Eva Dou, a Washington Post Technology Policy Reporter did an excellent job of researching and telling the history of Huawei. Many Chinese companies are coming into Tashkent, including Huawei and I was interested in learning more about the company. The story focuses on the founder, Ren Zhengfei. His father was a teacher and university professor siding with the Nationalists (losing side). He rose up through the military and when China opened to capitalism, he and his engineering friends developed telephone switches in the new economic zone of Shenzen. It was interesting reading about Chinese business practices that mirror the government. For example, periodically did a “mass-resignation ceremony” in which all employees wrote a summary of their work and then a written resignation. He would accept six of the 26 sales branch chiefs and turned over 30% of sales staff. These purges mirrored the Chinese Communist Party’s purges. Huawei made a lot of money in the sanctioned and downtrodden nations of the world which engineers sympathized with because of China’s economic troubles. It is incredible the amount of work the engineers and salespeople put in to make it a successful global company.
The company is lock step with the government and so the United States can’t allow their business to thrive in the USA and with American allies. I don’t own any Huawei products and I admire their organization for starting from nothing and building a multinational corporation. I would like to visit Shenzen and Shanghai someday. I’ve only been to Hong Kong and Macao, but not the southern mainland.
New Vocabulary
- caryatids – female sculpture forming a pillar
- Bouyei – the 1oth largest ethnic group in China; mostly farmers and business people southern China plains; 3.5 million people
- Gang of Four – Maoist political faction composed of 4 communist leaders; responsible for the disastrous Cultural Revolution (1966-76)
- guanxi – personal connections; how a lot of business gets done in China and it includes heavy rounds of drinking and lavish gifts
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