Huawei’s Founder Speaks To BBC

the founder of Huawei has said there is no way the u.s. can crush the company now on BBC World News rung Zhang Fei speaks exclusively to charisma for swanee in his first international interview since the arrest of his daughter the company's chief financial officer it's one of the world's leading telecommunications companies with annual sales last year in excess of a hundred billion dollars but now its founder run Jung PHA is facing the Battle of his life as China and the US face off in an increasingly ugly trade war Huawei finds itself at the center of the storm according to the indictment in 2012 Huawei began a concerted effort to steal information about a robot that t-mobile used to test mobile phones the United States is pressuring its allies to shun Huawei's products claiming that the company is an arm of the Chinese government but for mr. run this is also a personal fight his daughter has been arrested in Canada and is facing extradition to a US Court talking exclusively to the BBC run junghae claims the u.s. actions are politically motivated Buchan there's no way they can crush us the u.s. is constantly hurling accusations against us finding fault with us but this pushes us to make our products better try to go home Huawei success has become the prism through which the US and its allies are viewing China's rise at the core of this is a simple but critical question is Huawei truly an international company operating on the global stage or is it very much a product of the Chinese Communist system founder run Jeong Fei tackles this question and others in this special edition of Asia's tech Titans [Music] Ranjan fee has only ever wanted one thing to build a global company in China that could rival the best in the world and that is exactly what he's done mister run started Huawei with just three staff and two and a half thousand dollars in Shenzhen one of China's special economic zones when I first started out 30 years ago the communications industry was on the brink of enormous changes changes equivalent to thousands of years in the history of mankind all in the span of three decades back then we didn't really have any telephones the only phones we had were those hand cranked phones that you see in Old World War two films we were pretty undeveloped them while we started out by making simple equipment for rural markets instead of spending the money we earned we invested it back into the business making more and more advanced equipment we were lucky China was developing its network industry on a big scale of the time that's how we found a market for our goods if we tried to start a business today I don't know if we would be successful we worked for survival rather than for ideals how could we possibly have ideals then our priority was to survive today Huawei is the top telecoms network equipment seller in the world how did you do this what do you mean the shingle you sure you don't be Georgia shingle I am an ambitious man if someone can focus on one thing then they will definitely succeed I was focused on communications technology if I had focused on raising pigs I might have become a pig expert if I had focused on making tofu I might have become the king of tofu unfortunately I chose Communications this industry is very challenging hi Jenna but it's hanging we did this without really understanding just how high the barrier to entry was but we started anyway and there was no turning back because if we pulled out then we would have lost everything I had spent all of my initial investment and would have ended up begging on the streets so we had to keep forging ahead one step at a time today Huawei has sprawled out to become a global tech giant I had a chance to see the scale of that growth when I arrived on hua ways newest european-style campus in Shenzhen this is one of the three campuses Huawei has here this campus alone is the size of 345 football fields Wow I cannot believe they built this in the middle of an industrial city around the world it now has over a hundred and eighty thousand workers and it's done all of this in just three decades by any standards that's an astronomical rate of growth but it's not just about how big Huawei has become it's gone from a company aspiring to be Apple to one who's selling more smart phones than Apple and it's been able to achieve this mr. run says because it's a privately owned company not at the mercy of shareholders so it's free to decide its own vision of the future why have we succeeded while other companies found it difficult publicly listed companies have to pay a lot of attention to their balance sheets they can't invest too much otherwise profits will drop and so will their share prices at huawei we fight for our ideals we know that if we fertilize our soil it will become more bountiful that's how we've managed to pull ahead and succeed every year Huawei invests up to twenty billion dollars in R&D putting it in the top five companies for such investment in the world while some American telecom Giants were cutting jobs and closing labs Huawei pumped billions of dollars into new areas of research leepung fee is an engineer at Huawei his team works on what the company calls fundamental questions areas of research that don't have an immediate outcome from my research it is not directly involved in profit most of my work is about fundamental research in the u.s. and my friends who work in Apple who work in Google they work really hard and they have a lot of freedom on their research and I basically have the same similar freedom I'm the same a similar environment like they do have we Chinese people we are trying to develop we are trying to to to be better right we're learning and we're trying our best but some think it's not just investment into R&D that's enabled Huawei to pull ahead of its rivals both sets of charges exposed Huawei's brazen and persistent actions to exploit American companies and financial institutions and to threaten the free and fair global marketplace the US Department of Justice has charged Huawei with intellectual property theft alleging that it stole trade secrets from American firm t-mobile deliberately the Department of Justice has put forward charges saying that Huawei stole technology from an American company do you think that's fair we shall get make Waseca far to go yeah I trust the u.s. is a country ruled by law so everything will ultimately be settled by the law but sometimes I'm also very happy the u.s. is the world's most powerful country and their senior officials are going around the world talking about Huawei including places where we have not launched any advertising campaigns and people didn't know but because of this people everywhere now know of Huawei this is a huge advertisement for us at a very cheap price Cisco Nortel Motorola they've all accused Huawei of stealing their ideas stealing their technology the United States is trying to say why we can't be trusted what do you have to say about that I meant efficient only Chilean in actual fact many of our technologies are already far ahead of those my Western companies not just in 5g or optical switching or our chipsets the number of technologies in which we're leading is huge and these are complex technologies the charges that the US has made against Huawei are fairly marginal sure instrument they're not enough to say that Huawei has become what it is today by stealing from the US today we have many things that the US doesn't how can we steal what they don't have so much atole still the pressures on Huawei are growing and mr. run is not just fighting for his business his family is now involved as well the DOJ has charged mr. Renne daughter and Huawei's chief financial officer Meng Guangzhou with bank fraud and accused her of conspiring to violate American sanctions on Iran what is it like as a father to see your daughter in such a difficult situation Papa Guan China yet when she was detained as her father my heart broke how could I watch my child suffer like this but what happened has happiness what can one do we can only depend on the law to solve this problem I think this hardship is a valuable opportunity in life for her going through such a big event will give her wings for her future growth yokai shame language I should thank the US government for giving mangwon Joe a strong set of wings so she can fly higher in the future I believe that was she a successor that you were grooming that you were hoping to see her you know become the CEO one day how you say uncle Colin Georgie abandoned she could never become my successor because she has no technical background I feel that I shouldn't see my children's trials entirely through her father's eyes I should also see them flying strong and free children must have their own character and find their own way all my children are strong-willed hard-working and drive themselves to excel as their parents we cannot demand that they stay meekly by our side forever we think their personal development is more important despite this huge personal setback while he is pushing ahead with a project where it's leading the world 5g technology by many accounts who always thought to be at least a year ahead of its rivals on this front 5g will herald the start of truly virtual networks and hyper connectivity between everything you can think of all of which is designed to make our lives easier and more automated so I'm probably useful it see it's a detective movie but the Warriors whoever controls the infrastructure behind this technology could potentially control every aspect of our lives in the future jus paying is who always head of 5g wireless research and says that fears of vulnerabilities in 5g are unfounded from technology perspective 5g is is probably it's more secure than the 4G previous generation in the sense that we have build into some more sophisticated security itself needs the cooperation from manufacturer from the operator who runs the network and from the government how much of an advantage is it to be ahead of your competitors when it comes to 5g what does it mean for you this actually probably we will get more footprint so more customer and and this is beneficial for both our customer in terms of operators and our you know consumers you know and its most basic level 5g technology is about connecting everyday items like my toothbrush to the Internet every time I brush my teeth data is collected and analyzed but at its most sophisticated it's about everything in entire cities talking to each other from driverless cars to building temperature to how fast our public transport is and it's already starting to materialize right here in China in an old neighborhood in Shenzhen Huawei is building the framework for the Internet of the future by next year China will have 5g services in several cities and Huawei is already building the infrastructure for 5g in other Asian countries it's amazing isn't it this is 5g going up in front of my eyes generation in the next 20 or 30 years we will see a great technological revolution where we will become an information society automated by artificial intelligence in the era of cloud and AI we will see explosive growth in data bursting forth like a tsunami this data leads the support of the most advanced equipment possible I don't think 5g or any other form of data transmission existing today will truly meet the pinnacle of people's needs I believe there more profound needs that still need to be addressed right now human society is only in the early phases of the massive change that lies ahead we still have a very long way to go before we can deliver faster more real-time more accurate and more affordable information services but highways 5g ambitions have made some countries nervous Australia along with the US has banned Huawei from building the infrastructure for its 5g networks because of security concerns whoever controls the 5g infrastructure has the potential to know a lot more about our lives Tom murren helped inform the government's policy on it he says Huawei is just too big a risk there's been a lot of focus on highway because they're building critical communications networks that'll be really super important into the future in the last several years the Chinese Communist Party has been a lot more coercive and they've they've passed laws that basically compel companies and individuals to assist in intelligence efforts and this really crystallizes worries that companies like Huawei will be forced to help them conduct espionage or perhaps other things [Music] these laws allow the state to ask citizens and organizations for information and they have to comply they have no choice the fear is that Huawei will build a backdoor into its 5g technology allowing the Chinese state access to private data the Chinese government has clearly said that if you won't ask companies to install backdoors and Huawei will not do it either our sales revenue is now hundreds of billions of dollars we are not going to risk the disgust of our country and our customers all over the world because of something like that we will lose all our business and then we would not be able to repay the banks I'm not going to take that risk I said I would shut the company down also to express a kind of determination we will not do this to add to this suspicion there's also mr. Renne links to the Chinese military before founding Huawei he was an engineer in the People's Liberation Army I was a very low ranking officer in the People's Liberation Army after leaving the army I had no connection or interaction with it I was not the high ranking officer the US has made me out to be please don't think that Huawei has become what it is today because we have special connections even a hundred percent state-owned companies have failed do good connections mean you will succeed then Huawei success is still very much due to our hard work there has been no conclusive evidence that Huawei has been helping the Chinese government to spy on other countries but concerns that it could have been enough for the u.s. to pressure its allies including the UK to stop doing business with Huawei altogether while Australia has outright bans the use of Huawei equipment in its 5g networks the UK and New Zealand are leaving the door open for now Huawei's global cyber security program is run in London by John Suffolk he used to be the UK government's chief information officer and understands the level of suspicion targeted at the company the reality is we are a Chinese headquartered company we're very proud of our Chinese heritage in our Chinese roots not everybody a understands you know the modern China not everybody is in favor of the modern China and some will even see China as a threat as they saw you know Japan in the car industry in terms of the 70s and the 80s we have to ignore that we have to continue to satisfy what our customers want we have to continue to be open and transparent and then businesses will make the decision based on who will provide them with the greatest long-term value what kind of impact would it have on your business if the US is successful in getting many of its partners in the West to shut your equipment out vanya if the lights go out in the West the East will still shine and if the north goes dark then there is still the south america doesn't represent the world america only represents a portion of the world but security concerns continue to keep Huawei under scrutiny in particular the company's relationship with the Chinese Communist Party under China's modern facade is a system that's still very different from what the West knows you have to have a communist party committee in your company in China it's the law most big CEOs are members of the party even alibaba's Jack Ma these political connections are necessary to do business here and many just see them as a formality but they do raise questions about the independence of Chinese companies still you have to ask yourself if you were running a company in China how else would you operate Jun it's a fine equating according to Chinese law all companies in China including Chinese and foreign companies must establish a communist party committee and we must all obey the law in fact before we established a party committee motorola IBM and coca-cola had already established fares the communist party committee at Huawei serves only to educate its employees it is not involved in any business decisions I think all companies are by their own country's laws when when they're they need to so this happens for all telecommunications companies the difference it happens in the West the difference is that in the West there's independent courts and judiciary's and companies can actually contest those decisions in China there's not the same independence and rule of law I find it very hard to believe that a Chinese company can operate totally independently of the Communist Party if the Communist Party thinks that it is it needs to do something to protect itself it will can you see how difficult it is for many people around the world to believe you are free of influence from the Chinese Communist Party many countries may choose not to believe us or work with us but the world is big there are still many countries that welcome us we have already 131 5g contracts and shipped over 30,000 5g base stations anna-chan gana the hua people are increasingly aware of our advanced products and are more willing to accept us let the facts speak for themselves we cannot depend on speculation it's not the law it's been a long journey for mr. run whose life's work of building Huawei has in many ways mirrored the rise of China sanctions in Eng my mu Joshi vanyusha 30 or 40 years ago I did not study in the West many of my good friends went to the US and Canada to study this is because I served in the military I had no idea card and thus had no right to do so I missed that era after they came back to China my friends told me what a supermarket was I had no idea back then you could imagine how little we knew of what a market economy was at the time I was someone who had been in the military all my life at the time used to doing exactly what I was told suddenly I began to work in a market economy engaging in product transactions I was at a total loss so I too suffered losses I too was deceived and I was cheated but I had to pick myself up because I had a wife and a child and I had to provide for them it's that stealing as' shaped from past experiences that has helped mister run steer his company through an unprecedented level of global scrutiny was Sochi an F and Omega Java I object to what the US has done this kind of politically motivated Act is not acceptable the u.s. likes to sanction others whenever there's an issue they'll use such methods we object to this but now that we've gone down this path we'll let the court settle it despite the current level of skepticism attached to Huawei he's still able to see this as a mixed blessing there is no impact on Huawei's business due to Hmong windows loss of freedom in fact we're growing even faster thank you it's wrong so they got among wonder maybe they arrested the wrong person they may have thought if they arrested her that Huawei would fault but we didn't fall we are still moving forward for mr. run moving forward is not merely an option for Huawei it's the only way to survive [Music]

Channel: Huawei

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Length: 25min 45sec (1545 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 24 2019