At least two American newspapers ran ads from a Chinese company that United States officials believe poses a security threat.
Ads from Huawei, a Chinese telecom and electronics company that is one of the largest smartphone sellers in the world, appeared on The Washington Post’s website during the weekend and in a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday. Directed toward the US media, it said: “Don’t believe everything you hear. Come and see us.”
Huawei’s ad follows the arrests of two of its employees and allegations from the United States that its technology could create significant security risks. The Chinese government has disputed those claims, but countries including the US, New Zealand and Australia have blocked Huawei from supplying equipment for their developing 5G networks.
The banner ad in the Post links to a so-called open letter from Catherine Chen, a Huawei board director and senior vice president, who wrote that the “US government has developed some misunderstandings about us.” The letter, which ran in full in the Wall Street Journal ad, listed positive things about the company and invited American reporters to visit Huawei campuses.
“I hope that you can take what you see and hear back to your readers, viewers, and listeners, and share this message with them, to let them know that our doors are always open,” Chen wrote. “We would like the US public to get to know us better, as we will you.”
The Washington Post did not respond to an email sent to its public relations team on Sunday, but a page from 2016 on how the site uses cookies said that another company, DoubleClick, provides its advertising. DoubleClick uses cookies to select ads for users based on their interests or demographic information, so Washington Post readers didn’t universally see the Huawei ad.
It’s not unheard of for companies and even countries like China to buy enormous ad space in newspapers. For instance, the Chinese government bought a four-page ad last year in The Des Moines Register packed with propaganda on the country’s trade war with the United States.
Huawei already placed advertisements elsewhere in response to government decisions to exclude the company from 5G expansions due to security concerns. In New Zealand, a full-page ad in several newspapers followed the country’s move to block use of Huawei equipment in its 5G network.
“5G without Huawei is like rugby without New Zealand,” the ad said.
The United States began investigating Huawei in 2016 for alleged export and sanctions violations related to the shipment of products from the US to Iran and other countries, according to Reuters.
The US also has warned that Huawei’s tech could contain backdoors to assist the Chinese government’s spying efforts. American officials alleged security concerns with the tech while lobbying other countries against using it to build new 5G networks.
During this year’s Mobile World Congress, a conference for the mobile industry, the United States held a defense briefing during which Huawei was called “duplicitous and deceitful.” In turn, the company’s chairman, Guo Ping, said during his presentation that the US lacks evidence that Huawei spied for China.
Several people connected to Huawei were arrested in recent months, but none of their charges were strictly connected to using Huawei tech for espionage.
In December, Huawei’s CFO Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Canada, where she remains under house arrest and faces extradition to the United States on charges unrelated to spying. The US charged Wanzhou, who is the daughter of Huawei’s founder, with conspiracy to violate sanctions on Iran. In 2013, Reuters reported that Skycom Tech, where Meng was a board member, attempted to sell embargoed Hewlett-Packard equipment to a company in Iran.
In January, Poland arrested a Huawei employee on allegations of spying, but Polish officials told Reuters that the incident wasn’t directly connected to Huawei.
Contact Mollie Bryant at 405-990-0988 or bryant@bigiftrue.org. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
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