Huawei Gets Backing From Malaysia in Rebuke to Trump's Campaign

Malaysia’s Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad praised Huawei, snubbing the Trump administration’s global campaign against the Chinese network gear maker, according to Bloomberg.

The Southeast Asian country will use Huawei’s gear “as much as possible“ as they offer “tremendous advance over American technology,“ Mahathir, 93, said at a forum in Tokyo. Mahathir’s public comments add to signs U.S. efforts to win allies against Huawei are flopping in some countries that are prioritizing development of 5G networks, a specialty of China’s biggest technology company. While complicating a trade war between Washington and Beijing, the U.S. blacklisting of Huawei has also pressured telecom operators around the world to decide whether to shun the company.

This week, Singapore-based mobile phone carrier M1 said it’s open to more dealings with Huawei, while flagging that there will be alternative providers as well for 5G infrastructure. A day later, Japan-based SoftBank selected Nokia and Ericsson as vendors for its next-generation wireless network, excluding long-time supplier Huawei. Axiata Group, Malaysia’s biggest wireless carrier, said it is still working with Huawei on network technology, while it hasn’t decided on partners for introducing 5G services, the Star newspaper reported, citing comments by the carrier’s CEO Jamaludin Ibrahim.

Mahathir has praised Huawei before. He visited the company’s Beijing office in late April. “We found that Huawei is very advanced“ in the use of artificial intelligence, he said at the time. “We see there is an opportunity for us, together with Huawei, to improve our capacity in the fields of communication and AI.“ Outside Asia, the U.K.’s BT Group announced plans to remove Huawei gear from the core of its mobile network soon after the head of Britain’s foreign intelligence agency MI6 said the U.K. warned about the risks of using Chinese equipment.