| Hostages in the U.S. and China Tech Cold War |
 | | Meng Wanzhou, the Huawei executive who is being held in Canada for extradition to the United States. Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press, via Associated Press | |
| Each week, technology reporters and columnists from The New York Times review the week's news, offering analysis and maybe a joke or two about the most important developments in the tech industry. |
| Wise readers! I'm Raymond Zhong, a Times reporter in China — where, I contend, something is unfolding right now that carries higher stakes than any other tech story on the planet. |
| I know, I'm biased. But hear me out. |
| China detained another Canadian citizen this week, the third to have been snatched up in the country this month. Beijing denies it, but most people in China see the detentions as retaliation for Canada's arrest of Meng Wanzhou, a top executive at the Chinese tech giant Huawei. The United States has accused Ms. Meng of fraud, and is seeking her extradition. She remains in Canada under round-the-clock surveillance. |
| In other words, the United States and China's contest for technological supremacy has now left four lives hanging in the balance — hostages to something much larger than themselves. |
| To recap: Huawei is the world's leading maker of telecom network equipment. You probably don't ever think about this technology, but it powers our mobile age. Which is why the United States is so nervous that Huawei has become such a powerhouse supplier. Washington has warned for years, without specific evidence, that Huawei's products can be used for spying by the Chinese government. Ms. Meng's arrest this month was part of a yearslong effort to curb the company's rise. |
| It's an unenviable position for any company to be in — not least one, like Huawei, that is privately owned and was long known for secretiveness. |
| In an effort at openness, Huawei this week invited me and a bunch of other reporters to its campuses in southern China, where we toured some research facilities and chatted with Ken Hu, the company's deputy chairman. |
| Mr. Hu reiterated points that the company has made for years as it has come under scrutiny around the world. He said that Huawei had a clean record when it came to major cybersecurity incidents. He said that "ideological" or "geopolitical" fears had not cost Huawei the trust of its many customers. |
| "Concerns about security should not be aimed without basis at any specific company," Mr. Hu said. He issued a challenge to governments that raise concerns about Huawei's products: "If you have evidence, then make it public." |
| He declined to discuss the detained Canadians or Ms. Meng's arrest. |
| In a way, Huawei is itself a hostage of larger conflicts. The company has built a globally respected brand. It has won customers by investing in research and development, providing attentive service — and driving its employees really, really hard. (I wrote this week about Huawei's intense corporate culture.) |
| Yet to the company's fiercest critics, Huawei is tarnished simply by being Chinese, and hence within arm's reach of a government that conducts aggressive espionage against American companies and government agencies. For some people in Washington, it hardly matters that Huawei isn't state-owned, or that the Chinese government has never asked it to spy on its behalf. The mere possibility is enough. |
| As part of this week's visit to Huawei, we reporters were treated to a long presentation on the company's processes for evaluating products for security risks. It was a barrage of details, earnestly presented, that I suspect would have zero chance of changing the mind of anyone in Washington about Huawei. |
| Here's what else caught my eye this week: |
| ■ My colleagues at The Times have produced another blockbuster article full of revelations about how user data is collected and shared by giant tech companies. Here are five takeaways. |
| ■ The Wall Street Journal took a look at Apple's near-total failure to win over smartphone buyers in a giant, fast-growing market: India. The iPhone is clinging to market share there of around 1 percent, and the company's revenue in India is half of what executives once hoped for, according to The Journal's sources. The country simply doesn't have enough people who are willing to pay Apple prices. |
| ■ Well, it was fun while it lasted. TikTok, the quirky short video app that is now a worldwide hit, has a Nazi problem, according to Motherboard. The app's Chinese parent company, Bytedance, is no stranger to controversies about gnarly content on its platforms. |
| ■ Finally, I urge you to read this profile of Donald E. Knuth, the legendary computer scientist who, for the past 50 years, has been writing "The Art of Computer Programming" — a multivolume, still-unspooling bible of its field. |
| Raymond Zhong is a reporter for The New York Times in China. Follow him on Twitter at @zhonggg |
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