(Zdnet, York PA, 26 December 2019) Huawei Technologies has lashed out at a Wall Street Journal report that suggests the tech giant’s success is fuelled by billions of dollars in financial support from the Chinese government, arguing that its ties are no different from any other “private company” that operates in China. The WSJ article noted that besides subsidies, Huawei since 1998 has received an estimated $16 billion in loans, export credits, and other forms of financing from Chinese banks for itself or its customers. But the WSJ also notes that Huawei’s largest American competitor, Cisco Systems, received $44.5 billion in state and federal subsidies, loans, guarantees, grants and other U.S. assistance since 2000. Further, it notes that Swedish export authorities provided some $10 billion in credit assistance for Sweden’s tech-and-telecom sector as of 2018 and that Finland authorized $30 billion in annual export credit guarantees economywide from 2017. A 2005 study by the UK Secretary of State for Trade and Industry showed that the “opportunity cost” of UK export credits, i.e. government “subsidies”, was around US$271 million per annum. This dispute highlights the well known fact that Chinese and official OECD member export credit agency budgets are subsidies which violate the WTO’s Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures. The OECD ECA Arrangement creates a WTO loop-hole for OECD ECA subsidies if they meet the OECD’s poorly monitored and largely secretive OECD ECA self-monitoring. The Arrangement is a self-professed “Gentlemen’s Agreement” designed to restrict a race to the bottom in export subsidies, but is flawed by a lack of transparency. So yes, the Chinese subsidize Huawei just as OECD ECAs subsidize their own exporters. The difference is the US claim of internet security concerns wrt Huawei in their efforts to retain economic superiority in global markets. Google and Facebook’s violations of internet privacy and security don’t seem to rate the same US concerns.