‘Huawei too closed, monopolistic’: Chinese academic’s rare outburst signals emerging rift

China cannot win using ‘Chinese-style closure and monopoly to fight Western-style monopoly and containment’: computer scientist Sun Ninghui

Reading Time:3 minutes

As Huawei is expected to unveil an AI semiconductor this month, China’s top computer scientist has criticised the company’s supply chain ambitions. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 9:00pm, 26 Sep 2024Updated: 11:10am, 27 Sep 2024

Sun Ninghui, one of China’s leading computer scientists, has taken a rare swipe at Chinese technology giant Huawei, indicating an emerging rift between China’s academic community and its industry.

In a video clip posted on video-sharing service Bilibili on Sunday night, Sun criticised Huawei’s development model as too closed and monopolistic, saying the company’s control of the industrial chain would not help China to defeat the United States in their ongoing tech war.

“From chip manufacturing to software to large AI model to computing power network, it’s best for everyone else not to participate, and [Huawei] will take over everything,” he said, implying that Huawei dominated the technological chain in China.

“I think we are using this kind of Chinese-style closure and monopoly to fight Western-style monopoly and containment, which we certainly can’t win.”

02:53

Huawei’s Mate XT trifold smartphone sparks frenzy, prompting sky-high resale prices

It was not clear when or where Sun gave the speech.