"The world cannot leave us, because we are more advanced," #Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei said in an interview with the BBC. "If the lights go out in the West, the East will still shine. And if the North goes dark, there is still the South. America doesn't represent the world."

Peace can only be achieved when you have comparable strength with the strong, and it can never be achieved through praying for mercy, said Chinese tech giant Huawei's founder Ren Zhengfei, amid intensified US crackdown on the firm and deteriorating China-US ties.

The remarks were made during Ren's tour to China's top universities including Tsinghua University and Peking University, where he made a speech themed "up high into the sky, down deep into root," and called for more attention to basic science and diversified education to build up the "root" of China's economy amid the US' tech decoupling pressure.

"China's total economic output is quite big, thus the root also has to be strong," Ren said, adding that "the fast economic development model is not sustainable, and China's basic infrastructure is still not strong, not to mention some high technologies which our country cannot develop."

Science is the knowledge of objective laws. There is only one truth, and no such thing as Eastern science and Western science, Ren said, noting that "we must stand on the shoulders of our predecessors and touch the God's feet. We must insist on learning from all advanced countries, so closing the door will not help and will only take us back to backwardness.

Ren further added that the difficulty Huawei encounters today is because domestic basic industry is not able to produce the advanced chip it designed. 

"China's scientific research situation today is very similar to that of the US before World War II. In the 50 years before World War II, although the US industry had led the world, it was full of utilitarianism in scientific research. It did not attach importance to basic research and basic education, relying heavily on the basic research results of Europe and developing industries rapidly, the businessman said.

The history of science and technology development in the US is a mirror, and we should use it to reflect on the systematic and scientific nature of China's science and technology development strategy, Ren added.