Establishing the company In 1987, Ren Zhengfei, 43, and his partners founded
Shenzhen Huawei Technology Co., Ltd., which means "Having a Heart connected to
Chunghua, and making a difference" (心系中华，有所作为). At the beginning of establishing the company, friends recommended him to make money with high profits, but Ren thought that was not a long-term solution. After the introduction of a friend, he began to sell industrial instruments, but this was not economically viable in the long term. Later, Ren earned the first money for the company by selling HAX Technologies' program-controlled switches on consignment. At that time, the Chinese market was full of products from various countries. Faced with the gradual decline in switch prices and competition, Ren made a decision to import components made in China and hire people to assemble small user exchanges. He has been president of Huawei since 1988. In September 1991, Ren assembled a Huawei program-controlled switch with his employees. As Huawei's products are cheap, supply exceeded demand. Because of a shortage of domestic parts, Ren continued to assemble products while starting research and development. Like his employees, Ren reportedly ate and lived in the factory, going so far as to make soup for his employees in the evening. Due to the long lead time of research and development and the shortage of capital, Ren had to borrow at usurious rates to maintain normal operations of the company. Soon, Ren promoted the new BH03 switch. In order to solve the sales problem, he began to accept agents. In 1992, Ren Zhengfei invited professors and students from
Huazhong Technology University,
Tsinghua University, and others to visit. In early 1993, more than 270 Huawei employees held a 1992 summary meeting in a small auditorium in
Shekou, Shenzhen. Ren decided to use switches in the R and D Bureau to enter the field of public telephones and telecommunications. At the meeting, he presented 100 gold medals to outstanding employees and the boss of
Hongnian Company (鸿年公司) in
Hong Kong, which supported the start of the Huawei. Ren hired Xu Wenwei (徐文伟) from the nearby Yilida Group (亿利达集团) and put him in charge of the
hardware. In May 1993, Ren presided over a meeting of marketing managers and officially launched the JK1000 office telephone, after which more than 200 units were sold. In order to acquire talent, Ren also set up a "Talent recommendation Award". JK1000 products focus on the use of
analog circuit technology rather than
digital circuit technology, so that Ren made the mistake of not keeping up with the times. At that time, the company was short of money, and Huawei was on half pay, and the other half was recorded in the account. Ren set up a "everyone shareholding system": converting half of his recorded wages into shares in Huawei, which can be exchanged for cash when he resigns. In March 1996, Ren invited professors to form a Huawei basic law drafting group. The Huawei basic law was ready by 1998. Ren has sought to ingrain CCP ideology into Huawei's management and
corporate culture. He states that if a conflict between the interests of Huawei and those of the CCP's arose, he would "choose the CCP whose interest is to
serve the people and all human beings" and that he could not betray the principle of serving all human beings. Cisco agreed to drop the case in July 2024.
Expanding to overseas markets Ren Zhengfei aims to gain international market share in four stages: the first is to penetrate the neighboring Hong Kong market; the second is to gain market share in
Russia and
South America; the third is aimed at
Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and
Africa; and the fourth is to aim at
developed countries. In order to enter the international market, Ren put forward the idea of "Huawei globalization": the globalization of management, R and D, talent, sales, and corporate culture. Since 1996, Ren has successively hired
IBM and other
American and
British companies to reform Huawei's R and D, supply chain, financial and market systems, integrate its product development system, integrate its supply chain, human resource management, financial management, and quality control. In 1996, Ren led Huawei to compete in the international market, partnering with
Li Ka-shing's Hutchison Telecom: Huawei provided it with commercial network products with narrow-band switches as its core products. In 1997, Ren sent a delegation to visit Russia. As early as three years ago, he aimed at the huge Russian market, which had economic difficulties and lack of industrial upgrading. On 8 April, Ren went to
Ufa, Russia, to attend the signing ceremony of "BertoHuawei", a joint venture company between Huawei and Russia.
Leadership and ownership Ren now serves as a deputy
chairman of the Board of
Directors, but he is not currently one of the three rotating
CEOs. The company had an annual revenue of US$92.5 billion in 2017. Ren holds 1.42% of the shares of Huawei, valued at US$450 million in 2010. Huawei is essentially independent of Ren because its shares are held by its employees, but the ownership structure remains opaque. Similar fears are shared by other countries. In the United States such fears led to the collapse of Huawei's efforts to buy
3Com and forced
SoftBank to greatly sever ties with Huawei in order to have its takeover of
Sprint Nextel acquire U.S. national-security clearance. In the United Kingdom
the Intelligence and Security Committee has recommended the removal of Huawei's equipment due to fears of its being used to facilitate spying by the Chinese. == Family and interests ==