The difference of course is that we implicitly trust US tech companies, of course we do, nobody else has such a monopoly on CPUs and Operating System production. Not to mention web browsers and all kinds of technology. Avoiding the USA in your tech stack is quite literally impossible.

And we permit the US government (by extension the NSA and 5eyes) to do what ever they want to us without fear of repercussion because what course of action could we take? As long as we are not a US citizen we have literally zero protections.

it’s to the point that my EU based company is applying US sanctions (to Crimea for instance, where no EU sanction covers telecommunications) because we would fall out of line in many of our contracts from US tech companies.

It is clearly a double standard. But the answer is to hold the US to account. Not bring more of this hostile crap in.

The Chinese company is most likely right. But if you are a national carrier, do you then buy the product with the Chinese backdoors?

The only defense that wouldn’t kill their sales would be arguing for the opposite, that backdoors undermine the trust of their customers, and that they have the same incentive as Google, Apple or Cisco to push back on those requests.

There will never be a Snowden in China. You can guarantee their life, or their love one's life will be held hostage.

So not only does the "West" ( So to speak ) has a system in place protecting these people, they also have a system to vote them out and elect a new form of government should the ultimate worst come to play.

What can you do with the CCP?

The fight then ends up being a squabble over power and who should have it. The US government is only saying what it says because it simply wants more power in its hands—nothing more. Same goes for the China side, although they're just trying to sell something. There's no way China can win this argument since it's just about power (unless they bend over).

This just won't fly for anyone concerned with the ethical issues. The point is not that Huawei should get away with anything but no one should. This not only makes a mockery of concern with surveillance but also exposes globalization and free markets as self serving political tools.

Huawei is a perfect example of how ethical issues are hijacked by vested interests with zero interest in the ethics to encourage an empty culture of jingoistic finger pointing that serve to distract and deny while advancing their own financial interests at the cost of everyone else.

The scale of state crimes are vastly different here.

The reason there will be no Snowden in China is primarily that China doesn't hide its spying, and secondarily becaue China does not maintain the pretense of moral superiority on international scale. Snowden-type leak from China would not change the way Chinese citizens perceive their government, and nobody else would care, much less exert outside pressure to change things.

Leaks and whistleblowers will happen, though - they do happen even in most oppressive of regimes.

(Also excuse me, but I don't believe US wouldn't try to exert pressure on you through your loved ones in a case like this.)

For an accusation like that you should always provide substantiated evidence, otherwise you're just flaming the anti-Chinese racial flames. Because as terrible as you may think the Chinese government is, it still has the legitimacy and support of a vast majority of the Chinese population.

Has anything changed after Snowden revelations? New form of government?

Insane diplomatic incident.

You are right, USA wouldn't kill him if captured. They would only psychologically torture him for years, like they did with Manning.

Snowden would have been in a US jail if Russia hadn't found him to be a useful symbol of US hypocrisy. Snowden originally went to HK but the authorities were ready to extradite him, as were most countries that didn't want the US breathing down their necks.