Huawei’s founder said the company had replaced more than 13,000 product parts affected by U.S. trade sanctions, according to a transcript of a speech released by a Chinese university on Friday.
According to the transcript posted by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei said Huawei Over the past three years, the company has replaced 13,000 components with local Chinese substitutes and redesigned 4,000 circuit boards for its products. He said circuit board production had “stabilized”.
The comments, which Reuters could not independently verify, provide a window into Huawei’s efforts to escape U.S. trade restrictions.Since 2019, Huawei as a major equipment supplier 5G Telecommunications networks have been the target of successive rounds of US export controls.
The controls cut off Huawei both from supplying chips from U.S. companies and from using U.S. technical tools to design its own chips and have partners manufacture them. The Biden administration also banned the sale of new Huawei equipment in the United States last year.
Ren Zhengfei made the remarks during a Feb. 24 conversation with Chinese technical experts, the university said. The university posted the transcripts on its website Friday. A U.S.-based Huawei representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.
Ren Zhengfei said that Huawei’s R&D investment in 2022 will be US$23.8 billion (approximately Rs. 1,964.25 billion), and “as our profitability improves, we will continue to increase R&D spending.”
Previously, analysts said the origin of all the chips on the circuit boards of Huawei’s 5G telecommunications equipment demonstrated at an industry conference in Barcelona had been covered up.
© Thomson Reuters 2023
