Huawei CEO Ren Makes Media Debut
When is a company executive talking about the importance of the New Zealand market major news? The answer is: When the executive is the press-shy Ren Zhengfei, founder and CEO of China telecoms equipment giant Huawei, having his first ever meeting with reporters. Ren founded Huawei in the 1990s as a telecoms equipment importer, and has gone on to build the company into the world’s second largest networking equipment maker and one of China’s biggest high-tech exporters. Yet despite his 2 decades in the business, Ren had never done a media interview in all that time — a fact that the company confirmed for me when I asked about his media roundtable this week with a group of New Zealand reporters.As a former reporter who has covered Huawei for more than a decade, I’m probably giving Ren’s media debut more attention than most people normally would. But from a broader perspective, his interview is part of a much bigger campaign to bring a human face to Huawei, which is trying to counter western government suspicions that it is a spying arm of Beijing. Earlier this year, I even likened Ren to the Wizard of Oz, who was famous for speaking from behind a curtain to hide his real nature. (previous post) I’d like to think that perhaps my criticism was partly behind Ren’s decision to become more media friendly, but that’s really not an important issue in this case.
Some people might want to know what Ren said in his big media debut, though his actual words are a bit anti-climactic. He spoke mostly about the importance of the New Zealand market, where Huawei has been selected to help build an ultra-fast, state-of-the-art 4G telecoms network. (press release; Chinese article) The press release, which even includes a picture of Ren, doesn’t state who exactly is building the network, though it implies it’s a government-led project. That’s an important distinction, since politicians in the US and Australian have both expressly said they won’t use any Chinese-made telecoms equipment from Huawei or crosstown rival ZTE (HKEx: 763) in any of their government-backed networks due to national security risks.
So, what do I make of all this? As I’ve said above, Ren’s media debut looks like part of Huawei’s broader campaign to humanize the company and make it look more like a real commercial entity rather than an arm of Beijing. Ren’s own media shyness, and his background as a former Chinese army engineer, have been 2 major factors behind many of the negative western suspicions.I suspect that following this breakthrough interview, we can expect to see Ren make more public appearances and do more meetings with reporters in the future.
The next question is: Will any of this help in Huawei’s quest for acceptance in the west and especially the US, where it has been banned from selling to both the government and also private telcos? I would say this kind of move will probably help, and could ultimately ease western government concerns about letting Huawei and ZTE sell to private telcos in their markets.
Australia made an important distinction in the matter last month, when it said that Huawei was welcome to sell to its private telcos but that it would be barred from bidding on sensitive government contracts. (previous post) Many other western governments have taken a similar approach, though none has been so open as Australia in articulating its stance. That’s why Huawei needs to keep up its PR offensive and show the world a more transparent, corporate entity, and then let individual governments and telcos decide whether it’s really a commercial company or just an arm of Beijing.
Bottom line: The first-ever media interview by Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei is part of the company’s PR offensive to win acceptance in the west.
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