Overseas social networks recently circulated a speech that Huawei’s Senior Vice President, Chen Lifang, delivered in April, earlier this year, at a meeting with the company’s new employees. In one sentence, she mentioned “relying on comrades on the hidden fronts to take the risks” to obtain certain technologies on which the U.S. has imposed sanctions.

The quote was published on the Snowball’s (xueqiu) website, and other overseas websites carried it as well. The Senior Vice President cut to the chase at the meeting. “Why do we have to firmly study from the United States? How much do you understand about the real American manufacturing?” She gave examples of technologies on which China is still falling behind after 30 years of hard work. She said that in the field of composite materials, the process data accumulated by DuPont is more than 25 times what China has collected. In the field of turbofan engines, the number of materials and process tests completed in China is only 5 percent of what GE has done.

Chen expressed the belief that a long list of equipment, including smart grid advanced measuring instruments, material analysis precision testing instruments, mechanical performance testing equipment, new types of non-destructive testing equipment, environmental and safety testing instruments, and special defense testing instruments, all rely on imports. “For those technologies that are embargoed according to the Wassenaar Agreement (export controls for conventional weapons and sensitive dual-use goods and technologies), we can only rely on comrades working on the hidden fronts to take the risks to obtain them.”

She also said that as for equipment such as high-reliability and sensitive sensors, new composites, optical fibers, MEMS, biosensors, high-end (especially military-grade) electronic devices and variable frequency speed control devices, we can only rely on special means of importing goods to acquire them.

Chen did not clarify the term “hidden fronts” and the “special means of importing goods.”

Source: Radio France International, December 29, 2018

http://rfi.my/3VWd.T