Tribune. Neither European public opinion, nor European politicians and business leaders seem to fully understand the threat posed by China to Xi Jinping. The Chinese president is a dictator who uses state-of-the-art technology to impose total control over Chinese society. However, Europeans mainly regard China as a major trading partner. They do not understand that since the accession of Xi Jinping to the offices of chairman and secretary general of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), he has established a regime whose guiding principles are diametrically opposed to the founding values of the European Union. (EU).
This plunge into Xi's arms is more pronounced on the part of the United Kingdom than of the EU itself, the country being in a phase of separation from the bloc. Prime Minister Boris Johnson intends to keep the UK as far away from the EU as possible and build a market economy free from EU regulations. It will be difficult to achieve this, as the EU is ready to take action against this form of deregulation that the Johnson government seems to be considering. Only here, at the same time, the United Kingdom considers China as a potential partner, with the hope of re-establishing the partnership built by the former Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne between 2010 and 2016.
The Trump administration, separate from US President Donald Trump, manages its relations with China much better. The United States has managed to develop a bipartisan policy that considers China as a strategic rival, and has listed the tech giant Huawei and other Chinese companies on the famous "Entity List", which prohibits US companies from trading with these entities without government permission.
The case of Huawei
Only one person can break this rule with impunity: Trump himself. And it unfortunately seems to do so, by placing Huawei on the negotiating table with Xi. Since May 2019, when the U.S. placed the Chinese company on the Entity List, the Commerce Department has granted Huawei three-month exemptions to prevent some undue hardship for component suppliers electronic mail to the Chinese company.
Huawei is a very unusual company, unique in some ways. Founder Ren Zhengfei received technical training as a member of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) engineering corps, which became one of its first major customers. When Huawei was created in 1987, all Chinese technology was imported from abroad, and Ren Zhengfei's goal was to reverse engineer the technology with local researchers. He got there beyond his wildest dreams.
