The choice of photography that illustrates the beginning of the book In his own words, dialogue with Ren might seem like a whim by the founder of Huawei based on his devotion to history, but the image treasures a huge symbology for the message the company wants to send China.
It shows a dilapidated Ilyusha IL-2, the so-called "Soviet flying tank". "During World War II, the famous IL-2 continued to fly despite being riddled with anti-aircraft projectiles. Although it suffered serious damage, it was able to return home," reads the following text.
The history of Ilyusha Il-2 has acquired an epic connotation for Huawei, which came to adorn some walls of its headquarters in Shenzhen with that snapshot and the motto: "Where you do not fight, there is no force."
The Chinese businessman himself used the simile last June, during the debut of the Un Café con Ren meeting, which on that occasion brought Shenzhen to George Gilder (a well-known American author who has for decades become a quasi prophet and defender at the extreme of the next technological revolution) and Nicholas Negroponte, author of the success Ser Digital , founder of Wired magazine and the MIT Media Lab research center.
On that date, he acknowledged that the "precise blows" of the United States to "vital" elements of the company's strategy had generated "thousands of holes that we have to repair."
"We are like an Il-2 plane riddled with bullets during World War II," he said.
COMMUNICATION
Subsequently, Ren met again with two luminaries of the new technologies, Jerry Kaplan and Petr Cochrane. The series of Un Café con Ren is part of the new communication strategy of the tycoon, who spent decades almost without attending the media, but after the inclusion of the firm in the Washington blacklist does not cease to frequent them.
Both these meetings and the allegory of IL-2 respond to Huawei's attempt to show that the worst stage of its crisis with the United States could have been overcome. According to Zhengfei's words, "we cannot go from black to gray immediately, in the short term we cannot see a clear sky, but the results of the first semester are very good."
The main reference of Huawei explained in a recent interview with The Economist that the benefits of the emporium remain "similar to those of last year", although he admitted that its growth has slowed significantly, going from 30% at the beginning of the year to 19.7% in the current dates.
"We have already repaired the holes we had in the central axis of the 5G network, but we continue to feel the impact among consumers and repair those holes will take some time," he added.
According to the firm's figures, the sale of smartphones (one of the brand's most emblematic elements) fell to 40% at the beginning of the struggle with the United States, but now that decline has slowed to 20%.
In these months the company has released its new HarmonyOS operating system and another series of smartphones (Mate 30) without the presence of Google services that, as the brand representatives clarify, "can be downloaded manually and are still compatible with the terminal. "
Despite Washington's international offensive to try to curb Huawei's expansion in the 5G market, the company has signed more than 60 trade agreements around the world , mostly with Europe (28) and the Middle East (11), according to his rotary president Ken Hu Houkun declared recent in Shanghai.
HOLES
During the conversation in Shenzhen, Ren Zhengfei repeated his offer to sell his 5G technology license to an American firm to allow the appearance of a "strong competitor" in that market.
Days before, in another meeting with foreign journalists, the legendary character clarified that Huawei has already started producing 5G base stations without US components, one of the most significant "holes" that had caused the brand to be blacklisted. Washington. Ren estimated that since October 5,000 are being manufactured per month and that they will sell about 1.5 million next year.
"Huawei can now survive without components for 5G in the United States," said the leader of Huawei this past Thursday.
The company will need another "two or three years" to replace its dependence on US products, as acknowledged by the president of the board of directors of Huawei, Liang Hua, in another recent dialogue with foreign journalists.
Ren Zhengfei repeats incessantly that his products do not serve to spy or transmit information to the Chinese Government, a hypothesis that would be impossible to defend if Beijing orders it.
The businessman also seems to share the philosophy defended by the Chinese Communist Party about what is being the main application of new technologies in the country: strengthening security and population control.
"In Shenzhen there were 18,000 cases of theft of bags in motorcycles. Not one was registered last year. That is something positive for society," he said, referring to a city that, like all of China, is dominated by a massive presence of surveillance cameras and a huge police deployment.
The head of ranks of Huawei defended the protection of private data but not against the demand of the State ("which follows some protocols", he argued), but before the proliferation of the sale to private interests of this information. "In China, these data are traded. For example, companies [that produce artificial milk] are sold information that a woman is pregnant. We would have to strengthen the protection of that data."
ORIGINS
The headquarters of Huawei in Shenzhen is a reflection of the extraordinary expansion that this company has registered, in parallel to the same city that houses it. The two-square-kilometer complex (dotted with gardens and lakes with black swans) is home to about 40,000 employees, from engineers to artists like Chin, who leads a dozen designers responsible for delineating the exterior appearance of the brand's phones. In another of the many ironies that modern China is home to, its acolytes are inspired by images taken from Instagram, an application banned in the country.
Far away is the era in which Ren Zhengfei had to wear patched clothing in the face of his family's poverty or when he was locked in a cowshed after being considered the son of a "reactionary." It is also far behind when he had to resort to the liquidation offered by the army and borrow to collect the 21,000 yuan (less than 2,700 euros) with which he founded the company in 1987. The creator of the brand recalls how he was about to face an uncertain destiny amidst the turbulent years that were lived in China in that era.
"When Huawei was founded, millions of farmers moved to the cities. The CCP allowed them to install street stalls to survive. That was the beginning of private property. But at the same time it decreed that all those companies that had more than eight employees He was a capitalist, something that was still anathema. We were many more than eight. We were lucky that they didn't define us as capitalists, "he recalled.
The Zhengfei Ana could be as endless as its proclamations about the future of Huawei, always inspired by the photography of the Ilyusha IL-2. Although these statements raise as many unknowns as the "heroic image" of the damaged plane itself. Some experts believe that it never existed and that it is a screenshot of a current video game about the battle of Stalingrad.
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