He was a 43-year-old man with nothing left to lose, He had been cheated out of 2 million yuan. Fired from his job. His marriage was falling apart, He borrowed 21,000 yuan from friends and started a company in a run-down Shenzhen apartment.
That company is now the most powerful telecommunications empire on Earth.
Meet Ren Zhengfei, the founder of Huawei.
- Born October 25, 1944, Zhenning County, Guizhou Province.
- Poor mountain village, Parents were rural school teachers.
- Eldest of seven children.
- Family so poor his mother rationed every meal.
- Father was a university-educated intellectual.
- Persecuted during the Cultural Revolution.
- Told young Ren one thing, Knowledge is power, Study, Do not follow the crowd.
- Studied at Chongqing University of Architecture and Engineering.
- Taught himself computer technology. Automatic control. Advanced mathematics. Foreign languages.
- 1974, Joined the military as a construction engineer.
- Worked on the Liao Yang chemical fiber plant.
- Rose to technical deputy regimental commander.
- 1978, Attended the National Science Conference in Beijing.
- 1982, Elected delegate to the 12th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party.
- 1983, The army downsized. Demobilized.
- Moved to Shenzhen to join his wife.
- Assigned to a subsidiary as a deputy manager.
- No business experience, He was a soldier and an engineer.
- Then he was cheated.
- A fraudulent trading company disappeared with 2 million yuan.
- Astronomical sum at the time.
- He spent a year chasing the money. Recovered most of it.
- The company fired him anyway.
- His wife divorced him.
- 43 years old, Jobless, Living with his parents and siblings in a cramped apartment.
- The family could only afford dead fish and shrimp from the market.
- 1987, Borrowed 21,000 yuan, Founded Huawei.
- The name meant China has promise.
- Three employees, Started as a reseller importing switches from Hong Kong.
- He did not want to be a middleman.
He wanted to build his own technology.
- 1989, Began developing Huawei's own switch.
- 1990, First Huawei-manufactured switch passed certification.
- Foreign giants fought over China's major cities.
- Ren took Huawei to the countryside, Targeted markets the international companies ignored.
- That strategy worked.
- 1997, Visited the United States, Toured Bell Labs and IBM.
- Saw what a real modern enterprise looked like.
- Came back and spent hundreds of millions hiring IBM consultants.
- Gave his managers a brutal order, For five years do exactly what the consultants say.
No changes, After five years you can adapt, After ten years you can restructure.
- Management philosophy. The customer comes first. The boss comes last.
- Face the customer, Turn your back on your superiors.
- Built a system where Huawei does not depend on any single person, Not even him.
- He owns less than 1% of Huawei.
- The rest is held by employees through a virtual share system.
- He called it everyone's shareholding.
- His lack of selfishness was one reason Huawei succeeded.
- Known for his blunt style.
- Told employees the biggest problem would be having too much money and not knowing how to spend it.
- Buy a house, he said, but make the balcony big, So you can air out your money before it gets moldy.
- 2009, Huawei entered the Fortune Global 500.
- 2018, Revenue reached $107 billion. Customers in 170 countries.
- Then the world turned against it.
- 2018, His daughter Meng Wanzhou arrested in Canada at the request of the United States.
- Held under house arrest for nearly three years.
- 2019, US placed Huawei on the Entity List. Cut off access to American chips and software.
- Ren did not retreat, He accelerated.
- Huawei developed its own chips, Its own operating system, Its own ecosystem.
- The company survived.
- 2025, Age 81, Sat down with top competitive programming students in Shanghai.
- Spoke for 14,000 words about AI, education, and the future.
- Said China and the US were pursuing different paths.
- America chasing the highest peaks. China solving practical problems.
- If you can reach high, do not reach low.
- He still goes to work, Still does not give many interviews.
- Still travels without an entourage.
A teacher's son from a mountain village in Guizhou. Cheated out of his savings, Fired from his job, Divorced, Broke at 43, Borrowed 21,000 yuan and built the company that now connects a third of humanity.
He did not start with money, He did not start with connections, He started with knowledge, discipline, and a refusal to quit.
His name is Ren Zhengfei, He is 81 years old.
He is still building.
Author: Saikat Bhattacharya
