Huawei’s founder said the company has replaced more than 13,000 parts in its products that were hit by US trade sanctions, according to a transcript of the speech posted Friday by a Chinese university.

Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei said Huawei had replaced 13,000 components with domestic Chinese alternatives and redesigned 4,000 circuit boards for its products over the past three years, according to a transcript posted by Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Was. He added that circuit board production had “stabilised”.

The remarks, which Reuters could not independently verify, provided a window into Huawei’s efforts to bounce back from US trade sanctions. Since 2019, Huawei, a major supplier of equipment used in 5G telecommunications networks, has been the target of successive rounds of US export controls.

Those controls cut off both Huawei’s supply of chips from US companies and access to US technology tools to design its own chips and those built by partners. The Biden administration last year also banned the sale of new Huawei devices in the US.

The university said Ren made the comments during an interaction with Chinese technology experts on February 24. The university posted the transcript on its website on Friday. A US-based Huawei representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.

Ren said Huawei will invest $23.8 billion (roughly Rs. 1,96,425 crores) in R&D in 2022, and “we will continue to increase R&D spending as our profitability improves.”

The report comes after analysts said Huawei showed 5G telecom equipment at an industry conference in Barcelona that obscured the origins of all the chips on its circuit boards.

© Thomson Reuters 2023