The embattled telecoms pair of Huawei and ZTE (HKEx: 763; Shenzhen: 000063) are embarking on major hiring sprees outside their home market, seeking to not only import foreign expertise but also foreign faces as they try to look more global and less Chinese. That’s my major takeaway on reading separate reports that ZTE is launching a drive to recruit workers from 2 struggling western cellphone giants, while Huawei is also hiring thousands of new employees in Europe to cater to its largest market outside of China.
I was disappointed but certainly not surprised to read that homegrown telecoms equipment giants Huawei and ZTE (HKEx: 763; Shenzhen: 000063) won the big majority of a major new batch of contracts from dominant wireless carrier China Mobile (HKEx: 941; NYSE: CHL) to build its 4G network. Regular readers will know that I’m a strong advocate of free trade, and believe that Chinese and western equipment sellers should receive 4G contracts in any country roughly in line with their global market share. But in China such major purchasing often has a political element, especially when the buyer is a state-run company, which is clearly the case here. Read Full Post…
Beijing is showing that Washington isn’t the only one that can play games over national security concerns, with word that networking equipment giant Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO) is loosing big business in China due to revelations about US spying. Frankly speaking, this latest development in the networking equipment Cold War between Beijing and Washington doesn’t surprise me too much, and some might even say that China’s national security concerns are justified. But no matter what you think, it seems likely that Cisco’s new China freeze is at least partly and quite possibly completely in response to similar moves by Washington against Chinese networking equipment giants Huawei and ZTE (HKEx: 763; Shenzhen: 000063). Read Full Post…
