Huawei forbids employees from meeting US contacts

Huawei has ordered employees to cancel technical meetings with US contacts as tensions with the US administration reach an all-time high.

Dang Wenshuan, Huawei’s chief strategy architect, told the Financial Times on Friday that American citizens working in research and development at Huawei’s headquarters were sent back to the US two weeks ago, following the company's blacklisting by the White House.

According to the FT, on one occasion Huawei disbanded a workshop that was under way, asking all the American delegates present to remove their laptops, isolate their networks and leave the Huawei premises.

“We don’t know what will happen [...] We don’t know the boundary of the law, we have to be whiter than white,”Dang said.

Huawei is also limiting interactions more broadly between employees and any American citizens and controlling the topics of interactions between workers at its campus and overseas visitors Dang added.

One US citizen based in China received a message from a Huawei contact that said: “Because of our side’s regulation, we are not allowed to meet US citizens to discuss affairs related to technology.”

The US ban had hit Huawei hard because it forces American companies to obtain approval from the government before conducting any business with the Chinese giant. As a result chipmakers, as well as Google and Microsoft among other companies, have made significant changes to their business agreements with Huawei.

Huawei has gone as far as starting work on an operating system that does not rely on technologies sourced from the US, although it has yet to provide any evidence of how it will go about doing so.

HUAWEI CUT OFF FROM THE REST OF THE WORLD

Huawei is being cut off from the rest of the world by the Trump administration.

On Thursday, British and American officials said that Trump will consider limiting intelligence sharing with the UK if the British government does not ban Huawei from building parts of the country's 5G mobile network.

Trump is set to raise the issue during his three-day visit to Britain and will warn the UK again that the Asian company could use the network to spy for the Chinese government.

“The president is preparing to repeat the message that Chinese involvement in 5G could pose significant challenges for US-UK intelligence co-operation. He is prepared to go hard on this issue,” the source reportedly said.

John Bolton, the US national security adviser, said on Thursday: “These are the sorts of things you can’t resolve in one meeting. The discussions continue - I’ve been in conversation with Mark Sedwill [head of the UK civil service] about this frequently - and I’m sure they will go on.”

He also said the US would not risk allowing Huawei into its own 5G infrastructure. Trump is advising all his allies to ban the Chinese tech giant from being involved in the 5G network.