16. Mike Pompeo: Chinese companies do not answer to independent boards, and many of them are state-owned and have no need to pursue profits. A good example is Huawei.

False.

Fact check: The fourth national economic census of China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) indicated that by the end of 2018, there were 15.61 million private companies in the country, up 178.6 percent from the end of 2013, and 84.1 percent of total enterprises were private ones, up 68.3 percent. The number of state-controlled enterprises were about 242,000, accounting for only 1.3 percent of total enterprises.

-- Creating wealth and profits are the natural pursuit and the most important functions of businesses. NBS statistics revealed the following profits made by China's major industrial enterprises (with an annual business turnover of at least 20 million yuan each) in 2019: 1.64 trillion yuan by state-controlled enterprises, 4.53 trillion yuan by joint-equity enterprises, 1.56 trillion yuan by foreign as well as Hong Kong-, Macao- and Taiwan-invested enterprises, and 1.82 trillion yuan by private enterprises.

-- In China's economic system, the private sector contributes to over 50 percent of tax revenue, over 60 percent of GDP, over 70 percent of technological innovation, and over 80 percent of urban employment, and accounts for over 90 percent of the number of enterprises.

-- Huawei is a leading private enterprise, and 100 percent employee-owned. The Chinese government has no shares in Huawei, which adopts an employee shareholding scheme involving 104,572 people through its trade union. Only Huawei employees are eligible to participate, and no government departments or organizations have any shares in Huawei.