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China demands release of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou held in Canada
China demanded on Thursday that Canadian authorities release the chief financial officer of China’s Huawei Technologies, who was detained over the weekend for possible extradition to the United States.
Canadian Justice Department spokesman Ian McLeod confirmed on Wednesday that authorities detained Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver, British Columbia, on Saturday.
McLeod said he could not provide further details on the case due to a publication ban imposed at Meng’s request. She has a bail hearing on Friday, he said.
As BBC News reports, Meng is also deputy chairman of the board and the daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei.
Huawei issued a statement saying Meng was changing flights in Canada when she was detained “on behalf of the United States of America” to face “unspecified charges” in New York. “The company has been provided very little information regarding the charges and is not aware of any wrongdoing by Ms. Meng,” the statement said. “The company believes the Canadian and U.S. legal systems will ultimately reach a just conclusion.”
In China, online users and commentators reacted angrily to the news of Meng’s arrest. The Canadian embassy’s Weibo page was bombarded with posts criticising its role in the incident.
One user wrote: “Hello, American’s dog. What about human rights? What about freedom?”
On the US embassy’s page, another wrote: “Get out of China.”
Hu Xijin, the editor of China’s often stridently patriotic state-run tabloid the Global Times, posted on Weibo: “It is clear the US is pushing the battle line to our door … We can completely regard the US arrest of Meng Wanzhou as a declaration of war against China.”
Reports of alleged Huawei sanctions violations
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year that U.S. authorities were investigating whether the Chinese tech giant had violated sanctions on Iran. Canadian media also reported on Wednesday that the detention was likely linked to suspected U.S. sanctions violations.
Huawei has said it complies with all laws and rules where it operates, including export controls and sanctions of the United Nations, the U.S. and European Union.
The Chinese Embassy in Ottawa said Meng’s human rights were being violated and demanded her immediate release.
“At the request of the U.S. side, the Canadian side arrested a Chinese citizen not violating any American or Canadian law. The Chinese side firmly opposes and strongly protests over such kind of actions which seriously harmed the human rights of the victim,” the statement said.
China’s Foreign Ministry also demanded Meng’s release on Thursday and complained that neither Canadian nor U.S. officials had explained her detention.
Backdrop of a trade war
In April, China appealed to Washington to avoid damaging business confidence following the Wall Street Journal report that U.S. authorities were investigating whether Huawei violated sanctions on Iran amid spiraling technology tensions.
A foreign ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, said then that China opposes any country imposing unilateral sanctions based on its own law.
Asked about the report that Huawei was under investigation, Hua said in April, “We hope the U.S. will refrain from taking actions that could further undermine investor confidence in the U.S. business environment and harm its domestic economy and normal, open, transparent and win-win international trade.”
That same month Washington barred Huawei rival ZTE Corp. from exporting U.S. technology in a separate case over exports to Iran and North Korea.
President Donald Trump has threatened to raise tariffs on Chinese goods in response to complaints that Beijing improperly pressures foreign companies to hand over technology. That is widely seen as part of a broader effort by Washington to respond to intensifying competition with Chinese technology industries that Mr. Trump says benefit from improper subsidies and market barriers.
Meng’s detention in Canada on Saturday came as Mr. Trump sat down with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Argentina. Both leaders were positive about the meeting, which yielded a temporary truce in the fast-escalating trade war between the world’s two biggest economic powers. Mr. Trump agreed not to impose any new tariffs on Chinese goods for 90 days, to allow negotiations on a new trade deal to proceed.
But experts — and even White House advisers — were cautious in describing the cease-fire.
“I can’t call it an agreement yet,” Larry Kudlow, Director of Mr. Trump’s National Economic Council, told reporters in a call on Monday.
Noting that a similar pause in hostilities in May later fell apart, economists also warned that the sides remain far apart in ironing out key disputes. Those include intellectual property protection for American companies, Chinese commitments to buy more U.S. goods, and Beijing’s broader focus on turning China into a technological, industrial and military powerhouse.
“With the truce probably mostly due to a (possibly temporary) change of mind in the U.S., and room for agreement on much of the substance rather narrow, it is fragile,” Andrew Hunter of Capital Economics said in a note to clients.
Huawei wants to expand its appearance once again in the consumer industry and the company has announced a new plan to grow in the country by opening 100 new stores within 10 days.
Huawei officially announced the launch of over 100 new stores across China and it will start to happen From March 30, 2023, to April 8, 2023. Within 10 days, Huawei will deploy all of these 100+ stores together.
During a special promo opening offer, Huawei will provide attendees with limited-time discounts and gifts. These stores will also bring new products for the consumers at first hand.
These new stores could derive from Huawei Smart Living Pavilion. This is a new step by Huawei to improve its offline retail stores. It has an ingenious design in terms of environment, display, vision, and smart experience.
It also creates a comfortable and modern experience space. Allowing consumers to experience the smart synchronization between all gadgets in multiple scenarios, and truly feel an “immersive + futuristic” Life.
Huawei promised that there will be more exciting activities inside the stores that will allure the customers.
Smartphones:
Recently, Huawei announced new flagship devices – the Huawei P60 series and Mate X3 foldable phones. Packed with new camera technologies, powerful hardware, and eye-catching design, these smartphones bring an all-around experience.
The demand for the P60 and Mate X3 is hot and Huawei doesn’t want to miss the momentum. Therefore, promoting them offline will increase their reach.
Smart Car:
Huawei is now also a car seller, the company is promoting cars with Huawei smart car technologies and helping them to gain new customers via its consumer devices stores. Interested people can go to the store and take a test drive or talk to the related in charge to know more about the vehicle.
Huawei already has many stores in China including experience centers. These provide various on-site solutions for existing devices and also information about the Huawei smart device ecosystem.
Huawei leader Xu Zhijun brought us the good news that his company has achieved a breakthrough in chipset manufacturing and the company will kick off this journey with a 14nm chip node and above.
According to the information, the hardware development tool development team and the supported domestic partner made it possible to achieve a breakthrough at the root of the technology.
The team has introduced new architecture, released a cloud-native schematic diagram tool, created a high-speed and high-sensitive PCB layout too, and improved the 2D/3D CAD tool for structural design.
Huawei has developed a chip design EDA tool team alongside Chinese EDA companies to jointly create EDA tools required to process 14nanometer and above semiconductors.
The rotating chairman confirmed that the basic requirement of localizing these development EDA tools for 14nm and above will complete its comprehensive verification in 2023. In the past three years, Huawei has focused on three R&D production lines hardware development, software development, and chip development.
The Chinese tech maker has worked hard to build our tools and completed the replacement of 78 software/hardware development tools, ensuring the continuity of R&D operations.
Breakthrough:
Huawei said its software development tool is planning the entire operations since 2018. It moved to create a complete software toolchain from coding, compilation, testing, security, construction, and release to deployment and achieve the strategy of self-development.
Also to deliver joint research and development with partners to solve the tool continuity question. Huawei also has the strong support of over 100000 software engineers to provide external services based on Huawei Cloud to achieve internal and external consistency.
As of today, Huawei and its partners have released 11 product development tools and all of the partners are equally eligible to use the production line.
Currently, over 200,000 software developers and 197,000 hardware developers are using the tools developed by us or jointly developed with our partners every month. At the same time, 203 companies are willing to pay to use our software tools.
Xu Zhijun said that Have has made a lot of breakthroughs in product development tools over the years. However, the company still facing many challenges, and there are many product development tools that are yet to make breakthroughs.
This is amazing information coming from the company. Aside from mid-range and budget devices, Huawei can utilize the 14nm chip in network equipment and other products with low processing nodes.
Still, we have to wait for more inputs on this matter and the company’s plans for future manufacturing of the chipset.
(source)
Global consumers are excited about the next Huawei smartphones and the company said it will continue to operate in the global market with smartphones and other new products.
Huawei Consumer Business Group COO, He Gang said that Huawei will keep releasing new smartphones, smartwatches, PCs, audio, and other smart products for global consumers.
The latest comment from the COO came during a media interview after the launch of the Huawei P60 series smartphones. He Gang also said that Huawei launched the latest flagship in Spring, which means its products are returning to normal and it’s good news for everyone.
Delayed in the past:
After the U.S. sanctions, Huawei was restricted from purchasing the required hardware technologies to build new smartphones and other devices. The low yield leads to the market share drop.
That’s why Huawei only launched one flagship, P50 Pro in 2021. The phone made it to the global market 6 months after in the first quarter of 2022. On the other hand, the last year’s Huawei Mate 50 Pro made its way to global consumers within 2 months.
These phones were launched without Google Mobile Services (GMS) and Play Store. Therefore, the sales volume in the overseas market remained invisible due to the GMS requirements. Another factor that hit Huawei phones is 5G connectivity. Still, Huawei managed to fill these downsides with new features and powerful camera technologies.
Aside from smartphones, Hauwei is continuously launching new smartwatches and earbuds devices for global customers and it has only increased.
According to the information, Huawei already announced Huawei P60 series will launch on May 9th in Munich and will be accompanied by Huawei Mate X3 and other products.
