China Telecom just ordered 40,000 servers worth $1.7bn. Huawei did not even bid, yet its ecosystem walked away with the bulk of the deal. That is not an accident. It is the template. A state-owned Chinese carrier has handed Huawei a major win without Huawei lifting a finger. China Telecom named the winners of a multibillion-dollar server tender this week. The largest slice went to chips tied to Huawei’s homegrown ecosystem. The order is a snapshot of how China is swapping American silicon out of its digital backbone. The headline number is big. The mechanism behind it matters more. What...