Huawei founder gives rare interview

By Rory Howard
0 Comment(s)Print E-mail China.org.cn, January 28, 2015
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Huawei founder and chairman, Ren Ren. [File photo]

Huawei founder and chairman, Ren Zhengfei, made a rare appearance at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland on January 22 2015, where he discussed his life, and attempted to allay fears about the telecommunication giant's access to private information.

Ren Zhengfei's story is a humble one beginning in Guizhou. The eldest of seven children born to rural teachers, Ren Zhengfei humbly says that they had cooking salt, which made them richer than most. Through education and hard work, Ren Zhengfei went on to study at Chongqing Construction Engineering University. He sighs while he talks of the experience, saying that he sleepwalked himself into university.

"I was a boy coming out of the mountains and in to the city. I decided my choices like I was in a novel. It's different these days, kids have the Internet, they are more worldly."

After graduating from university, the Cultural Revolution started so there was no work. He did not want to waste his days so he started studying electronics and eventually attended Xi'an Jiaotong University.

It was here that his life would change and this put him on a trajectory to become who he is today. Ren Zhengfei remembers one class with a computer scientist who had just come back from America, "I understood nothing, but it changed me," he told the audience.

Ren Zhengfei's time in the army happened mostly by chance. It was the result of the Cultural Revolution, when some groups of people were accused of being "counter revolutionary," these people were generally intellectuals. At this time of low employment for technicians and graduates, Ren Zhengfei joined the army.

Ren says that there was little to live on back in those days, even getting a tiny patch of fabric to repair clothes was hard work. To deal with the short supply of fabric, the Chinese government got textile manufacturing equipment from France. The only problem was that the textile factory was in a desolate area and no one was willing to go there to work, so the army went to build it.

Once the factory was built the government no longer had a use for them being stationed there. The government promised that the soldiers would receive the same benefits they had had while working on the factory. Ren took leave and went to Shenzhen where he found work paying 200 yuan a month, double what he was getting paid before. Feeling himself unable to take the responsibility of being an army officer, Ren looked for opportunities to start his own business.

It is this origin of Huawei that has been hard for some nations to deal with. They fear that the company they are entrusting with creating information networks and telecommunications equipment is not only chaired by an ex-army officer, but has close ties with the Chinese government.

It has been put to Ren Zhengfei that Huawei's success stems from its military background. Ren responded by saying that as a Chinese enterprise Huawei will stand by the Party and the Government as a whole, but it adheres to the rules, laws, and ethics of any country that it carries out work in.

Despite his reassurances that Huawei does not work on behalf of the government, Ren says that America continues to be "a fortress blocking the way" to Huawei's ambitions of further expansion.

According to its founder, one of the problems that Huawei faces is that "America thinks that Huawei is a Chinese company with a military background so is therefore socialist; China sees Huawei as a shareholding company and is capitalist."

There are misunderstandings from both domestic and foreign viewpoints, but Ren is steadfast, "Rather than spend time trying to explain ourselves, it is better to think about how to engage in production, how to turn a profit, and how to develop as a company." Ren said.

Sales appears to be going well as the boss reports 20% profits in 2014, and expects more growth in the year to come.

Perhaps it is his attitude towards customers that shows him to be a businessman and not a government sponsored spy: "Money only comes from one place, and that's the customers' pockets... you can't trick it out of them."

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