MORRISVILLE – Lenovo, which is fighting to restore growth on multiple fronts from smartphones to servers and PCs and could be dragged into a looming trade war between China and the U.S., now is engaged in a bruising political battle across its homeland of China.

Liu Chuanzhi

Lenovo’s founder and chair of Lenovo parent legend holdings along with Lenovo chair and CEO Yang Yuanqing denied that it was unpatriotic – some have said the firm is a traitor – for voting against a Chines firm over next-generation 5G standards in 2016.

Liu Chuanzhi acknowledged, however, that the criticism has hurt.

“Recently there have been a few ‘vicious’ articles making the rounds that have accused Lenovo of ‘selling out China,’” Liu wrote. “Such accusations are snowballing and have seriously dented our reputation.”

Liu called the allegations against Lenovo as “slander.”

Chines media are following the unfolding story closely.

“Since May 10, posts have been circulating via Quora-like site zhihu.com, alleging that Lenovo did not support a Huawei Technologies Co-led coding scheme called Polar during 5G standard setting meetings held by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), a global telecommunications standards body, in 2016.,” reads one report.

“Some went so far as to call Lenovo a traitor.”

With China-based ZTE Corp. on the brink of shutdown after being hit with sanctions by the U.S. government due to selling US goods in Iran and the ongoing dispute over trade before the two countries, Lenovo is caught right in the middle.

The firm operates dual headquarters – one in Morrisville, the other in Beijing – and its server operations are based in RTP.

Lenovo itself has faced difficulties in the US over security issues.

To add to its woes, the giant will be dropped from Hong Kong’s premier stock index in June.

One China media outlet, quoting from Liu’s letter, pointed out:

“Liu said Lenovo initially voiced support for the U.S.-proposed LDPC (Low-Density Parity-Check) code during the 3GPP’s meeting in October 2016, but switched to the Polar code camp, led by Huawei, at another meeting a month later.

“Lenovo made the decision to support Huawei based on two principles. The first was to protect the company’s interests. The second was to safeguard national and industrial development, Liu explained.”

The letter has not yet appeared on Lenovo’s English website.

Liu, who turns 74 later this year, founded Lenovo along with 10 other engineers and was capitalized by a loan from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.