Vice President of Government Relations
As of June 2010, Bill Plummer is the head lobbyist for Huawei, a Chinese telecommunications network company. Bill Plummer explained to us how Huawei has grown over the years to becoming the trusted telecommunications network company while the United States wouldn’t let it get its foot in the door. It’s a very interesting situation of protectionism that seemed to cause great pains to Bill Plummer who has been trying to get the company in the country for almost ten years now.
Huawei was found in 1987 in rural China. Because the Chinese government favored state-owned enterprises (SOEs), who tended to be crippled by bureaucracy and thus less efficient or profitable, Huawei, with its superior productivity, was not given access to large cities in China. So, it was forced to go international. Since then, Huawei has expanded to other countries in Asia as well as to countries in Latin America and Europe. By the early 2000s, the Chinese company had two billion dollars in revenue from its Asia and Latin America operations and in 2004, Huawei earned its first contract in Europe with a Dutch company. Today, 46 of the top 50 telecommunications operators in the world run on Huawei networks, the other four being the ones in the United States. Even without the United States, or maybe because of its absence from the US market, the telecommunications network company has managed to grow at astounding rates–32% growth in 2016, 15.7% growth in 2017–to $92 billion in revenue. Since the company did not have operations in the US during the Dot Com Crash, it was not affected by the recession. As a result, while US companies were slashing their R&D budgets to 2%, Huawei kept its R&D budget at 15%. According to Bill Plummer, this was the reason why the Chinese technology surpassed the American technology and this is the reason why the American government doesn’t want to give market access to the Chinese company. Huawei has fought hard to enter the US market but may instead pull out its operations instead.
At the beginning of the battle for the US market, the telecommunications network company was eager to prove that it was a trusted company and that it was not controlled by the Chinese government. In 2012, the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee conducted an 11-month investigation into Huawei. According to Bill Plummer, the company was very happy at the news of this investigation because it would give the company a way to clear it name. The American counterparts knew better though. It was just a cover up to see if they could really find something on the company but the government would ban the company whether or not they found something. Which is what happened. Since then, Bill Plummer has been trying to prove the innocence of the Chinese company. If Huawei was trusted by most of the countries around the world, it couldn’t really be that evil right? Maybe and maybe not. What’s clear is that the US isn’t willing to find out either way.
We suggested that the company sue the country for its malpractices but Bill Plummer insisted that that was not the way of the company culture. We also suggested that the company go to Beijing and ask the government to bring it to the attention of the WTO but Bill Plummer pointed out that that would only be proof that the company is beholden to the Chinese government. This international business relations situation is really an interesting one. Given the outrage of several media outlets, such as CNN and Bloomberg, over the situation, I am inclined to believe Bill Plummer’s explanations. Yet, I would prefer to believe that we, as a country, have moved beyond petty protectionism and that the US government is acting in good faith. Either way, Bill Plummer provided for an interesting discussion on international business and the fear of no longer being the best.