Blacklisted by US, Huawei Secretly Funds Harvard IDR 16 Billion per Year

JAKARTA – Chinese telecommunications giant, Huawei secretly funding cutting-edge research at America’s leading universities despite being blacklisted by the US Government.

Based on a Bloomberg report, Huawei is using an independent foundation based in Washington DC to give millions of dollars to universities including Harvard since 2022. Huawei was blacklisted by the US because of concerns that the company was linked to the Chinese Communist Party and that its technology could be used by Xi Jinping as a spy tool. to advance his anti-US agenda.

However, Huawei-funded research competitions have attracted hundreds of professors at leading US universities such as Harvard. The competition is overseen by the Optica Foundation, a non-profit organization focused on communications, biomedical diagnostics and lasers.

According to dailymail, Huawei’s Chief Optical Standards Expert, Xiang Liu, is part of the competition selection committee which consists of 10 people. In documents seen by Bloomberg, the foundation stated that it was not required to name Huawei as a funding source or program sponsor of the competition.

In addition, the document stating the existence and content of this Agreement as well as the relationship between the parties will also be considered confidential information. Several applicants and university officials told Bloomberg they were unaware that Huawei was behind the program, which provides funding of $1 million or IDR 16 billion per year.

(nng)