Tech executives call for greater bilateral trust

Senior tech executives on Friday called for an open, cooperative and win-win approach to embrace 5G technologies while underlining the fact more efforts are needed to build trust between China and the United States.

Li Zixue, the chairman of ZTE Corp, a major Chinese telecom equipment maker, said at a panel discussion of the New Economy Forum in Beijing that 5G technologies will reshape a wide range of sectors and bring changes to global telecom supply chains.

"Only with an open mindset and building our core competence in an open environment, we can survive the fierce competition," Li said. At such a critical period, it is of utmost importance to entertain an open attitude.

His views were echoed by Sanjay Mehrotra, president and CEO of US memory chip heavyweight Micron Technology Inc. The senior executive said 5G is not just about one country. Instead, it will be ubiquitous.

For the whole semiconductor industry, it is important to fully get the benefits of scale. Both China and the US are important markets, and more cooperation is needed, Mehrotra said.

At the forum, Gary Dickerson, president and CEO of Applied Materials, a US tech giant that provides semiconductor materials engineering solutions, also highlighted that firms and countries that grow the fastest are those that cooperate with others the most.

No companies or countries can build their own ecosystem just by themselves and he does not see that happening in five or 10 years, Dickerson explained.

Lenovo Group chairman and CEO Yang Yuanqing said US-China technology and supply chain decoupling will hurt the interests of the two countries and is not feasible.

"Technology should serve all the people around the world. It is not only a moral thing, but also in accordance with the laws of economics," said Yang, while noting that openness and sharing of technological innovation will remain the direction of the industry going forward.

"Lenovo has always adhered to the strategy of combining 'globalization' with 'localization' on its path of international development ...We respect local users and comply with local laws and regulations when we do businesses," Yang said.

Jerry Yang, the founding partner of AME Cloud Ventures and co-founder of Yahoo, said China-US tech decoupling will challenge core innovative capacities.

China and the US need to carry out cooperation in the field of innovation and build a certain degree of mutual trust in a bid to benefit the people of the two countries, he added.