tanding on Huawei Technologies Co.’s sprawling new campus near Shenzhen, it’s hard to conceive that Ren Zhengfei, backed by five friends of friends, could have single-handedly turned his tiny start-up into a technology-driven colossus.
5G, the latest generation of wireless technology, is expected to be so fast it will change how we live. The 74-year-old founder and chief executive insists that he and the company have never knowingly compromised the security of its products and that they would never do so. He recently said he would rather close the company than do anything to hurt Huawei’s customers. He has also said his daughter committed no crime.
Huawei’s $1.5-billion, Disney-like campus in Dongguan has 12 replica European towns. The 2,200-acre site is connected by a red tram cloned from Switzerland. Had they kept their shares, they would each boast stakes equal to Ren, who owns 1.14% of the company’s shares at $1.17 apiece — a stake worth more than $220 million, the company said.
Despite U.S. efforts to constrain Huawei, its annual revenue rose almost 20% in 2018 to $105 billion. Ren predicts sales could triple over the next five years should Huawei overcome U.S. interference. A few years after that, China’s gross domestic product — led by Huawei and other tech companies — is likely to surpass that of the U.S.
“Since the Opium Wars, China has been defeated by countries with less population, wealth and geographical resources again and again,” Xi said in May. “One of the root causes of the situation is our inferior technology.” Within Huawei, Ren is regarded as more of a spiritual leader than a hands-on executive. His musings are often posted on an internal company website for employees to read. He’s prone to military imagery and has likened his troubles with Washington to a war.
Ren was born in 1944 in the impoverished southwestern province of Guizhou, the oldest of seven children. They often went hungry and grew up with few clothes, according to Ren. He graduated with a degree in civil engineering during the Cultural Revolution, when few people had jobs, and taught himself electronics using textbooks.
Ren’s first business effort, a small state-owned enterprise with 20 employees, was a flop. He then succeeded in raising capital with five other investors in Shenzhen to launch Huawei, a company that would start out by selling telephone switch equipment procured from Hong Kong. What’s certain, analysts say, is that Huawei has made the most of its situation. Early in its history, it seized rural Chinese markets left open by foreign and state-owned firms, often delivering phone lines to villages for the first time. That gave it the foundation to then penetrate urban markets, distinguishing itself by offering customer support when rivals didn’t.
One staffer who works at the company’s Shenzhen headquarters said Huawei was like an adopted child who outperformed the state’s weak and corrupt biological children — its state-owned companies. Others said Huawei has rejected requests from the state to take on projects overseas. “But every year, everyone made money,” said Joseph Tian, an IT staffer at Huawei for 10 years who left in 2017.The lofty pay was necessary to justify a grueling work environment in which employees were expected at times to do the work of three people. Huawei’s so-called “wolf culture” even encompassed Cultural Revolution-styled self-criticism sessions.
While the U.S. has been falling behind, Huawei has been plowing ahead in 5G research and development. If 3G gave cellphone users access to the internet and 4G brought streaming video, then 5G will be remembered as the technology that tethered anything fitted with a chip to wireless networks. If those patents are used by other companies, Huawei is paid royalties — a likely windfall given the potential scope of next-generation wireless.
Beyond the risk of spying, critics of Huawei worry the company’s massive global footprint in places such as Europe could give China immense leverage in a time of conflict. One recent example suggests it might not be easy to resist government pressure, particularly during a national crisis or a deepening U.S.-China conflict. Didi, China’s equivalent to Uber, tried unsuccessfully to resist revealing its database to a government supervisory agency last year.
“No Chinese government agency or legal entity from China or abroad holds any share of Huawei,” said Guo Ping, one of Huawei’s three rotating co-chairmen. Take the case of the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, whose Huawei-built IT system was a gift from China to the organization. In 2017, the French newspaper Le Monde reported a hacking of the headquarters’ servers via a back door installed in the system.
U.S. Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo has warned that the U.S. might be unwilling to share intelligence with its European allies should they buy Huawei technology. Nevertheless, Germany and other European countries have shown little interest in following America’s lead. European Commission Vice President Andrus Ansip, who’s responsible for cybersecurity, said last month his job was to assess the threat, not weigh evidence of past wrongdoing.
People hold a sign outside a Vancouver, Canada, courthouse before a bail hearing for Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s chief financial officer. Meng was detained at the request of the U.S. government during a layover at the Vancouver airport on Dec. 1.
Although Canadian courts usually approve U.S. extradition requests, Meng’s Vancouver lawyer, David J. Martin, has won several cases in which he persuaded Canadian courts to assert their independence from heavy-handed U.S. prosecutors. Meng’s lead U.S. lawyer, Reid Weingarten, a partner in Steptoe & Johnson’s Washington office, is one of America’s most accomplished white-collar criminal defense lawyers.
Stop doing PR for Huawei please.
Stop ripping off IP 🇨🇳