A growing number of former Apple devotees in China have started switching from iPhones to domestic Huawei smartphones as trade and technology tensions escalate between Washington and Beijing.

The South China Morning Post reported that consumers were spurred by a rising "nationalist sentiment" to support the Chinese tech giant which has been blacklisted by the US.

According to the newspaper, "nationalist rhetoric of 'switch to Huawei' has gained increasing traction as trade tensions escalate."

Social media campaigns have been urging citizens to support Huawei at Apple's expense in response to US-China trade disputes, it said.

Some long-time Apple users in China have started framing Huawei purchases as acts of patriotism.

"There is a calling from my heart that I need to show support for Chinese brands, especially in the trade war climate," said Wang Zhixin, a manager at one of China's largest solar module manufacturers. Earlier this month Wang retired his three-year-old iPhone 7 and got a Huawei P30.

He explained that Huawei was not entirely chosen out of sympathy. "The company has a reputation for better quality at a cheaper price... [The P30] is faster and can take better pictures."

Another former Apple fan, Sam Li, who works at a state-owned telecom company in Beijing, said that "It's kind of embarrassing to pull an iPhone out of your pocket nowadays when all the company executives use Huawei."

China is Apple's largest overseas market, accounting for 17 percent of its total sales in the most recent quarter. Last year, Apple ranked as China's fifth most popular smartphone brand with a 9.1 percent market share in the country. The company makes roughly 20 percent of its revenues and profits in China, which is the world's largest market for smartphones. Apple's market share in China has already fallen to seven percent in the first quarter of 2019, mainly due to Chinese consumers' growing support for domestic brands.

On Wednesday, Goldman Sachs said that Apple's earnings could drop by almost 30 percent if its products were banned in mainland China.

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The US is apparently seeking to lock Assange away for the rest of his life as an example for all other journalists around the world to see, Fairbanks said, commenting on the latest indictment against the whistleblower announced by a federal grand jury. Each of the 17 additional charges introduced under the Espionage Act carries a 10-year prison sentence, meaning that the Wikileaks founder could face up to 175 years in jail in total.

Fairbanks believes Assange might actually face a much more gruesome fate.

"I am not even convinced that they will not give him the death penalty. There are other espionage act charges that carry the death penalty," she told RT, adding that the US is likely to "throw everything they can at him."

Assange's prosecution goes beyond simply seeking to punish a man who exposed US atrocities, including the indiscriminate killing of civilians in Iraq as well as torture and mistreatment of prisoners, according to the journalist.

"They are sending a message that if you publish some leaks or something that the [US] government does not like, that is going to ruin your whole life. You can potentially go to jail forever."

The US government basically wants the people to give up hope that they will have any future at all if they ever dare to go against Washington, Fairbanks said.

"If there was something so important that you felt you needed to leak it, you could know that you would still have some of your life left afterwards. Now they are sending the message that you won't," she told RT.

The entire campaign against Assange is "a huge threat to the First Amendment, especially for the national security reporters," as it severely limits journalistic freedoms and puts reporters under indirect pressure from the US authorities.

"They are criminalizing journalism. That is exactly what they are doing and there is no way around it."

The fact that Assange is not even a US citizen and that he never committed any crime on US territory is particularly worrying, Fairbanks notes. She explained that this situation shows that pretty much any journalist from any country can become a victim of the US persecution and face extradition to America.

Fairbanks took particular issue with the indictment's claim that Assange endangered individuals working for the US government by publishing the classified government documents.

"To claim that the leaks harmed someone now would be ridiculous," she told RT.

During the 2010 trial of Chelsea Manning, the US Army intelligence analyst who provided Assange with the documents, the Pentagon itself confirmed that nobody was killed because of the leaks and nobody even had to be moved because of the leaks.

"I find it hard to believe that it would suddenly change, because the Pentagon had no interest in protecting Manning at that time," Fairbanks said.

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