In the hunt for global talent, China’s Huawei will not be poaching engineers from US technology giants such as Qualcomm or Apple anymore. “If they are connected to the US, the long arm of US jurisdiction can reach our company,” Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei said earlier this year. “If they have a US identity, we will not hire them.”
His decision to sever the link between the world’s largest telecoms equipment maker and the world’s largest pool of tech talent is just one symptom of a much larger battle over trade and technology that is playing out between China and the US — and causing growing damage to the Chinese economy.
The Trump administration’s decision last week to declare China a “currency manipulator” — a response to Beijing letting the renminbi slip through the symbolically important level of seven to the dollar — was just the latest evidence that both sides are digging in for the long run.