model will have a 6.7in display – multiple rear camera setup and interestingly, a punch-hole screen design for the front camera. (Notch? What notch?)
Citing Yonhap News, The Verge reported that the South Korean tech giant is expected to unveil the flagship Galaxy S10 in February 2019, most likely at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Spain. Yonhap’s sources also say there are plans to showcase the Galaxy F at MWC ahead of its official March launch.
Gotta move faster
The dawn of 5G network connectivity is upon us. This new technology promises significantly faster data transmission speeds and capacity, less waiting around for an online task to be completed (also known as lower latency), and could connect more smart devices and sensors simultaneously than ever before.
According to Reuters, 5G is currently in the final testing phase and is poised to offer data speeds of up to 50 or even 100 times faster than current 4G networks. In theory, that is.
To test real-world 5G speeds, Qualcomm ran a simulation to approximate real-world 5G speeds in Frankfurt and San Francisco, taking into account various factors such as geography, user demands on the network as well as devices with varying levels of LTE and 5G connectivity.
As reported by The Verge, the tests yielded more down-to-earth but still vastly improved speeds – in Frankfurt, browsing speeds went up from 56Mbps for 4G users to 490Mbps for 5G users, with download speeds clocking in at 100Mbps for over 90% of users compared to 8Mbps on LTE. In San Francisco, browsing speeds jumped up from 71Mbps for the 4G user to 1.4Gbps for the 5G user, while download speeds clocked in at 186Mbps on 5G compared to 10Mbps on 4G.
As 5G is an entirely new technology, users will have to upgrade to new smartphones – to that end, one of the variants of Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S10 is said to support 5G, according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
Apart from high speed mobile and data services, experts agree that 5G is essential for the next phase in developing technologies like self-driving cars and improving industries like healthcare, virtual and augmented reality and more.
Vodafone demonstrated how a young football fan could get Houghton (left) to teach her some football skills with a holographic 3D call on a 5G network. — AP
In September, Vodafone demonstrated how a live 3D holographic call is possible with 5G at the Vodafone Future Ready Conference in United Kingdom. In the demonstration, English footballer Steph Houghton appeared as a hologram to give an 11-year-old fan some game tips. This exchange showcases how the technology could potentially change the way people communicate with each other, with more chances for remote coaching, training as well as enabling more immersive interactions with famous personalities.
In Malaysia, Communications and Multimedia Minister Gobind Singh Deo announced that Putrajaya and Cyberjaya as testing grounds for national-level 5G trials. The one-year trial began in November and the findings will help the government develop plans and policies on the use of 5G network in the country.
Game on
In 2019, brace yourself for the possible release of another Nintendo Switch. The WSJ reported that Nintendo plans to release a new version of the popular gaming console, with one possible upgrade being a better display.
One of the biggest news in 2018 is Sony announcing that it will not be attending the 2019 E3 Expo for the first time in 24 years. Instead, the company shared that it will be “engaging with consumers and the community in different ways”, with unconfirmed rumours swirling that the company might hold its own event to announce details on the PlayStation 5.
Companies like Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo could all be announcing new gaming consoles in 2019. — AP
According to tech website T3, the PS5 console may include upgrades to support 60FPS (frames per second) at 4K resolution and it will be running on next-generation AMD graphics cards. Sony could also be announcing details about the PlayStation VR2 – upgrades may include better controllers, new built-in cameras and gloves for enhanced virtual reality experience.
One company that is not skipping E3 in 2019 is Microsoft. Speculation is rife that the company will be using the event to announce details about two new next-generation Xbox consoles, codenamed Anaconda and Lockhart. Users could also be looking at a cloud-based streaming-only disc-less version of the Xbox One S for 2019, which could be announced as soon as next month, according to The Verge.
Microsoft is also expected to reveal more details about its Project xCloud, a Netflix-style streaming service for Xbox games. Not to be confused with Xbox Game Pass, Project xCloud – currently in beta testing mode – is said to make Xbox games available across PCs, phones, and consoles.
Gamers can also look forward to major videogame releases in 2019 – there’s the long-awaited Kingdom Hearts 3, The Last Of Us 2 and hopefully, Hideo Kojima’s star-studded and much-hyped Death Stranding.
For mobile gamers, there’s the 2019 release of the Harry Potter Wizards Unite AR game by Niantic, the same developer behind Pokémon Go. The game will allow users to encounter characters and creatures from the Harry Potter books, cast spells and solve mysteries.
Augmented Reality (AR) everywhere
AR technology is not exactly new to platforms like Snapchat and Instagram with its selfie filters, but we could be looking at more than just digital face masks in 2019.
In May, Facebook announced a new version of its AR developing tool AR Studio for content creators and developers. The tool is made for designing AR animations, visuals and interactions for the Facebook Camera. Along with existing features like AR Target Tracker and free-to-use sound files, Facebook said it will be adding other features like Body Tracking, Hand Tracking and analytics for AR effects. So you could expect more AR elements in the photos or videos your friends share on Facebook.
AR is likely to become a bigger part of the way we experience events in real life and consume content on social media platforms. Here, an attendee is trying out an AR baseball game at a trade show in Japan. — Bloomberg
AR could also be a part of more live experiences like concerts and sporting events in 2019. TechCrunch reported that rapper Eminem incorporated AR into his live performance at Coachella music festival in April.
Concertgoers could see added AR visual enhancements to the show by downloading the Eminem Augmented app.
In terms of gaming, something exciting is brewing at Niantic. The company announced that it is investing in holographic augmented reality display – technology developed by waveguide optics firm DigiLens, which specialises in wearable lightweight plastic AR displays. For users, it could mean that Niantic is looking to enhance game play interactivity with an AR device like smart glasses.
Cheer for Malaysia in eSports
Malaysia is beginning to embrace eSports as a mainstream sporting event. In the recent Budget 2019, the government announced a RM10mil budget for the development of eSports in the country.
In 2019, eSports will be a medal event at the South-East Asia Games (SEA) in Philippines. eSports Malaysia secretary-general Rinie Ramli said a national league will be held as the selection process for a squad to represent Malaysia at the SEA Games.
Get set to support a Malaysian eSports team at the 2019 SEA Games. — Bernama
Mobile Legends: Bang Bang is going to be one of the titles contested at the Games, along with other shortlisted titles like Dota 2, StarCraft II, Tekken 7 and Arena Of Valor, according to a recent announcement by the Philippine SEA Games organising committee and its eSports partner, gaming hardware company Razer.
eSports is also currently being considered as a medal event for the 2022 Asian Games in China. However, the plan to announce eSports as an official medal event has been put on hold as the gaming committee does not want a violent or shooting-based game to be contested. Reuters reported that titles for the 2022 Asian Games may feature sports-themed games like Pro Evolution Soccer (PES). Whatever it may be, we’ll look to eSports as a way of getting everyone together to cheer for the same team.
The arrest of a top Huawei executive may spark a conflict that could cripple America's rival and unleash chaos in the world order.
WE shouldn’t be misled into thinking that the “trade war” between the United States and China is being resolved following their presidents’ recent meeting.
Instead, President Donald Trump is taking the conflict way beyond tariffs into many other areas in a comprehensive attempt to stop or slow down China’s economic development. This has implications not only for China and countries like Malaysia, which are integrated into the Chinese production chains.
The evolving conflict spells the end of the Western countries’ belief in the win-win benefits of trade and investment liberalisation. It accompanies the emergence of an alternative view that China and some other countries are not partners after all but rivals that must be checked.
Just as Trump and China President Xi Jinping were sitting down for dinner on the sidelines of the G20 summit to thrash out a “truce” to their tariff war, the Canadian authorities were arresting the daughter of the owner of Huawei, China’s giant technology company whose smartphone sales are now bigger than that of Apple’s iPhone and second globally only to Samsung phones.
Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou was in transit at Vancouver airport when she was detained at the request of the US on the grounds that her company violated US sanctions against Iran years ago. Only after many days was she released on bail, and she has to wear an electronic tracker.
The Chinese government called the action “very nasty” and Chinese citizens are outraged. It would be equivalent to China arresting Melinda Gates, co-head of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, for alleged violation of China’s regulations on healthcare. In the whole Western world, there would have been a tremendous outcry and threats of very dire consequences.
Yet the Chinese are supposed to accept Meng’s arrest as a routine matter that is unrelated to the trade war. It cannot be sheer coincidence that years after the alleged crime, the arrest took place at the exact hour that Xi was having dinner with Trump to work out a truce.
The incident reminds us of the US accusation against another Chinese tech leader, ZTE Corp, in 2017 of breaking the same sanctions. A ban was imposed on ZTE from buying telecom chips from US company Qulcomm, which paralysed the company for weeks. Only much later was a political deal struck, with ZTE paying a fine before resuming production.
With China, Trump is concerned not so much with his country’s big trade deficit, but more with the threat to America’s global supremacy.
Suspicions over China’s global ambitions became certainty in the fevered minds of Trump and his hawkish advisers when Xi moved from the rhetoric of the Chinese dream to the concrete industrial plan of Made in China 2025.
This was to get Chinese firms to be world leaders in 10 high-tech sectors, including artificial intelligence, robotics, semiconductors, electric cars and aerospace.
Alarmed by the prospect of Chinese domination of the commanding industries of the future, Trump has been countering the ways by which China is developing its world-class companies. This is through trade, investments, subsidies and support, and acquisition of technologies and intellectual property.
The extra tariffs are meant to inhibit Chinese exports. The new Export Control Reform Act increases powers to regulate US exports of emerging and foundational technologies of importance to national security, and can be used to ban sales of components and technologies to China.
To prevent Chinese companies from buying into US companies (and acquiring their technologies), the review powers of the US Committee on Foreign Investment have been strengthened.
Last month, new national security rules were passed to allow review of small minority investments into sensitive US technologies, including biotechnology, nanotechnology and wireless communications equipment. The aim is to hinder Chinese firms from buying even small stakes in US tech start-ups.
The US has also been blocking attempts by Chinese firms to take over or buy controlling stakes in US companies, also on national security grounds. For example, the same committee recently refused to approve a US$1.2bil (RM5bil) deal between Money Gram, a US money transfer company, and Ant Financial, a Chinese electronic payment company.
European countries and Australia are also increasingly restricting Chinese companies from investing in or taking over domestic firms.
Moreover, the US has banned the use of Huawei’s 5G-related equipment, with Australia and New Zealand following suit.
US officials have also been touring Europe to warn against choosing Huawei equipment, leading to growing concerns over the risk of Chinese spying and the security of 5G networks that use Huawei technology.
When slapping extra tariffs on Chinese products, Trump accused China of intellectual property theft and forced technology transfer.
The US actions cited national security grounds or used the unilateral Section 301 of its domestic trade law. Most World Trade Organisation (WTO) law experts view these actions to be a violation of various WTO laws.
Many countries have taken cases against the US in the WTO.
Perhaps feeling that the WTO rules constrain several of its planned actions, the US has moved to cripple the organisation’s dispute settlement system by blocking its appellate body from adding new members.
By the end of 2019, that body will not have enough members left and the WTO will become ineffective as it loses its strongest function.
There would be no more formal way within the multilateral trade system to legally challenge the US actions against China or other countries. Or for any country to challenge the actions of another. The system would break down.
Then the global trade order would slip from rules-based to each country for itself. America first, France first, Britain first, are already in vogue, and many others will follow suit.
The trade war that started with some aluminium and steel may thus snowball into a world of anarchy, where only might prevails.
It is an awful scenario, but not an unrealistic one to ponder upon as 2018 draws to a close.
It is not too late to halt this trend, but something has to give or change drastically in the US, if we are to have even a small chance to avoid disaster.
This photo of Shanghai Bund is taken by Chinese Satellite with 24.9 billion
pixels of quantum technology. It's worth seeing! You can zoom in, zoom
out when you look at it. You can clearly see every gesture, even face of
pedestrians on the road. You can see the license plate. Photos can also
be moved up and down, left and right. It is said that this is the
latest development of China's military science and technology
achievements, hidden, indeed suffered harm!!! It can also be rotated.
Press'+'to zoom in and'-' to zoom out. Left and right rotation. It's too
clear!
Quantum
Technology will be used in 5G phone very soon. Europe and US are scared
to death now because this technology is monopoly in nature
Why did Canada arrest the CFO of Chinese tech giant Huawei? – Samsung surrendered its Chip IP right to US companies in order to survive
By Janus Dongye, Researcher at University of Cambridge
The detailed reason for this arrest has been revealed. Huawei CFO Wanzhou Meng is suspected of conspiracy to defraud multiple financial US institutions. The US Judiciary found that there was a company called Skycom that traded with Iran during 2011–2014 and Huawei was suspected to control the company Skycom at that time.
So the accusation is about the old Iran sanctions 7 years ago. And you might wonder why someone brought this up at this particular time.
There is something else that you need to know to understand this incident.
Global 5G Battle
5G is the fifth generation of cellular mobile communications. It succeeds the 4G (LTE/WiMax), 3G (UMTS) and 2G (GSM) systems. 5G is the new critical node for the future global supply chain. This is the ultimate technology that determines the communication/mobile networks in the next 10 years. Therefore this is a big cake that everyone wants to get a slice from it.
The whole 5G framework can be divided into two key technology: the modem chipset and router infrastructure.
On one hand, the modem chipset is installed in your phones and other sensors that need to be connected to the Internet.
The current 5G modem chipset patent (IP) is held by:
Huawei (China), Qualcomm (US), Samsung (Korea), MediaTek (Taiwan), Intel (US), Apple (US) (rumoured).
On the other hand, the router infrastructure is placed in base stations all over the buildings and towers. It directly talks to the 5G modem in your mobile phones and translates your 5G requests to the Internet.
The current 5G router patent (IP) is held by:
Huawei (China), Nokia (Finland), Ericsson (Sweden), ZTE (China) Surprise Hah?, Cisco (US), Samsung (Korea).
There are two hidden traps from this 5G technology that other people might not tell you:
The router and the modem chipset must be compatible, and therefore a standard must be settled in order for them to talk.
The modem chipset is deeply coupled into the system on a single chip with CPU and GPUs. The system is normally shipped as a package.
If you hold the 5G modem IP in a SOC (System-on-chip), you can also bind your CPU and GPU IP in a package. That means whoever controls the 5G IP would also control the whole market of the CPU and GPU intellectual property. If you hold the 5G router standard, you can also control the modem standard and then control the whole system standard.
For example, if the US were to allow Huawei to sell its 5G router devices to Verizon or AT&T, then Huawei could make all of its base stations to only support its own modem standard. Then you could end up with the whole system package delivered by Huawei as well. Then the US might have to buy more devices made by Huawei in order to use 5G.
That’s how Qualcomm rose from a small company to the top simply based on its 3G patents. And you can see that Huawei and Samsung is the dominant player here that they both control the modem and router patents.
However, owing to the pressure of the US government, Samsung surrendered its chip IP right to US companies. This is the fundamental difference between Samsung and Huawei. Because the South Korean market is so small and therefore Samsung has to surrender to the US in order to survive.
Samsung Galaxy S10 Comes with Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoC and 5G Service – Tech News Watch
You might wonder why Samsung does not use its Exynos processors in US but it has to use Qualcomm one? That is the pressure from the US government.
Meanwhile, Huawei gets the full cultivation in the Chinese market and does not fear the US government. It never intends to go to the US market as well. What it focuses on is the adoption in China and the rest of third-world countries. If you read the following recent news, you can get a feeling that China is really leading the global 5G battle in all three fields: technology, adoption and market.
Chongqing launches first 5G trial network
‘World’s first’ 5G call completed by Vodafone and Huawei
China Mobile and China Unicom to start 5G trials | TelecomLead
Briefing: China’s mobile operators granted nationwide 5G licenses · TechNode
The Chinese government said it would perform nationwide 5G adoption using Huawei technology around March 2019. Please note that this is a market of 1.4 billion people that is US population and Europe population combined. And the Chinese government is pushing this really hard, unlike the US stuck in legislation as you can imagine.
Meanwhile, the first adoption of 5G belongs to South Korea, which is four months ahead of China:
South Korean carriers set surprise commercial 5G launch for December 1 And compared to the US government, both Chinese and Korean government are very efficient in promoting 5G infrastructures. In this manner, US companies are really lagging behind. This could firstly cause wide-spread fears among the US companies. It is very likely that those companies would lobby the US Congress to ban Huawei at first. The arrest happens just before the Huawei 5G technology is going to be adopted commercially in China.
It is very likely that some people wanted to disrupt the growth of Huawei. Everyone talks about the Huawei arrest. But no one is talking about who initiated the investigation against Huawei and who filed the case in the US juridical system in the first place?
Another interesting side note during the incident:
Cisco temporarily bans employees from China
I suspect CISCO could be the one who actually filed the case to ban Huawei.
American economist Jeffrey D. Sachs says Canada is doing the Trump
administration's bidding in its handling of the Huawei case. To read
more: https://www.cbc.ca/1.4947966
Nobody is supposed to win any war, and the US is anxiously proving that true in skirmishes with China over IT, trade and ‘national security’.
CHINA will not have Ivanka Trump arrested if she were to transit through Hong Kong airport, even now.
Beijing does not have the intent or capacity for that – nor the recklessness required for it, particularly in the throes of a trade war.
But US authorities had Sabrina Meng Wanzhou arrested while transiting through Vancouver airport. Ivanka and Sabrina are prominent businesswomen, but there are also differences between them. Ivanka is the daughter of President Donald Trump. In China and elsewhere, Sabrina is the daughter of modern China and its historic rise.
Critics of Sabrina’s arrest call it a kidnapping. The charges against her are unclear, the intent lacks transparency, and the action itself is unprecedented even for US double standards and a maverick president.
British politician George Galloway condemned Sabrina’s arrest as piracy, a death wish and an act of war. Prof Jeffrey Sachs calls it almost an act of war on China’s business world exposing Washington’s “supreme hypocrisy.” He finds the official pretext lacking credibility. Sachs says that in the past nine years alone, the US penalised 25 other companies from almost as many countries for violating unilateral US sanctions on doing business in third, fourth or fifth countries.
Yet in all these cases the US held the company responsible rather than an individual officer of the company. The case against Huawei had taken an unprecedented and disturbing character from the start.
Jack Ma says the trade war itself is only part of the complicated and now troubling relationship between the US and China. It is so messy that he sees any resolution only in another 20 years.
At one level, today’s US phobia about doing business with China relates to what Washington calls security concerns. Huawei founder and Sabrina’s father Ren Zhengfei was reportedly an elected official of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 1982.
What would that mean for Ma of Alibaba, confirmed only two weeks ago as a current card-carrying member of the CPC? Nobody outside Washington seems too bothered.
Business, especially international trade, is supposed to be above petty political differences in a very diverse world. But apparently, pettiness matters in a trade war scenario veering towards a cold war. The trade war mindset and the persecution of Huawei are situated within global superpower and geopolitical rivalry between the world’s two biggest economies.
China is still a developing country despite its many achievements, and is determined to press ahead with more growth to develop its poorer regions. Huawei is in the forefront of this national resurgence.
The US remains the world’s technology leader and sole superpower – and intends to stay that way. Since a hyper-competitive international environment does not always favour it, it has resolved to block any challenge while complaining about trade with China.
Owing to China’s population size, significant GDP growth per capita would mean development on a massive scale. And because of reliance on international markets and global supply chains, connectivity makes infrastructure and IT vital.
The current US position on China consists of the phobias and manias of senior administration officials around Trump.
Among the most prominent is economics hawk Prof Peter Navarro, head of the White House National Trade Council. The author of Death By China was conspicuously left out of Trump’s cordial visit to China last year.
Since then, Navarro has moved closer to the Oval Office. So have other hawks circling China.
John Bolton is a Bush-era neo-conservative savouring entry into Trump’s inner circle. That did not happen in the first year, but now he is National Security Adviser. Bolton is notorious as instigator of the Iraq invasion. Now he has focused his foreign aggression on a trade war, indicating he had more to do with Sabrina’s arrest than Trump himself.
US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer is another hawk eager to target Beijing. He regards China as a “trade threat” and has grown personally close to Trump.
The Economist called US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross a protectionist, and he has submitted to the hawkish trend against China. His shares in some China companies are no longer an issue, especially after he has turned his China experience to serve US nationalist interests.
Yet for all their devices, the attack on China by targeting Huawei will not dampen – much less stop – China’s rise. It will teach China to be more vigilant about trade partners, steel it for future pitfalls, and redouble its efforts to grow stronger.
Already there are signs of Sabrina’s arrest being counter-productive, with other forms of blowback against US interests virtually assured.
First, Beijing’s support for Chinese firms like Huawei operating internationally will grow. Even greater state-industry collaboration in China’s national interests, particularly when abroad, can be expected.
Second, China’s corporate sector will offer even greater support for the Government and the CPC in return. As this happens at multiple levels, China’s international competitiveness can only heighten.
Third, public support in China for Chinese companies has also grown, fuelling the rise of Chinese nationalism. Even before Sabrina’s arrest, a nationwide survey found majorities in 300 Chinese cities would boycott US companies.
Fourth, public support for the Chinese state and the CPC continues to accumulate. Whenever the national interest is threatened, all sectors close ranks against the common foe.
Fifth, the action against Huawei has provoked China and triggered its people’s national pride. The extent to which this will multiply is still uncertain, but a clear sense of it is evident in social media.
Sixth, international support for China and its campaign for free trade are set to grow. This involves more than just companies fearful of similar actions for violating US sanctions, since the US has alienated itself from even its allies.
Seventh, the Chinese diaspora in Canada has come out in support of Sabrina and other unfortunate Chinese nationals caught in such a situation. It has become more than just a national or criminal matter.
Eighth, Chinese Americans may also feel the racist pinch of US policy and act similarly. Will they then become suspects to their own Government?
Malaysian entrepreneur and Harvard MBA Tan Hock Eng’s Singapore-based Broadcom was supposed to take over California-based Quallcom in the biggest IT deal in the world. But in March this year the US scrapped the deal in the name of “national security interests.” To many ethnic Chinese that was a racist move.
Ninth, while some countries may sympathise with China over Huawei, others may just be put off by the US action and attitude. The result would be a net loss for US standing and prestige.
To provoke a rising China and get away with it requires consistently deft handling and masterful strategies. Both are lacking in Washington.
Trump has not been focused enough to even make senior administration appointments after two years. Melania Trump has also been pressuring her husband to dismiss the Deputy National Security Adviser.
The departure of senior staff has already been peaking on its own, many for personal reasons. Then Robert Mueller’s continuing investigations and indictments will add further to the dismissals.
All this is what comes of a “trade war” that is about more than just trade, involving more than any conventional notion of war.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said two Canadian
citizens being kept in custody by China are unlawfully detained and they
should be returned. Pompeo made the accusation on Friday during a joint
press conference after the US-Canada 2+2 ministerial meeting
Mr
Ren Zhengfei survived Mao Zedong's great famine and went on to build a
telecom giant with US$92 billion in revenue that strikes fear among some
policymakers in the West.PHOTO: EPA-EFE
HONG KONG (BLOOMBERG) - At the sprawling Huawei Technologies campus in Shenzhen, the foodcourt's walls are emblazoned with quotes from the company's billionaire founder and chief executive Ren Zhengfei.
Then there's the research lab that resembles the White House in Washington. Perhaps the most curious thing, though, are three black swans paddling around a lake.
For Mr Ren, a former People's Liberation Army soldier turned telecom tycoon, the elegant birds are meant as a reminder to avoid complacency and prepare for unexpected crisis. That pretty much sums up the state of affairs at Huawei, whose chief financial officer, Ms Meng Wanzhou, who's also Mr Ren's daughter, is in custody in Canada and faces extradition to the United States on charges of conspiracy to defraud banks and violate sanctions on Iran.
The arrest places Huawei in the cross-hairs of an escalating technology rivalry between China and the US, which views the company, a critical global supplier of mobile network equipment, as a potential national security risk.
Hardliners in President Donald Trump's administration are especially keen to prevent Huawei from supplying wireless carriers as they upgrade to 5G, a next-generation technology expected to accelerate the shift to Internet-connected devices and self-driving cars.
Mr Ren is a legendary figure in the Chinese business world. He survived Mao Zedong's great famine and went on to build a telecom giant with US$92 billion (S$126 billion) in revenue that strikes fear among some policymakers in the West. Huawei is the No. 1 smartphone maker in China, and this year eclipsed Apple to become second maker globally, according to research firm IDC.
Though it has a low profile compared with China's Internet giants, Huawei's revenue last year was more than Alibaba Group Holding, Tencent Holdings and and Baidu Inc combined. About half of its revenue now comes from abroad, led by Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
The company's high-speed global expansion has come under fire for years, starting with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US' derailing of an acquisition in 2008. More recently, Australia, New Zealand and the US have blocked or limited the use of Huawei gear.
The arrest and prosecution of Ms Meng in US courts comes amid a far bigger US-China struggle for technology dominance in the decades ahead - and could have huge, and potentially severe, consequences for Huawei. Mr Ren declined an interview request from Bloomberg News.
"It gives Trump a bargaining chip," said Mr George Magnus, an economist at Oxford University's China Centre. "She's the daughter of the CEO, Ren Zhengfei, himself a former PLA officer, and Huawei's alleged dealings with Iran are just the latest in a string of concerns."
An outright ban on buying American technology and components, should it come to that, would deal Huawei a crushing blow. Earlier this year, the Trump administration imposed just such a penalty on ZTE Corp, also a Chinese telecom, and threatened its very survival before backing down.
Both Huawei and ZTE are banned from most US government procurement work.
A full-blown, commercial ban in the US would not only apply to hardware components, but also cut off access to the software and patents of US companies, Mr Edison Lee and Mr Timothy Chau, analysts with Jefferies Securities, wrote in a report.
"If Huawei cannot license Android from Google, or Qualcomm's patents in 4G and 5G radio access technology, it will not be able to build smartphones or 4G/5G base stations," they note.
The company's legal troubles in the US may also spill into other markets.
"Government telecommunication infrastructure requirements are essentially locking out the Chinese supplier in critical growth markets," noted Morningstar Research equity analyst Mark Cash in an e-mail. "Additionally, telecom providers without government imposed restrictions may start limiting their usage of Huawei equipment for their 5G network build-outs."
If there's a Darth Vader in the minds of Chinese national security hawks in Washington worried about China's rising tech power, it's Mr Ren. In China, though, he's feted as a national hero, who rose from humble beginnings to the pinnacle of wealth and status in Chinese society.
His grandfather was a master of curing ham in his village in Zhejiang province, which afforded Mr Ren's father the chance to become the village's first university student, according to a 2001 essay by Mr Ren about his upbringing, which was published on a website linked to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
His father, Mr Ren Moxun, was a Communist Youth League member, who later worked as a teacher and an accountant at a military factory, but who kept up his rebel fervour under the Kuomintang by selling revolutionary books.
After moving to rural Guizhou province, he met his wife Cheng Yuanzhao and gave birth to Mr Ren Zhengfei, the oldest of two sons and five daughters.
The family lived on modest teaching salaries. In one of Mr Ren's speeches, he remembered how his mother read him the story of Hercules, but withheld the ending until he came home with a good report card.
Famine Years
During the Great Leap Forward campaign that started in the late 1950s, a famine came to his home town after Communist Party industrialisation and collectivisation policies went off the rails. Mr Ren recalled in his essay how his mother stuffed into his hand each morning a piece of corn pancake while asking about his homework. His good grades gained him entry to the Chongqing Institute of Civil Engineering and Architecture.
After graduation, he worked in the civil engineering industry until 1974, when he joined the PLA's Engineering Corps as a soldier, and worked on a chemical fibre base in Liaoyang. Huawei says he rose to become deputy director, but did not hold military rank. He does, however, often pepper his speeches with military references.
"Our managers and experts need to act like generals, carefully examining maps and meticulously studying problems," Mr Ren said in a speech posted on a website for Huawei employees.
Mr Ren's Communist Party credentials aren't as deep as his father's. He attended the 12th National Congress of the Communist Party in 1982, and once cited the party's dogma of "a struggle that never ends" when defending the company's tough work hours.
But Mr Ren was a bookworm as a child and was denied acceptance into the Communist Youth League, according to the book Huawei: Leadership, Culture And Connectivity, a book co-authored by David De Cremer, Tian Tao and Wu Chunbo.
He didn't become a Communist Party member in the PLA until late in his military career. However, a 2012 House permanent Select Committee on Intelligence report on Huawei asked why a private company had a Communist Party Committee, which has become common among China's Internet giants.
Mr Ren retired from the army in 1983, and joined his first wife to work at a Shenzhen company involved in the city's special economic zone. It was around then that he had to sell off everything to pay a debt related to a business partner, and lost his job at Shenzhen Nanyou Group, as well as his first marriage, according to Ren Zhengfei And Huawei by author Li Hongwen.
Comeback Play
After a period of sleepless nights while living with family members, Mr Ren saw an opportunity. When China began its economic opening under Deng Xiaoping, the telephone penetration rate was lower than the average rate in Africa, or 120th in the world. He founded Huawei with four partners in 1987 with 21,000 yuan in initial working capital, just above the minimum threshold required under Shenzhen rules.
Huawei started out as a trader of telecom equipment, but the company's technicians studied up on switchboards and were soon making their own. Workers put in long hours in Shenzhen's swampy heat with only ceiling fans. Mr Ren kept up morale with subtle gestures, like offering pigtail soup to workers putting in overtime.
The company became known for its "mattress culture" in which workers would pass out on office mattresses from exhaustion. In 2006, a 25-year-old worker Hu Xinyu, who had made a habit of working into the wee hours and then sleeping at the office, died of viral encephalitis. Some Huawei employees subsequently committed suicide.
The deaths triggered a revision of the company policy on overtime, and the creation of a chief health and safety officer role.
It wasn't the only move Mr Ren made to stabilise morale. He used to pay his workers only half their salaries on payday, but eventually decided to convert the other half of employee salaries and bonuses into shares. The company's 2017 report shows that he has a 1.4 per cent stake, giving him a net worth of US$2 billion.
Wolf Culture
Huawei struggled for market share, with foreign companies using so-called "wolf culture" of aggressive salesmanship, which sometimes materialised in the form of Huawei employees flooding sales events with several times more salespeople than competitors.
The company ventured into international markets in the 2000s, with telecom equipment that was more affordable than products of competitors such as Cisco Systems. Huawei later admitted to copying a small portion of router code from Cisco and agreed to remove the tainted code in a settlement.
Mr Ren since stepped up the company's research and development. Of its 180,000 employees, about 80,000 are now involved in R&D, according to the company's 2017 report, and the company has been known to recruit some of China's top talent out of universities.
The company recently refocused on existing markets after the US government called Huawei a national security threat, and cited concerns over its possible control of 5G technologies. Mr Trump signed a Bill banning government use of Chinese tech including Huawei's, and has even contacted allies to get them to avoid using Huawei equipment.
Collectively owned by its employees, the company is known for a culture of discipline, in which no one, Mr Ren included, has their own driver or flies first class on the company dime. Lately, Mr Ren has been warning employees against using fake numbers or profit to enhance performance. The company set up a data verification team in 2014 within the finance department, which was overseen by Mr Ren's daughter.
In a recent speech posted on the Huawei employee network, however, he called for patience with critics, but rejected foreign intervention. "We will never give in or yield to pressure from outside," he said.
That maxim is going to be soon put to the test by the US Department of Justice.
Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Chinese tech
giant Huawei, who was granted a $7.5 million bail, is unlikely to be
extradited to the US because she is charged for political reasons,
analysts said.
Samsung’s foldable device with Infinity Flex Display is a smartphone model that features a tablet-sized screen when unfolded and a smaller screen when folded like a book. — AP 
Vodafone demonstrated how a young football fan could get Houghton (left) to teach her some football skills with a holographic 3D call on a 5G network. — AP
Companies like Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo could all be announcing new gaming consoles in 2019. — AP
AR is likely to become a bigger part of the way we experience events in real life and consume content on social media platforms. Here, an attendee is trying out an AR baseball game at a trade show in Japan. — Bloomberg
Get set to support a Malaysian eSports team at the 2019 SEA Games. — Bernama
