Editorial,

Google’s suspension of business with Huawei, which it announced on the weekend, is not a surprise after Washington’s blacklisting of the Chinese telecommunications equipment maker on Wednesday.

But — and no doubt to the relief of those that have been happy to use Huawei’s products and do business with it — having seen what happened to another Chinese company ZTE, the telecom giant has prepared itself for an attack by the United States and has implemented a contingency plan.

That explains why Ren Zhengfei, founder and also chief executive officer of Huawei, said in an interview with Japanese journalist on Saturday that his company will not have any problem even if US companies stop providing it with components. What is even more noteworthy is that Ren said Huawei will never manufacture equipment for 5G telecom networks in the US even if his company is invited to do so.

“It is too risky to do business in the United States which has repeatedly issued policies to threaten its trading partners,” Ren said, adding that Huawei has done nothing wrong and illegal. It is true that Huawei may meet some difficulties. And as Ren said, his company’s development will slow down a little bit.

But by accusing Huawei of espionage without evidence and using the groundless excuse to exclude the Chinese company from the US market and even persuade its allies not to do business with Huawei, Washington is showing it has no qualms about using dirty tricks to try and crush China’s 5G leader.

It is not the first time that the US government has told lies for political reasons. In order to launch a war against Iraq, it told the international community that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. That was a lie.

It claims to be a supporter of free trade, but as its protectionism and rules bending/breaking show, that too is a lie.

It has never been one for keeping its words, and its withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change and from the multilateral Iran nuclear deal continue its tradition of agreeing to one thing and then doing another.

With its treatment of Huawei, the US government has revealed all its ugliness in its dealings with other countries: Its despotism as the world’s sole superpower without any respect for rules, its haughtiness and lack of respect for the dignity of its trade partners, its condescending attitude toward the rest of the world and its outright selfishness and unwillingness to accept that it is a member of a wider community.

It seems as if the US takes it for granted that it has the absolute say over everything in its dealings with the rest of the world, which has to take whatever the US dishes out no matter how arbitrary and despotic that is. But China will not take it and neither will Huawei.