Chinese telecommunications equipment giant Huawei Technologies has undertaken a bit public relations push and called on the U.S., Australia, and other countries to prove it is a security risk and collecting information internationally for the government of China, the Associated Press reported.
Speaking to a group of reporters at the company’s headquarters in southern China, chairman Ken Hu said that claims of spying activities on the part of the company were “ideology and geopolitics” and said that if governments had proof of their claims, “it should be made known.”
Huawei had already announced a $2 billion cybersecurity reboot.
The company, a major competitor to U.S.-based Cisco, faces sales bans in the U.S., Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. And France reportedly is discouraging its wireless carriers from using the company’s equipment.
Back in July, security officials from the U.S., Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, and the U.K. agreed to contain Huawei. After, in a campaign called “unprecedented” by the paper, the representatives publicly addressed claimed risks associated with equipment from the Chinese company.
However, Germany’s IT watchdog said that it had yet to see evidence to warrant a ban.
At the beginning of this month, Canadian authorities detained Wanzhou Meng, the company’s chief financial officer and daughter of its founder. The U.S. had demanded the detention and extradition. Huawei has almost completely shut down its U.S. lobbying efforts, Bloomberg reported.
Interactions between the U.S. and China on security have had a rocky past. Back in 2014, documents leaked by Edward Snowden showed that the U.S. in 2009 conducted an intelligence offensive against China and Huawei.
