Huawei reportedly set to salvage honor with sale of server x86 business

Huawei is reportedly poised to offload its x86 server business after US sanctions left it unable to buy the silicon it needs to build boxes, according to Bloomberg. Negotiations with possible buyers continue, with the newswire reporting that the purchaser is a consortium including a government-backed buyer who has asked not to …

[Andy The Hat]

Just an opinion

I believe that Huawei will use their massive Chinese (and non sanctioned trading partners) to actually build their r&d and product base, increase self reliance and thus become more dominant in the world. I think that the US sanctions based to a large extent on protectinism will come to bite the US-centric world hard in a few years time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Just an opinion

I agree. Sanctions basically don't work. The longest surviving authoritarian governments (North Korea, Iran & Cuba) still survive today after decades of sanctions in large part due to sanctions helping their governments keep the populations isolated from the rest of the world.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Just an opinion

Not to mention sanction busting support from like minded countries including Russia and China.

[martinusher]

Re: Just an opinion

The purpose of sanctions is to drive the target country's economy downwards. Its one of the tools of economic warfare, its goal is to make like so miserable for people living in target countries that they'll welcome a replacement government, one more amenable to Western interests. We actually spend quite a bit of money stirring up trouble in these target societies and, of course, we're game for any national liberation movement we can find or create.

Another plank in this process is encouraging emigration, especially of qualified people. (We normally use terms like 'defecting'.) This has come back to bite us because by selectively encouraging emigration we've also encouraged mass emigration of people displaced by economic hardship, war and so on.

Incidentally, how would you describe a government like Saudi Arabia's?

[willyslick]

Re: Just an opinion

What about the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989? - don't you think that the high technology embargo of the west towards the eastern bloc countries imperiled their economies and contributed to the opening towards the west?

Seems to me to be an example where sanctions in fact did work - not that I support them in general.

[steviebuk]

Re: Just an opinion

I doubt it. Look at the history of them and they've pretty much copied most of their tech.

[Roland6]

Re: Just an opinion

That was also part of the doctrine of the Nixon era, getting China to use US technology rather than home grown or Russian technology. Trump has given China a big incentive to not be dependent upon US technology. The concern here is that in a few years China will be exporting products that contain that technology to the USA etc.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Just an opinion

"...build their r&d and product base, increase self reliance..."

This has been their long term goal for a couple of decades at least. The US sanctions have simply accelerated the plan. The Chinese have always worked with a long term view. They don't work to a short term, 4 year plan based on election cycles and popularity.

[elsergiovolador]

Theatre

A CPC department, sorry "a company" switches hands from one apparatchik to another.

These pen pushers like to pretend they actually work...

[willyslick]

Economic warfare (which is what the sanctions against Huawei are) is an instrument of political warfare- this worked in the past with tech embargoes to the eastern bloc countries and Russia. But China in the here and now is a different story - there are technology areas they lead in, such as mobile infrastructure, which they can leverage in such a conflict - in the end the consumers will pay the price in the form of slower adoption and higher prices to achieve these political aims.

Are such embargoes preferable to fostering economic interdependence as a way to reduce military conflicts? Perhaps, but that requires trust between the political blocs - something in short supply at this point in time.