Sun Ninghui, one of China’s leading computer scientists, has taken a rare swipe at Chinese technology giant Huawei, indicating an emerging rift between China’s academic community and its industry.
In a video clip posted on video-sharing service Bilibili on Sunday night, Sun criticised Huawei’s development model as too closed and monopolistic, saying the company’s control of the industrial chain would not help China to defeat the United States in their ongoing tech war.
“From chip manufacturing to software to large AI model to computing power network, it’s best for everyone else not to participate, and [Huawei] will take over everything,” he said, implying that Huawei dominated the technological chain in China.
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“I think we are using this kind of Chinese-style closure and monopoly to fight Western-style monopoly and containment, which we certainly can’t win.”
It was not clear when or where Sun gave the speech.
Huawei did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
Sun is a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and president of the China Computer Federation, the largest community of computer scientists in China.
He focuses on computer architecture and high-performance computing in his work at the High Performance Computer Research Centre at the Institute of Computing Technology at CAS. The research centre is behind the development of the country’s Shuguang series of supercomputers under the Chinese government’s 863 programme. He is also an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
In a lecture on AI and intelligent computing to China’s top legislative body in April, he suggested that China should reduce dependence on US technology by coming up with its own innovations and diversifying its supply chains.
Sun’s concerns were echoed by an industry computer expert who asked not to be named. The expert said he believed the overwhelming dominance of one tech company was not conducive to building a healthy innovation ecosystem, citing Samsung’s absolute dominance of the industry in South Korea, which he said had stifled the country’s technological progress.
The expert said he was aware Huawei tended to have more advantages and preferential treatment than other bidders in competing for many government orders.
But a founder of a Chinese venture capital firm that focuses on investments in hi-tech start-ups, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said the problem was not as serious as Sun portrayed it.
The investor said China’s most urgent priority would be to innovate at the most acute choke points, a move requiring a few large companies with the ability to pool resources.
Once the breakthroughs were made, he said, it would not be too late to address issues such as resource monopolies and market share by the giants.
Others – including Xiang Ligang, a tech analyst and founder of Beijing-based telecoms information portal CCTime.com – suggest that Sun’s open criticism of Huawei is because of a conflict of interest.
In a video released on Monday on Douyin, the Chinese sister app of TikTok, Xiang said some scientists, represented by Sun, were “very depressed” and had “grievances against successful companies like Huawei” after the supercomputers they developed stopped taking part in world rankings. The video has since been deleted.
This was a “big blow” to scientists such as Sun, who had no way of proving the strength of their machines, said Xiang, who described these supercomputing systems as “incapable or weak” in terms of practical use and commercial value.
Xiang said that while concentrating the industry chain in one company was an inefficient strategy, Huawei might have to adopt it because it was being “choked” by others.
The US sanctions and China’s worsening relationship with the US in recent years have seen domestic supercomputing research institutions stop submitting data to the Top500 list, including information on supercomputing development and performance.
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Also in 2019, Huawei said it would invest an additional US$1.5 billion in incentives to expand its developer base from 1.3 million to 5 million to come up with the next generation of intelligent applications and solutions.
