Huawei rejects accusations of 'paranoia' during press tour

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/10/huawei-rejects-paranoia-accusation

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Huawei has rejected accusations of “paranoia and secrecy” after a PR staffer told a group of journalists on a government-organised tour in Shanghai that they could not mention the Chinese electronics company in their reporting from the day.

The group, which included the Australian Financial Review’s Angus Grigg, had been invited to Huawei’s Shanghai development campus as part of a tour of Chinese science and technology firms arranged by the government for foreign and local journalists.

The tour should have been an opportunity for Huawei to win round sometimes-hostile technology journalists, who have spent many years interrogating the company over reports that its close ties with the Chinese government pose a security threat to other nations.

Huawei has always denied these reports, with the company’s deputy chairman writing in October 2013 that it has “never received any instructions or requests from any government or their agencies to change our positions, policies, procedures, hardware, software or employment practices or anything else, other than suggestions to improve our end-to-end cybersecurity capability”.

And in March, the UK government gave Huawei its seal of approval, after the firm launched a cybersecurity centre in Banbury, Oxfordshire. The Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre “fulfilled its obligations to provide assurance that any risks to UK national security from Huawei’s involvement in the UK’s critical networks have been sufficiently mitigated”, the government’s oversight board reported.

However, in last week’s tour around the research campus, Grigg reported that attempts to press Huawei on the issue were met with resistance. “As soon as the question was asked a PR person swooped in and said there would be no comment on this issue.

Then the 30-odd foreign and local reporters were told “Huawei’s name and that of our technology-savvy tour guide, Mr Hu, could not be mentioned in any reporting from the day”, Grigg wrote.

Grigg added that the reporters were ordered to “not write anything about Huawei in your reports”. When it was pointed out that Huawei had invited the media, they were told “we didn’t invite you … it was the government that invited you and now you should leave”.

For its part, Huawei told the Guardian that it is happy to discuss issues of cybersecurity, and that the responses by the member of the PR team did not reflect the company’s position.

A spokesman said: “Huawei strives to be open and transparent on all aspects of our business, including our position on cyber-security.

“Huawei is happy to answer any questions on cybersecurity and has actively published two white papers, launched the industry’s first list of cybersecurity requirements for selecting ICT vendors, and spoken on this topic at multiple events in the last two years alone.”