Huawei's founder Ren Zhengfei meets the media in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province, on Tuesday Photo: Courtesy of Huawei

Huawei, the world's 5G technology leader, will not be "beaten to death" by the US government despite Washington's current efforts to blacklist and suffocate the Chinese high-technology company, said Ren Zhengfei, Huawei's founder and chief executive officer. 

The Shenzhen-based company is likely to witness its growth momentum slow in the next two years, with sales in 2019 and 2020 to hover around $100 billion, compared with $130 billion in 2018, Ren told a panel discussion in Shenzhen, which was live-streamed on Monday. 

Under strict bans imposed by the Trump administration, many US chip producers and software companies like Google have cut off supplies to Huawei, which will hurt Huawei's device sales, market analysts said.

Meanwhile, industry representatives hinted that the company will soon unveil a new chipset while welcoming more app developers to its own Android platform, as part of its resistance against US sanctions. 

However, Ren told the panel discussion with two renowned American thinkers in Shenzhen, the headquarters of Huawei, that the "restrictive measures of the US government will not be a big hindrance in our way." 

US companies have business integrity and ethics, and in the past 30 years, Huawei has been dependent upon and supported by its American partners, Ren said. He admitted that it was beyond his imagination that the US government would be "so determined to cripple" his company that Washington would go too far to take "such extreme and wide-ranging measures" to achieve its goal of strangling Huawei. 

Major US technology companies including Intel and Qualcomm are now lobbying US policymakers to ease the ban on sales to Huawei, Reuters reported on Monday, citing unidentified sources. 

Huawei will see its output cut by about 30 percent in the next two years, or about $30 billion, the founder said. "We'll see some switchovers in the next two years, and it will take time to see how it is working out."

The company has not been waiting passively for the Trump administration to lift the ban, Ren said. Besides working on core technologies like self-developed high-end chipsets, Huawei has also been actively testing its homegrown operating system (OS) called HongMeng OS. 

Meanwhile, Huawei has sent requests to developers to publish their apps on its own app store, and some insiders see the move as part of the preparations for the launch of HongMeng OS, according to media reports. 

Huawei's chip arm HiSilicon will soon launch a new type of processor, Kirin 810, which will also be included in the upcoming Nova 5 device, which is scheduled for release on Friday. 

The 7-nanometer chipset will largely be an upgrade from the previous Kirin 710 by working with TSMC, which will be enhanced in both the CPU and GPU designs, a source close to the matter confirmed to the Global Times on Monday. 

"This shows that Huawei and TSMC are working as normal and are not affected by the US ban," an industry insider surnamed Liu told the Global Times. 

Some media reports suggested on Monday that Huawei is preparing for a 40 to 60 percent fall in overseas smartphone shipments following the US government ban. "Our phone shipments to the international market are likely to drop by 40 percent, but we will see very robust growth in the Chinese home market," Ren said to the panel. "The future is all about cooperation," he added. 

Chinese internet users applauded Ren's remarks on Monday, as some see him as a national hero when facing the US crackdown. "Ren's remarks showed that a good conscience is a soft pillow, he is respected from a global perspective," a blogger with the pseudonym of Yangyouzoudiule said. 

"We don't consider him a national hero. He's said he isn't one. But he is a true entrepreneur, a responsible one," the blogger said.