In an interview Wednesday with Fox Business network, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Huawei's ties to the Communist Party of China (CPC) pose the biggest threat to the US economy and national security. Pompeo is trying to stoke public outrage in the US over the Huawei issue. Washington's "target campaign" of Chinese high-tech companies has exacerbated the Sino-US conflict, turning it into a deeper crisis between the two countries, far beyond the rumblings of a trade war.

No country in the world sees Huawei as the "greatest threat" to their national security because it is a technology giant that grew up in CPC-led China. Those countries are much less capable of keeping themselves secure than Washington, but most use Huawei equipment, and in their own ways eliminate the risks they fear.

Not only has the US banned the use of Huawei equipment, it is also trying to mobilize allies to exclude it from 5G networks and further suppress the corporation by blacklisting it. In any case, this is not about "national security" in the usual sense. The "biggest threat" that Pompeo said was an unfounded and crude label.

The only explanation is that Washington does not want a Chinese company that is far ahead of US and Western companies in key communication technologies. Groundless speculation about Huawei's special ties with the Chinese government is only a subterfuge for the US to choke Huawei.

It is impossible for all national enterprises, especially the large ones, to have zero relations with the government. The US government orders companies to sever supplies to Huawei. Those companies are capitulating to the US government and undermining their commercial contracts with Huawei. Is this independence? ? American package delivery company FedEx has raised hackles by diverting Huawei packages addressed to the Chinese mainland to the US. Could the world make the conclusion that FedEx is a partner of America's intelligence community?

The US has done everything it can to crack down on Huawei and the latest example is the New York-based International Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), which has barred Huawei staff from editing or reviewing articles for its magazines. The US is acting brazenly, like an authoritarian country, on the Huawei issue. 

The IEEE has lost its character as a scientific civil society group in succumbing to an egregious form of American national interest. How easy it is for US-dominated scientific profession to abandon academic principles in favor of politics. This is a wake-up call to the Chinese public which has always believed that Western scientists generally follow the principle of "science without borders."

Huawei is already a mirror of the US. It shines the spotlight on some negative national traits emerging in the US. Clear-headed Americans will understand: the mirror shows a different America from the one they take pride in.