A paper on Huawei’s links to the Chinese military

“Huawei Technologies’ Links to Chinese State Security Services” is the title of a new paper by Christoper Balding, a professor of economics and finance who used to teach in China, and contributes to Bloomberg.

Balding says the study is based on a “unique dataset of CVs that leaked from unsecure Chinese recruitment databases and websites and emerged online in 2018,” and shows close ties between Huawei and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

However, several scholars have called attention to what they describe as sloppy methodology behind the study: See, for example, China scholars Jeremy Daum and Mike Gow, who tweeted:

There are no quotes from the CVs, no list of appointments, no list of institutions. We are left with a paper which presents zero data, yet makes claims and generalizations based on inferences drawn from a miniscule sample.

https://twitter.com/mikeygow/status/1147688668720766976

Balding tweeted this defense of his paper:

Excuse my mini rant before I go dark for a while, which after the names and bad faith arguments put forth about my work primarily by people in the academy. So let's review. How many hours journalists and policy makers have asked to have access to the data? Lots. How many 1/n

— Blue Check Balding 大老板 (@BaldingsWorld) July 7, 2019