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David Dou Yong, Huawei's chief executive in Chile, told Reuters
the company was eagerly following the public tender process
initiated by Chile in July and would participate when bids were
invited for the trans-Pacific construction.
"Huawei will be very actively participating in this business
opportunity," he said in an interview.
"This bidding process has several steps ... We are ready and we
will follow the process until the bid to select a vendor to
implement it starts and for sure we will be part of the tender
process."
His comments came two months after another Chinese telecoms
firm, Hengtong Optic-Electric Co Ltd, said in a filing with the
Shanghai Stock Exchange that it had signed a letter of intent
with Huawei to buy its 51% stake in Huawei Marine Systems Co
Ltd, the company's submarine cable business, via cash and share
issuance. [L4N23A10Y]
The move would represent Huawei's first major asset sale since
the United States ratcheted up accusations the Chinese firm is a
vehicle for espionage, raising doubts about undersea cable
construction projects Huawei has interests in around the world.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration effectively
blacklisted Huawei in mid-May, alleging it was involved in
activities that compromise U.S. national security, a charge the
company has denied.
Asked for clarification about the reported sale of the submarine
cable business and its implications, the company's head of
public affairs Weiqiang Zou said the deal was not confirmed.
"This is something that came out a few months ago but it is not
confirmed and there is no final decision," he said.
On Wednesday Huawei launched a data center with locally-hosted
cloud storage services in Santiago, an investment of more than
$100 million.
Huawei has lobbied the Chilean government to store its data in
the cloud.
Documents reviewed by Reuters show that in the past three years,
senior Huawei executives have held dozens of meetings with city
mayors and government ministers and officials from the Chilean
police, its central bank, its tax authority, its army, the state
development agency and the ministries of mining, health,
economy, transport, energy and interior to lobby for cloud
computing and facial recognition software technology.
Dou Yong told Reuters there were no agreements in place with
government yet but that Huawei would keep pressing for state
business.
"We look on Chile as the benchmark for the whole of Latin
America," he said.
(Writing by Aislinn Laing; Editing by Tom Brown)
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