"U.S. needs Huawei more than Huawei needs U.S.": Huawei executive

"America needs Huawei more than Huawei needs America," a senior executive of China's telecoms company Huawei said on Tuesday, adding that Washington's ban on its products "will hurt America in a very substantial way."

The logo of Huawei [File photo: IC]

Andy Purdy, chief security officer of Huawei Technologies USA, said that about 30 percent of components of Huawei's global products come from the United States and that last year, Huawei spent 11 billion U.S. dollars buying technologies and components from some 130 U.S. companies.

Without purchases by Huawei, those U.S. companies are going to lose, which might affect 40,000 U.S. jobs, Purdy said at a press conference held on the sidelines of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Telecom World 2019.

The U.S. government in May announced that it would "prohibit transactions posing an unacceptable risk" to the country by declaring a national emergency over what it claimed are technological threats, and announced restrictions on the sale and transfer of U.S. technologies to Huawei.

However, "all these technologies have already gone through the clearance to show that they don't damage the security of the United States, that's why they are allowed to be purchased by us and sold by us worldwide," Purdy said.

Also, some 40 rural telecoms carriers in the United States and tens of thousands of rural residents would not be happy if they could no longer use Huawei equipment, which has been proved to be safe and have competitive price, Purdy added.

Meanwhile, Huawei has been incredibly successful without significant penetration of the U.S. market, Purdy said, adding that Huawei hopes to have conversation with the United States and asks for "trust through verification."

There is no evidence of any wrongdoing by Huawei, he said. "Blocking Huawei will not make America more secure."

Because the sophistication of the malicious attackers in the cyber space and their ability to virtually hack into anybody's equipment, the mobile community needs objective and transparent standards concerning the security issue, Purdy added.

As for the components forbidden to be purchased from the United States, Yang Chaobin, president of Huawei's 5G Product Line, said that Huawei began to establish a business continuity mechanism 10 years ago.

"Huawei has a principle, that is, for any components of our products, we are not going to rely on any single supplier or any single country," said Yang.