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from the desperate-to-get-those-contracts dept.
Huawei denies receiving billions in financial aid from Chinese government:
Huawei may not be as much of a self-made success story as founder Ren Zhengfei has consistently made the company out to be. According to The Wall Street Journal, the Chinese government has granted as much as $75 billion worth of financial assistance to Huawei, allowing the company to spend more freely than it would have otherwise been able to.
Using a combination of publicly-available records, the WSJ estimates Huawei received $46 billion in loans and lines of credit from state-controlled lenders, as well as $1.6 billion in grants. The company was also able to save as much as $25 billion in taxes between 2008 and 2018 thanks to incentives aimed at China's tech companies, and $2 billion on land purchases.
Chinese diplomats may have also helped the company. According to court documents obtained by the WSJ, the Chinese government helped Huawei close a deal in Pakistan by offering the country's government a $124.7 million loan through the Export-Import Bank of China. The state-controlled bank waived most of the three percent annual interest on the 20-year loan. The catch, however, was that Pakistan's government had to skip its usual competitive bidding process and award the contract to Huawei.
Huawei responded to the article in a series of tweets and a lengthy statement posted earlier today. "Once again, the WSJ has published untruths about Huawei based on false information. This time, wild accusations about Huawei's finances ignore our 30 years of dedicated investments in R&D that have driven innovation and the tech industry as a whole," the company said. Huawei also said that it reserved the right to take legal action against the WSJ for "a number of disingenuous and irresponsible articles."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Monday December 30 2019, @02:56PM (11 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 30 2019, @03:15PM (4 children)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Monday December 30 2019, @03:55PM
This isn't even something that's called corruption when done in the united states, though.
"Tax breaks, financing, and cheap resources" are all things that are handed out to american megacorps as "regular business"
How american tax breaks go should be obvious, what with Blizard-Activistion having a -51% effective tax rate this year, receiving a straight $221 million cash from the IRS fiscal 2019. That's not even what huawei is getting in China, they're still paying net tax there. Just less than a corp their size should.
As far as financing, anyone rich enough gets cheap financing from the fed, with the overnight window offering obscenely unconscionable rates to literally every major bank.
And as for cheap resources, almost no property owners in the US gets their own mineral rights anymore, they're handed out at fire sale prices to the likes of exxon mobile.
Not that I want to live in a society where that kind of thing is normal, be it the US or China, but mind the beam in your own eye.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 30 2019, @04:00PM
No, but it's so much tastier when served with egg roll. You could say the corruption is slanted in another direction.
Side-note: and THAT'S how it's done, Ethy, you moron.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday December 30 2019, @06:12PM (1 child)
It's not just the USA or China, more or less every single country has at least one corporation or another that they have these deals with. It's wrong, it's corruption etc but everyone does it so it's really just the current normal and while some cry about it sometimes they always sort of forget that they also do it. But I guess it's the global version of don't do what I do -- do what I say. It's just that when some countries "speak" it carries a bit more weight.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 31 2019, @05:18AM
Who here has forgotten that "they also do it"?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 30 2019, @05:05PM (3 children)
1 company? 25 billion?! I am going to say you have not thought through your thoughts.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday December 30 2019, @05:56PM (2 children)
The breaks on interest to foreign business buying their products was first done by western government-run export banks. "We'll give you a long-term interest subsidy if you buy our country's products as part of a foreign aid program " - which always worked out shitty for the buyer.
This is capitalism as practiced in the USA. And because Trump blocked the nomination process for new judges, nobody can complain to the now-judgeless WTO.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Monday December 30 2019, @09:06PM
Technical paralysis of normal WTO operations is an instrumental necessity, because of the USA adopted one-sided policy of sanctions against too many adversaries.
Those sanctions are basically political pressure only, not an economical tool of trade. Particular reasons of the day are irrelevant to money flows, those sanctions are illegal by international standards of free market capitalism consensus and WTO would be a relevant platform to solve this situation.
Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 31 2019, @08:27AM
Trump won't talk to me :(
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 30 2019, @06:27PM (1 child)
It's not so much whether they got gov't help, it's whether they tried to hide it. I cannot comment on whether or not Boeing did such.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday December 30 2019, @06:45PM
Again, who cares whether they tried to hide it or not? Governments and businesses often keep contract details secret. This is especially true of export contracts.
China has been very open about achieving tech supremacy by 2025. They were also very open about wanting to achieve hegemony in Asia and Africa via their Belt and Road trade deals.
Their lead in patents issued every year (more than the US, EU, Japan, and Taiwan combined) says it all.
While Western investors have spent the last 20 years investing in tech unicorns that will never make money, the Chinese have been spending on building up industry and manufacturing.
Whether they did it with government assistance or not is immaterial. The US internet was built with huge government research and subsidies, and the savings were never passed on to the consumers.
G5 isn't needed, but both the government and telcos are creating an artificial demand for it. And they're pissed off that a Chinese company might benefit from the lobbying scam, instead of US telcos.
Of course, they certainly will in the rest of the world. Money talks. Used to be the US had the financial leverage, but with cuts to foreign aid, the Chinese have moved in.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 30 2019, @03:07PM
HAAAHAAAHAA hahaha... haaaa haa haa... oh wow... are we telling jokes now to end the year?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ilsa on Monday December 30 2019, @03:10PM
Oh please please please take action. I bet the WSJ would welcome it.
If the WSJ is in fact wrong, then the truth will vindicate Huawei. But they won't push beyond feigning outrage, because the WSJ is probably right. The fact that their response side-steps, if not completely ignores WSJ's core argument, is very telling.
I imagine I could also get a lot done if someone through almost $100 billion dollars my way.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 30 2019, @03:38PM
Strange complaint considering their American equivalents don't pay taxes at all and get the state department to reroute money to them via Israel's stock purchase through the foreign aid program.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday December 30 2019, @03:51PM (5 children)
The story was about their financing, not their R&D.
Too bad there's a paywall in front of WSJ's propaganda.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Monday December 30 2019, @06:57PM (4 children)
Export subsidies by government are business as usual. Long practised by the west, all of a sudden it's wrong when the Chinese do it? I don't think so.
The Chinese weren't stupid. They knew Trump would shut down the WTO, and now the US has nobody to complain to for unfair business practices.
How much in subsidies does Israel get for buying US-made fighter jets and missiles? Close to $5 billion in the last year. That's a subsidy to American manufacturers.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by RamiK on Monday December 30 2019, @09:14PM (3 children)
They didn't know. Trump didn't know. It's just that the Chinese end up doing less total $/¥shenanigans by the merit of their weaker currency and how they can subsidize public education, health care and infrastructure where US racial and class divides mean it can't. So, what they did know is that any remotely fair WTO process evaluating violations on per-case basis and penalizing on the $/¥ will just end up more rewarding to China as tally builds up. So, regardless of the WTO, China was, is and will win so long as the US keeps wasting resources and time fighting itself.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday December 31 2019, @12:55AM (1 child)
And it's somehow the rest of the worlds fault that the US is racist, and refuses to fund single payer health care? There are plenty of western countries that aren't as rich as the USA but have universal health care, heavily subsidized education, etc.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday December 31 2019, @03:50PM
Much less causation, there's little correlation between what Trump says and what he does.
I know what you mean and I'm in full agreement here... But there's a distinction between fault and responsibility here. While the US is the only party responsible for its mistreatment of its minorities, like when a wife gets murdered by an abusive husband and the neighbors knew about it for years but didn't say anything, there's plenty of fault to go around.
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @05:39PM
Are you trolling or an idiot? You think there are no racism and class divides in China?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 30 2019, @03:53PM (3 children)
If anyone cares to look at what's happening in science (or more accurately "science" now), there are Chinese knock-offs everywhere. All the original work done in the past decades is rediscovered by 12+ Chinese authors (got to get the citation count up) who only cite other Chinese-only articles. Fast forward a few years and all the posts at many US institutions are occupied by Chinese who only hire other Chinese.
I bet that investment did not cost $100B.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by legont on Monday December 30 2019, @09:28PM
Well, the US used government money to lure the brightest and the best educated people from abroad for a very long time. The intent was that those folks would become Americans and switch their loyalty from foreign kings to the US idea of freedom.
Guess what, the freedom is gone and with it any chance of loyalty. Foreigners are not free as in free beer brain source anymore, but hostile agents of foreign governments.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 30 2019, @09:47PM (1 child)
Chinese authors have been on major papers going back to Imperial China ~100-120 years ago. Many of them were students, professors, or citizens of America, Britain, Germany, etc when they published, but China has had plenty of deep academics in the Western world for ages including on some key patented technology like Silicon and Fiber Optics. While I agree China has stolen a lot (just like the US did from Britain, and Western US did from Eastern US, I might add!), they definitely have some competent scientists navigating both the governments dislike to free thought and the corruption in publishing most authors and faux scientists choose to publish. The US is really no different in that regard, except that we might have at one time had a higher caliber of scrutiny of our scientific research than China has, which over the past few decades has seemed to have eroded even further than it had in the 50 years prior, although that may just be due to more transparency and funding available to refute 'popular' papers that supported the community/governnent's view on a subject.
Really, America needs to focus more on fixing its own shit, because competition progresses regardless of intellectual rent-seeking, and without the minds for the intellectual arms race, America has already lost, even if it takes a few decades for it to be made clear. The economic arms race on the other hand is simple: Reciprocal legal restrictions for the other country's citizens and expats: They can't own land in America unless we can own land in China. Same with Corporations. Eminent domain Chinese owned assets at or slightly below market values and tell them when either they become US citizens or their country allows equal ownership in China they can buy them back. That would either cause China to open itself more to globalization, or to lose the economic footholds they are gaining in other countries, helping set a trend that would weaken their own global hegemony.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 01 2020, @06:55PM
Reciprocity doesn't work because it gets gamed. Whatever method to identify somebody as belonging to a given country will be angled to enable people, and especially companies, from other countries to qualify as such.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 31 2019, @05:48AM
If true, it also provides weak supporting evidence for the claims that Huawei is supporting Chinese cyber-skullduggery since there would a ready avenue of control and communication from the Chinese government to compliant Huawei actions.