(Yicai Global) May 30 -- Two scholars from renowned Chinese institutions Tsinghua University and Peking University will withdraw from the editorial board of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers after the body banned Huawei Technologies employees from acting as reviewers and editors.

The IEEE's involvement in the US-Huawei ban by replacing all reviewers from Huawei is far beyond the basic principles of science and technology, Zhang Haixia, president of the IEEE Nanotechnology Council's Beijing branch and a professor at Peking University, wrote in a letter to the IEEE Presidents-elected.

"If the IEEE chooses not to be free of politics, I choose to be free of the IEEE", Liu Yiqun, associate professor from the department of computer science and technology at Tsinghua, posted on WeChat, adding that he will resign from his academic position with the IEEE. He also asked students not to contribute to any meetings or periodicals organized by the institute.

The IEEE complies with US government regulations by restricting the ability of Shenzhen-based Huawei and their employees to participate in certain activities that are not generally open to the public, and this includes certain aspects of the publication peer reviews and editorial processes, the IEEE said in a statement on May 24.

Huawei and its employees can continue to be members of the IEEE Standards Association, including earning or exercising voting rights of membership, attending IEEE standards development meetings, submitting new proposals for standards, and participating and commenting in public discussions of standards technology proposals, according to the statement.

The IEEE is an international association for electrical and electronics engineers and the world's largest association of technical professionals with 420,000 members spanning 175 countries. The institute publishes many magazines, academic journals and books and holds at least 300 professional meetings every year and makes over 900 industrials standards for the aerospace, computer, telecommunications, biomedicine, electric power and consumer electronics areas.

Huawei held a workgroup meeting in Shenzhen early this year for IEEE P2413, a standard for an architectural framework related to the Internet of Things. Many Huawei researchers serve as editors-in-chief and associate editors-in-chief at the IEEE.