By Kit Holstein
April 2, 2026

This edited talk was given during the launch of the book “China Changes Everything” held at the SHAPE (Self Help for African People Everywhere) Center in Houston and online on March 28, 2026. Go to youtu.be/D3RRYJD0wQU to view the entire program.

Huawei is a Chinese technology company, their equivalent to U.S. companies such as Apple. It makes phones, computers and similar instruments that are fast, reliable and cheaper than ones from other companies. They are used in China and throughout the Global South.

However, in the U.S. and most Global North countries, you cannot purchase any Huawei technology. This is because it is banned. Not only has the United States government banned it, but it has pressured many other countries to do the same.

In the university cybersecurity class I am taking, we are assigned papers about how Huawei is dangerous, suggesting that Huawei’s expansion around the globe proves that China does not really care about the sovereignty of other nations. According to this argument, the mere presence of Huawei infrastructure in another country is a threat to other countries’ sovereignty, because Huawei ultimately answers to the Chinese state.

I am here to challenge this way of thinking. Of course, Huawei has ties to the Chinese state; China is a socialist country, so the biggest companies have to be subservient to the state rather than independent of it. It’s the opposite of how it is in the U.S., where the state exists primarily to serve corporate interests. According to the imperialist arguments, that makes any company from China a threat to other countries’ sovereignty if its products threaten U.S. dominance in cyberspace. This is awfully convenient for U.S. corporations.

Essentially, this argument rests on the assumption that private companies are inherently more trustworthy than states, especially socialist states. That is why the U.S. considers Huawei a threat to international users’ data in ways that other companies are not.

U.S.-based corporations maximize profits

I think this argument is nonsense. Just because U.S.-based CEOs aren’t directly tied to a state doesn’t mean that they care about their consumers’ privacy and data rights. All they care about is making a profit, and in this day and age, what that means is that they sell their customers’ data to the highest bidder.

Now we have seen that the compromising of customer privacy includes not only private companies but the government as well. Many firms have been selling their customers’ data to extremely controversial government agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). If they are willing to sell out users from within their own borders, it goes without saying that they would just as easily sell out users residing in other nations, if the U.S. government paid enough for their data.

And of course, the revelations made in 2013 by whistleblower Edward Snowden make it clear that in many cases the U.S. corporations turn over data for free as well.

One of the authors I read even admitted that there is no proof that Huawei has in any way acted against other nations’ sovereignty nor violated the trust of its international users. He could only argue that if the Chinese government required it to, then it would do so. If this is enough to merit bans and sanctions, what can we say about these U.S. companies which shared their users’ data without being required to by law?

The U.S. government remains convinced that U.S.-based companies can get away with doing the exact same things it accuses China of doing as an excuse for bans and sanctions (always to its own benefit). However, it’s not an accident that in the current moment, more and more countries are turning away from the U.S. and moving towards China.

Even longtime U.S. allies like Canada are realizing that working more with China and less with the U.S. is the safer choice. As much as the U.S. tries to paint China as the aggressor and itself as the savior, that narrative isn’t believable anymore.