http://www.wirelessweek.com/News/2011/02/Huawei-Reputation-US-Failed-3Leaf-Deal-Business/
Doing business with China and in China is a tightrope and a challenge. Since the early to mid-1990s (nearly 17 years now), it has been a nightmare for nearly every foreign company that has done business in China.
The open secret about doing business in China is: It’s their country, their rules, and you pay a lot of people a lot of fees and surcharges. Sometimes, the government tells you to select a Chinese partner and they tell you which one. It is the cost of doing business in a massive marketplace.
The mere fact that this has become a news story now, is what is surprising to me. Main stream media is so late so often it is not even slightly amusing. Not surprising is that Huawei is playing dumb. I have said this for years, China is the 8,000 pound gorilla in the global marketplace. Everyone knows the country is throwing its weight around; testing the waters. Think about this one: about 3 years ago, Wall Street analysts were thumbing their noses at Huawei; assigning them no importance. Today, Huawei is a force to be reckoned with. Huawei is not the only China-based company that is doing business globally. Bear in mind, any China-based company that is doing business globally is backed by the Chinese government. That being said the whole matter of Huawei defending its reputation is really about China defending its reputation.
Despite protests from other nations regarding patent infringement and intellectual property theft, nothing has changed. Every company has to pay high fees to everyone else in China. Every major company on the planet wants to do business in China.
China has cash and despite public protests, China will eventually find a way of doing business in the USA. Let us face facts, they have cash and we want it. They have a huge marketplace and we want to do business in it. The keys to doing business in China are understanding “that nearly everything can be negotiated”, “China loves to see how far they can push”, and “China plans are long-term not short-term.” The only way to understand how to do business in China is to understand that everything is planned from a long-term perspective.
Will Huawei prevail? Eventually.
The next question now is: How smart are we and other nations in setting our respective expectations?
This is a balancing act between national security interests and economic needs.
As an aside, China and other nations, like India, are a global economic force. In the next year, we will likely see a major telecom technological shift to China and India. It will feel like the late 1970s and 1980s when Japan was one of the major technological leaders in the world.