On Friday, May 15th, the US commerce department said it would amend last year’s blacklisting to stop Huawei and its affiliates from buying computer chips that had been made or designed with US equipment. Any company that wishes to manufacture computer chips to Huawei’s designs with US tools now needs to apply for a licence.

“Huawei is undertaking a comprehensive examination of this new rule. We expect that our business will inevitably be affected. We will try all we can to seek a solution. We hope that our customers and suppliers will continue to stand with us and minimize the impact of this discriminatory rule,” said Huawei’s Rotating Chairman, Guo Ping, while delivering his keynote speech at the 17th annual Global Analyst Summit.in Shenzhen, both onsite and online.

Ping was addressing over 2,000 analysts, key opinion leaders, and media representatives from a range of industries, including telecoms, the Internet, and finance.

According to Ping, “ICT infrastructure is the foundation of the intelligent world. By 2025, the digital economy will represent an industry worth 23 trillion US dollars. The ICT industry still has great potential.”

However, Huawei is grappling with the US ban and over the past year, many technologies were not available to it even though it struggled to survive and is striving to move forward.

The ban is discriminatory as Huawei says it has remained committed to complying with all US government rules and regulations and fulfilled its contractual obligations to customers and suppliers, but the US government has blatantly ignored to reverse the ban.

“US actions against Huawei will not only harm Huawei, but also harm the experiences of customers and consumers that use Huawei’s products and services,” Ping said adding that everyone will be affected because Huawei has long been an active contributor to the ICT industry. In the past 30-plus years, the firm has deployed over 1,500 networks in more than 170 countries and regions, serving over 3 billion people worldwide. It also provides smart devices to 600 million consumers.

“This decision was arbitrary and pernicious, and threatens to undermine the entire industry worldwide. This new rule will impact the expansion, maintenance, and continuous operations of networks worth hundreds of billions of dollars that we have rolled out in more than 170 countries,” Ping said in his keynote.

The move is likely to impact communications services for the more than 3 billion people who use Huawei products and services worldwide. This decision by the US government does not just affect Huawei. It will have a serious impact on a wide number of global industries. In the long run, this will damage the trust and collaboration within the global semiconductor industry which many industries depend on, increasing conflict and loss within these industries.

Ping said the US is leveraging its own technological strengths to crush companies outside its own borders but the move will only serve to undermine the trust international companies place in US technology and supply chains. Ultimately, this will harm US interests.

“To attack a leading company from another country, the US government has intentionally turned its back on the interests of Huawei’s customers and consumers. This goes against the US government’s claim that it is motivated by network security,” he said.

Despite the ban, Huawei says it will continue investing and innovating in connectivity, computing, and smart devices and will work with customers, partners, standards organizations, and all other industry players in domains like supply chain, standards, and talent cultivation, to encourage open collaboration, promote inclusive industry development, and explore the future together.

The first Huawei Global Analyst Summit took place in 2004, and has been held annually ever since. This year’s summit runs from May 18 to 20, with a series of parallel sessions. Attendees include industry experts from around the world, who discuss and share their insights into industry trends, tech trends, and global collaboration.

There is a huge amount of nervousness that this is not just a tit-for-tat spat between the US and China, but is turning into a technological cold war