House of Huawei summary

Ren Zhengfei is now one of the richest men in the world. But he came from humble origins. Born in 1944, Ren grew up in the hills of Guizhou province in China, where food and clothing were often scarce.

After university, Ren worked for the Chinese military – something that would later attract scrutiny from Huawei’s critics. But according to Ren, his work had nothing to do with communications technology. He was a simple construction worker.

In 1978, Ren joined the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP. Again, this was something that would one day raise questions. How closely was Huawei connected to the party, given Ren’s own connections?

Being a member of the CCP no doubt helped Ren to advance in his career. Now, he was part of the establishment.

In the ‘80s, China was beginning to experiment with capitalism. A vast new city was being built on the southern coast – the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone. 

It was intended as a kind of buffer zone. China could benefit from capital and technology from neighboring Hong Kong, while staying protected from the so-called “moral corruption” of capitalism.

When Ren first visited Shenzhen, he was amazed by what he saw – an exciting new world with many business opportunities.

In 1987, Ren founded Huawei in Shenzhen. Originally, it was a startup that made and sold telephone switches. But Ren had big ambitions for his company, and he wanted to produce his own products.

By the early ‘90s, Huawei's aim was to make a digital telephone switch that could cope with ten thousand phone calls at once. Ren had assembled a promising team of young engineers who were up to the task. 

However, working conditions were brutal. Engineers worked long hours in a stiflingly hot building, taking naps on mattresses when they reached breaking point. One even had to have emergency surgery for a detached cornea.

Still, through hard, relentless work, Huawei began to get results. And all the while, the CCP was looking on approvingly. There were clear benefits to Huawei’s work on telephone switches. As Ren himself declared, “A country without its own program-controlled switches is like one without an army.”

The CCP agreed. It was also interested in other ways that Huawei technology could be used – surveillance, for instance.

By the mid-’90s, Huawei had successfully manufactured the first advanced Chinese telephone switch. This meant that China was no longer dependent on foreign technology.

But while Huawei was flourishing in its home country, Ren now had even bigger ambitions. It was time to go international.