Huawei founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei (pictured) insisted efforts by the US government to stifle its business won’t succeed, noting it can overcome short term difficulties by scaling-back operations and shifting its investment priorities, BBC News reported.

In an interview, Ren stated there is “no way the US can crush us,” adding “America only represents a portion of the world”.

The US government recently took steps to push the Chinese vendor out of the market due to security concerns and applied pressure to its allies to do the same.

Ren, who recently stepped back into the limelight to defend the company after not giving interviews for years, reiterated Huawei does not pose a threat and said he would “shut the company down” if any spying activity took place.

Ren argued countries cannot entirely abandon Huawei because “we’re more advanced” than the competition. He again explained the company could scale-down operations to adapt to any US ban, adding it also has the option to shift its investments to better serve countries which allow it to participate in the market.

Huawei enjoyed some respite in the past fortnight, with Turkcell CEO Kaan Terzioglu publicly backing the vendor and the UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) stating a ban is not the only option for the country.

Reports of a ban in New Zealand could also have been overplayed, with the country’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern stating no final decision had been taken on a request by operator Spark to deploy Huawei 5G kit.