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Opinion | Spurned by the West, Huawei should nurture research in Chinese universities instead
- The tech giant should plant the seeds of research collaboration with Chinese institutions, even if they are less renowned than their counterparts in the West, and take the opportunity to improve the transparency of its guidelines
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Early this month, MIT became the latest leading Western academic institution to say it would cut future research collaboration with Huawei. It is all but certain that until Huawei resolves its legal disputes with the US government, the Huawei Innovation Research Programme, which offers funding and collaboration opportunities for research, will come under increasing pressure despite the Chinese tech company’s attempts to trumpet its value to society.
Huawei should take advantage of this challenging time to retool its model of partnerships, switch its geographic focus and reframe best practices.
The importance of university collaboration for Huawei cannot be overstated. Meng Wanzhou, who is fighting extradition to the US over allegations of banking fraud to skirt Iran sanctions, made her first public statement after her arrest in Vancouver in an article published by Nikkei Asian Review on January 24, titled “Why Huawei values collaboration with universities”.
The article, adapted from a speech Meng gave at the World Academic Summit in Singapore last September, reveals that Huawei has provided funds to most of the top 100 universities around the world. Meng compares the innovation research programme to a “virtual coffee shop”, created for employees to “absorb the energy of the universe over a cup of coffee”, through the exchange of ideas with universities and research institutes around the world.
Eric Xu, a rotating chairman of Huawei, wrote in the Financial Times in July last year that such partnerships bear fruit that benefits the public, while supporting academic freedom, a cornerstone of US academic success.
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