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The founder of the Chinese technology giant Huawei, Ren Zhengfei, has said in an interview with Bloomberg that he would be "the first to protest" if Beijing retaliates against the US-based tech giant Apple.
A Bloomberg reporter has asked the Huawei CEO in an interview whether he would retaliate against Apple amid "calls by some in China" to take countermeasures against the US company.
"That will not happen, first of all. And second of all, if that happens, I'll be the first to protest. Apple is the world's leading company. If there was no Apple, there would be no mobile internet. If there was no Apple to help show us the world, we would not see the beauty of this world. Apple is my teacher. It's advancing in front of us. As a student, why should I oppose my teacher? I would never do that", Ren Zhengfei has told Bloomberg in an interview, published on Sunday.
Huawei has been accused by several countries of being sponsored by the Chinese state and spying on its behalf through its devices.
US President Donald Trump issued an executive order earlier in May that added Huawei and its 70 affiliates to a trade blacklist, thereby restricting its activity in the country. US companies are hence required to receive permission before trading with the telecom company.
As a result, Google had to suspend business operations with Huawei, including the transfer of all hardware, software and technical services, except those publicly available via open source licensing. This move has already impacted the telecom giant, with several mobile carriers, such as UK Vodafone and EE suspending their launches of new Huawei products.
The standoff between Huawei and Apple was sparked by the December arrest of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of Huawei's founder in Canada, for alleged violations of US sanctions on Iran. Beijing decried the move and demanded that Canada immediately release the Chinese national.
In January, the Chinese telecom giant punished staffers who used an iPhone to send an official company tweet amid a standoff between the two tech giants. In an internal memo, published online by Chinese media, Huawei said those responsible were demoted and had their salaries slashed by $730.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed on Thursday that the Chinese tech giant allegedly had close links to not only the Chinese government but also to the Chinese Communist Party. He said that these ties significantly threatened any US-related information that passed via Huawei's devices. Pompeo also said the State Department expected more companies worldwide to cut ties with Huawei in the future.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Friday that Pompeo's remarks were made in an attempt to stir up ideological resistance against the company.
Last year, the United States, Australia, Japan, and New Zealand banned the company from participating in government contracts due to security concerns. Huawei has vehemently denied all allegations of spying.
Huawei has repeatedly denied it is controlled by the Chinese government, military or intelligence services.
Ren also responded to critics who claim that Huawei got to where it is currently through intellectual property (IP) theft and government support.
"The US has not developed that technology so from where should I steal it?" he asked.
"We are leading the US. If we were behind, Trump would not need to make so many efforts to attack us."
As the number of companies supplying Huawei with components and software falls, Ren added that Huawei would use its own products instead.
"The US manages its own companies. The US is not the international police - they can't manage the whole world. The rest of the world decides whether they should work with us based on their own business interests and positions," he said.
"If the US imposes further restrictions on us, we will reduce our purchases from the US and use more of our own chips. If American companies have permission from Washington to sell to us, we will continue to buy from them."
Last week, Trump also, for the first time,linked a dispute over Huawei, which he views as a threat to American security, with a deal to resolve the US-China trade war.
"Huawei is something that is very dangerous," Trump told reporters at the White House. "You look at what they've done from a security standpoint, a military standpoint. Very dangerous."
Ren told Bloomberg that there was no need for negotiation over the issue.
"The US has never bought products from us. Even if the US wants to buy our products in the future, I may not sell to them. There is no need for negotiation."
It seems the world is spiraling into turbulence. All
countries need to act prudently. They need to make as many friends as
they can and avoid becoming tools of other countries. They should also
cast aside illusions of using geopolitical methods to realize
development goals that can't be achieved economically.
As Huawei is pinned in the eye of the China-US trade war,
French President Emmanuel Macron claimed Europe won't capitulate to US
pressure to block the Chinese tech company. What is Europe's attitude
toward US demands? What impact has the trade conflict caused for Europe?
Huawei products should not be linked to politics: Ren
U.S. ban not to affect Huawei's high-end and 5G products: Ren
https://youtu.be/Yz6tKCEhvqA
Huawei is a commercial company, and the use of its products is a choice for consumers based on their likes and should not be linked to politics, said Ren Zhengfei, founder and president of Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. on Tuesday.
Ren made the remarks after the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) of the U.S. Department of Commerce put Huawei and its affiliates on an "Entity List," which would restrict the sale or transfer of U.S. technologies to the company. The ban has triggered opposition from markets worldwide.
Huawei maintains mass production capacities for specific key components, including chips, and the U.S. ban will not result in negative business growth, Ren told reporters.
The telecommunications giant projected slower but positive growth this year.
Huawei posted a 39 percent year-on-year revenue growth in the first quarter of the year. The growth has slowed slightly in the second quarter, but the slowing will not hurt the company, Ren said.
"Huawei had made preparations for the extreme situations even before the Chinese Lunar New Year," he said.
He noted, however, that it would not reject the U.S. supply chain, citing Huawei's announced purchase of 50 million chips from Qualcomm in 2018.
"As long as the U.S. government allows U.S. companies to export the components, Huawei will continue to buy while sticking to its own research and development," he said.
Ren said he appreciated the support of a large number of U.S. components suppliers over the years, and they are also lobbying for the easing of U.S. government-imposed restrictions.
He said Huawei is also in talks with companies like Google for potential remedy solutions, he said.
China can hardly make the US clear about all these
issues. The only option for China is to do its own things well and
accept the fact that the China-US trade war will last in the days that
follow. As China becomes stronger, it will eventually see the US willing
to reflect upon itself.
The overall output value of China's satellite navigation
and positioning services industry reached 301.6 billion yuan ($43
billion) in 2018, up 18.3 percent on a year-on-year basis, with the
country's home-developed BeiDou satellite system contributing 80 percent
to the core production value, reads an official white paper.
China sent a new satellite of the BeiDou Navigation
Satellite System (BDS) into space from the Xichang Satellite Launch
Center in Sichuan Province at 11:48 p.m. Friday.
"There's no way the U.S. can crush us," Zhengfei told the
broadcaster. "The world needs us because we are more advanced. Even if
they persuade more countries not to use us temporarily, we can always
scale things down a bit."
In an exclusive interview with the BBC, Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei describes the arrest of his daughter Meng Wanzhou, the company's chief financial officer, as politically motivated
The UK is set to make a decision on whether it will use Huawei's
equipment in March or April, but the country's National Cyber Security
Centre has reportedly found ways to "limit the risks" of its technology.
Ren said regardless of ban in the UK, Huawei will continue to invest
in the country, and promised the company will increase its focus there
if the U.S. doesn't work out.
"We still trust in the UK, and we hope that the UK will trust us even
more," he added. "We will invest even more in the UK. Because if the
U.S. doesn't trust us, then we will shift our investment from the U.S.
to the UK on an even bigger scale."
On the arrest of his daughter, Ren objected to the actions of U.S., calling them "politically motivated."
"The U.S. likes to sanction others, whenever there's an issue, they'll use such combative methods," he said.
"We object to this. But now that we've gone down this path, we'll let the courts settle it."
What Europe needs is not only the ability to distinguish
between right and wrong, but also the courage to make its own
independent choices. Europe's cooperation with Huawei on construction of
a 4G network is already an established fact, but it seems now that
beneficial collaboration has become one of the biggest risks.
A Huawei Technologies Co logo sits on display inside an electronic goods store in Berlin on December 17. Photo: VCG
Former Huawei employee in US laments government's 'endless assaults on the company'
○ Huawei's so-called 'wolf culture' helped it become successful in foreign countries
○ The top global telecom equipment provider has been going through a tough year in 2018
○ Chinese and foreign employees hold different views on Huawei's rapid expansion and aggressive corporate strategy
When Jason Li was assigned to the Mobile World Congress at the beginning of 2011, shortly after he joined China's Huawei Technologies, he impressed Ren Zhengfei, the former military officer who founded the company in 1987, with a presentation about the company's products in English.
"He [Ren] came to the company's stand the day before the congress kicked off and asked me where I studied before joining the company. I said New Zealand," Li said, noting that Ren immediately suggested that this newly recruited employee should fly to the UK office and help build a local talent center as part of Huawei's global expansion.
The Shenzhen-based company has experienced a rapid expansion over the past 30 years, and has footprints in more than 170 countries and regions. However, it has been under the spotlight recently as Meng Wanzhou - its chief financial officer - was arrested by the Canadian authorities in Vancouver on December 1 at the request of the US on suspicion of violating US trade sanctions.
Under pressure from the US, more governments in the West have been considering blocking Huawei's core products over security concerns, which is considered as a major setback in its development into a multinational giant.
Former employees of Huawei like Li spent years working overseas, and describe Huawei's corporate culture as a "wolf culture" that helped it become successful.
However, this "wolf culture" also sparked controversy, and might have harmed its current operations.
Arduous journey
When Li started working at Huawei's London office, he started everything from zero. From 2012 to 2014, he had traveled to over 20 countries and spent most of his days in countless hotels and airports, sacrificing much of his spare time to reach out to more foreign telecom carriers and companies.
"As soon as I left Egypt after a business trip to Cairo years ago, the country plunged into civil conflict, and some of my former coworkers were stuck in the hotel. And one time in Nigeria, we were exposed to yellow fever," he told the Global Times, referring to those days at Huawei as an unforgettable memory.
Long working hours on challenging projects with constant business trips to remote areas are common descriptions of the workplace culture at the world's largest telecoms equipment maker.
"Employees at Chinese telecom companies such as Huawei and ZTE endured hardships in an earlier stage of global expansion," Xiang Ligang, a veteran industry analyst close to Huawei, told the Global Times in a recent interview.
Ren, the founder of Huawei, is considered one of the most successful Chinese executives during the country's reform and opening-up. He was influenced by the military theories of Mao Zedong, according to a book on Huawei's development published in April.
Like Mao's military theories, which advocated taking small and medium cities and extensive rural areas first as part of a revolution, Ren started from remote and less developed areas to avoid fierce competition with foreign rivals.
"In some countries in Africa and South America, telecom operators could not afford expensive products. They also lacked staff members for maintenance and operations. This gave more room for companies like Huawei and ZTE, which continuously assigned staff to those areas, to grow," Xiang said.
Huawei beat Ericsson and Nokia in the global mobile infrastructure market in 2017, as the Chinese company took 28 percent of the market share and became the largest mobile infrastructure provider worldwide, according to the latest industry report from IHS.
"In the early days, Huawei assigned most of its senior executives to the overseas market to explore business opportunities," Xiang said, noting that accepting these assignments later became an unwritten rule.
Lingering conflicts
Huawei's corporate culture has a long-lasting influence on its staff. An former employee who worked as a programmer at Huawei's then headquarters in Nanshan district, Shenzhen in the early 2000s said that he worked for Huawei for about one year and a half shortly after he graduated from college but the short experience there has instilled a lasting impact on his future career. He learned to be hardworking, persistent and low-key.
Even after he left Huawei, he sometimes, as if he had been brainwashed, still would read aloud the internal letters written by Ren Zhengfei circulated online to his then-girlfriend-now-wife, partly as a way to woo and impress her, and partly as a way to draw inspiration and strength for himself.
The employee in his early 40s who only spoke on condition of anonymity said he worked long hours from about 10 am to 10 pm every working day at Huawei. When he was tired, he would sleep on the mattress under his desk. "All co-workers did the same, especially the managers," he said. "When a new project kicked in, we would work overnight."
This so-called wolf spirit - a high-pressure workplace - is also known as a "mattress culture," as many of its engineers work so hard that they use blankets and mattresses to sleep at the office. And this military-style management was sometimes rejected by its foreign staff overseas, which led to deeper culture clashes.
"As far as I know about this so-called military style management, it's implementing the corporate policy in the most efficient way," Li said.
For example, when he worked at the company's London office, all the staff there were required to punch in and out every day, following strict discipline.
"Sometimes, foreign employees preferred more flexible working hours, especially when it was bad weather. But the headquarters rejected this request," he said, noting that localizing its business in foreign markets was a bumpy road over some similar daily issues.
For some foreign employees, being part of a growing Chinese company is still remarkable experience.
"I have great respect for what the company has achieved… Huawei's growth and expansion have been amazingly impressive. It was exciting to be a part of that," William Plummer, the company's former US vice president of external affairs, told the Global Times.
Plummer, who is considered an eight-year veteran bridging the Chinese company with the US government, was reportedly laid off by Huawei in April amid rising tension between China and the US.
He noted that the experience with Huawei was sometimes frustrating both "due to the US government's endless assaults on the company, and the company's inability to trust and listen to non-Chinese experts in dealing with such matters."
The company has been going through a tough year in 2018. In January, major US carrier AT&T suspended potential cooperation with Huawei in its mobile business over security concerns.
And the "Five Eyes" nations (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK, US) decided to take aim at all Chinese telecoms equipment companies. Australia slashed its use of Chinese-made products in August, followed by New Zealand and the UK.
In particular, the US government targeted Huawei for years, as American counterintelligence agents and prosecutors began exploring possible cases against its leadership back in 2010, according to the New York Times.
Focus on own work
After Meng's arrest, several of Huawei's Chinese employees shared posts on their social media accounts to support each other, claiming that the company can definitely get through this difficult time.
"It will survive widespread bans in Western countries … and we should focus on our own work," a current employee at the company told the Global Times.
Some observers suggested that Huawei's foreign and Chinese staff, who often hold different attitudes in the workplace, may see its struggles in a different light.
Many Chinese staff work very hard overseas because of Huawei's incentive stock options. "Three years after I joined Huawei, I earned about 300,000 yuan ($43,500) a year, and my bonus was almost the same as my basic salary," said a former Chinese employee "Eric," who worked at Huawei from 2009 to 2013 and spent a year in Mumbai, India.
Working long hours is driven by growing business. Many employees understand that the better financial performance Huawei has, the more profits its employees could share in accordance to employee stock ownership plans.
However, to become a true global tech firm, Huawei will need to diversify its leadership, Plummer suggested.
As the case of Meng has entered the judicial system, some believe that Huawei's situation will get worse, even though there is no proof for the US allegations.
Looking into this dilemma, the company's aggressive and customer-centered business strategies might have helped its take over as much market share as possible.
"But in the long run, as a private company that insists on not going public, its opaque financial status also raises questions over its sustainability," Eric said.
The past year was a tough year for China-US relations.
From Washington DC to Iowa to Seattle, this Global Times reporter
recently talked to over 50 government officials, scholars, reporters,
businessmen and farmers in the US and asked them what they think of the
trade war and China-US relations
China should be confident in this: As long as China
maintains steady peripheral diplomacy, the US can do nothing to China
and Beijing will gain the initiative in diplomacy toward Washington.
Mr
Ren Zhengfei survived Mao Zedong's great famine and went on to build a
telecom giant with US$92 billion in revenue that strikes fear among some
policymakers in the West.PHOTO: EPA-EFE
HONG KONG (BLOOMBERG) - At the sprawling Huawei Technologies campus in Shenzhen, the foodcourt's walls are emblazoned with quotes from the company's billionaire founder and chief executive Ren Zhengfei.
Then there's the research lab that resembles the White House in Washington. Perhaps the most curious thing, though, are three black swans paddling around a lake.
For Mr Ren, a former People's Liberation Army soldier turned telecom tycoon, the elegant birds are meant as a reminder to avoid complacency and prepare for unexpected crisis. That pretty much sums up the state of affairs at Huawei, whose chief financial officer, Ms Meng Wanzhou, who's also Mr Ren's daughter, is in custody in Canada and faces extradition to the United States on charges of conspiracy to defraud banks and violate sanctions on Iran.
The arrest places Huawei in the cross-hairs of an escalating technology rivalry between China and the US, which views the company, a critical global supplier of mobile network equipment, as a potential national security risk.
Hardliners in President Donald Trump's administration are especially keen to prevent Huawei from supplying wireless carriers as they upgrade to 5G, a next-generation technology expected to accelerate the shift to Internet-connected devices and self-driving cars.
Mr Ren is a legendary figure in the Chinese business world. He survived Mao Zedong's great famine and went on to build a telecom giant with US$92 billion (S$126 billion) in revenue that strikes fear among some policymakers in the West. Huawei is the No. 1 smartphone maker in China, and this year eclipsed Apple to become second maker globally, according to research firm IDC.
Though it has a low profile compared with China's Internet giants, Huawei's revenue last year was more than Alibaba Group Holding, Tencent Holdings and and Baidu Inc combined. About half of its revenue now comes from abroad, led by Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
The company's high-speed global expansion has come under fire for years, starting with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US' derailing of an acquisition in 2008. More recently, Australia, New Zealand and the US have blocked or limited the use of Huawei gear.
The arrest and prosecution of Ms Meng in US courts comes amid a far bigger US-China struggle for technology dominance in the decades ahead - and could have huge, and potentially severe, consequences for Huawei. Mr Ren declined an interview request from Bloomberg News.
"It gives Trump a bargaining chip," said Mr George Magnus, an economist at Oxford University's China Centre. "She's the daughter of the CEO, Ren Zhengfei, himself a former PLA officer, and Huawei's alleged dealings with Iran are just the latest in a string of concerns."
An outright ban on buying American technology and components, should it come to that, would deal Huawei a crushing blow. Earlier this year, the Trump administration imposed just such a penalty on ZTE Corp, also a Chinese telecom, and threatened its very survival before backing down.
Both Huawei and ZTE are banned from most US government procurement work.
A full-blown, commercial ban in the US would not only apply to hardware components, but also cut off access to the software and patents of US companies, Mr Edison Lee and Mr Timothy Chau, analysts with Jefferies Securities, wrote in a report.
"If Huawei cannot license Android from Google, or Qualcomm's patents in 4G and 5G radio access technology, it will not be able to build smartphones or 4G/5G base stations," they note.
The company's legal troubles in the US may also spill into other markets.
"Government telecommunication infrastructure requirements are essentially locking out the Chinese supplier in critical growth markets," noted Morningstar Research equity analyst Mark Cash in an e-mail. "Additionally, telecom providers without government imposed restrictions may start limiting their usage of Huawei equipment for their 5G network build-outs."
If there's a Darth Vader in the minds of Chinese national security hawks in Washington worried about China's rising tech power, it's Mr Ren. In China, though, he's feted as a national hero, who rose from humble beginnings to the pinnacle of wealth and status in Chinese society.
His grandfather was a master of curing ham in his village in Zhejiang province, which afforded Mr Ren's father the chance to become the village's first university student, according to a 2001 essay by Mr Ren about his upbringing, which was published on a website linked to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
His father, Mr Ren Moxun, was a Communist Youth League member, who later worked as a teacher and an accountant at a military factory, but who kept up his rebel fervour under the Kuomintang by selling revolutionary books.
After moving to rural Guizhou province, he met his wife Cheng Yuanzhao and gave birth to Mr Ren Zhengfei, the oldest of two sons and five daughters.
The family lived on modest teaching salaries. In one of Mr Ren's speeches, he remembered how his mother read him the story of Hercules, but withheld the ending until he came home with a good report card.
Famine Years
During the Great Leap Forward campaign that started in the late 1950s, a famine came to his home town after Communist Party industrialisation and collectivisation policies went off the rails. Mr Ren recalled in his essay how his mother stuffed into his hand each morning a piece of corn pancake while asking about his homework. His good grades gained him entry to the Chongqing Institute of Civil Engineering and Architecture.
After graduation, he worked in the civil engineering industry until 1974, when he joined the PLA's Engineering Corps as a soldier, and worked on a chemical fibre base in Liaoyang. Huawei says he rose to become deputy director, but did not hold military rank. He does, however, often pepper his speeches with military references.
"Our managers and experts need to act like generals, carefully examining maps and meticulously studying problems," Mr Ren said in a speech posted on a website for Huawei employees.
Mr Ren's Communist Party credentials aren't as deep as his father's. He attended the 12th National Congress of the Communist Party in 1982, and once cited the party's dogma of "a struggle that never ends" when defending the company's tough work hours.
But Mr Ren was a bookworm as a child and was denied acceptance into the Communist Youth League, according to the book Huawei: Leadership, Culture And Connectivity, a book co-authored by David De Cremer, Tian Tao and Wu Chunbo.
He didn't become a Communist Party member in the PLA until late in his military career. However, a 2012 House permanent Select Committee on Intelligence report on Huawei asked why a private company had a Communist Party Committee, which has become common among China's Internet giants.
Mr Ren retired from the army in 1983, and joined his first wife to work at a Shenzhen company involved in the city's special economic zone. It was around then that he had to sell off everything to pay a debt related to a business partner, and lost his job at Shenzhen Nanyou Group, as well as his first marriage, according to Ren Zhengfei And Huawei by author Li Hongwen.
Comeback Play
After a period of sleepless nights while living with family members, Mr Ren saw an opportunity. When China began its economic opening under Deng Xiaoping, the telephone penetration rate was lower than the average rate in Africa, or 120th in the world. He founded Huawei with four partners in 1987 with 21,000 yuan in initial working capital, just above the minimum threshold required under Shenzhen rules.
Huawei started out as a trader of telecom equipment, but the company's technicians studied up on switchboards and were soon making their own. Workers put in long hours in Shenzhen's swampy heat with only ceiling fans. Mr Ren kept up morale with subtle gestures, like offering pigtail soup to workers putting in overtime.
The company became known for its "mattress culture" in which workers would pass out on office mattresses from exhaustion. In 2006, a 25-year-old worker Hu Xinyu, who had made a habit of working into the wee hours and then sleeping at the office, died of viral encephalitis. Some Huawei employees subsequently committed suicide.
The deaths triggered a revision of the company policy on overtime, and the creation of a chief health and safety officer role.
It wasn't the only move Mr Ren made to stabilise morale. He used to pay his workers only half their salaries on payday, but eventually decided to convert the other half of employee salaries and bonuses into shares. The company's 2017 report shows that he has a 1.4 per cent stake, giving him a net worth of US$2 billion.
Wolf Culture
Huawei struggled for market share, with foreign companies using so-called "wolf culture" of aggressive salesmanship, which sometimes materialised in the form of Huawei employees flooding sales events with several times more salespeople than competitors.
The company ventured into international markets in the 2000s, with telecom equipment that was more affordable than products of competitors such as Cisco Systems. Huawei later admitted to copying a small portion of router code from Cisco and agreed to remove the tainted code in a settlement.
Mr Ren since stepped up the company's research and development. Of its 180,000 employees, about 80,000 are now involved in R&D, according to the company's 2017 report, and the company has been known to recruit some of China's top talent out of universities.
The company recently refocused on existing markets after the US government called Huawei a national security threat, and cited concerns over its possible control of 5G technologies. Mr Trump signed a Bill banning government use of Chinese tech including Huawei's, and has even contacted allies to get them to avoid using Huawei equipment.
Collectively owned by its employees, the company is known for a culture of discipline, in which no one, Mr Ren included, has their own driver or flies first class on the company dime. Lately, Mr Ren has been warning employees against using fake numbers or profit to enhance performance. The company set up a data verification team in 2014 within the finance department, which was overseen by Mr Ren's daughter.
In a recent speech posted on the Huawei employee network, however, he called for patience with critics, but rejected foreign intervention. "We will never give in or yield to pressure from outside," he said.
That maxim is going to be soon put to the test by the US Department of Justice.
Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Chinese tech
giant Huawei, who was granted a $7.5 million bail, is unlikely to be
extradited to the US because she is charged for political reasons,
analysts said.
Lost direction? Many companies controlled by Chinese families experience succession problems as the leaders age but their children are not yet ready to take over the business. The fact that most Chinese families have just one child means tough decisions will have to be made when entrepreneurs consider retirement and succession. Hong Ye / for China Daily.
Lenovo Group Ltd may not want to disclose its succession plans but at least it has one. There's a good reason for the secrecy: Revealing who is going to replace whom puts the group at a disadvantage because it will encourage competitors to recruit its best people.
If history is an indicator, power or ownership transition is always difficult and most of the time, it will hurt.
"Chairman Liu (Chuanzhi) and CEO Yang (Yuanqing) realized that Chinese companies struggle with succession planning. The cornerstone for us is creating the next generation of leaders. The board worries about it," Kenneth DiPietro, senior vice-president of human resources at Lenovo, told China Daily.
Lenovo's board of directors, Yang and DiPietro discuss key moves within the organization once every year.
"We even create scenarios of possibilities such as 'what if we move this person to another department, what will happen?' or 'if this person is put here, what sort of results can we expect to see?' This helps us to build up the skills and capacity of certain people," he said.
The process, which was adopted four years ago, speaks volumes, especially when Lenovo is up against other Chinese mainland companies in terms of corporate governance.
Most Chinese chief executive officers and founders are young, the majority of them being in their 40s or 50s. Starting succession planning now doesn't carry as much importance as pursuing bigger profits and expanding into new markets.
The limitation of companies is not access to talent, DiPietro said. "The question is also not always about funding for mergers and acquisitions. As we move into new markets and new technology space, we ask ourselves: 'How are we going to execute with depth?'."
Now, 32 years after China's economic reform, the country's private sector, especially companies that have become globally competitive, will soon face the question of how to hand over to the next generation.
Liu Chuanzhi, Lenovo's chairman, is 67, and so is Ren Zhengfei, founder and president of telecom solutions provider Huawei Group. Zhang Ruimin, founder, chairman and CEO of Haier Group, a consumer electronics producer, is 62. Zong Qinghou, founder, chairman and CEO of Hangzhou Wahaha Group, a beverage maker, is 66.
Referring to succession planning in corporate China, Liu Shengjun, a professor from China Europe International Business School, said: "Usually they don't have a plan or they don't think it's necessary to have a plan. If they have a plan, it's usually poorly hatched."
He said the challenges that corporate China will face or is already facing are that founders are getting old, companies are getting too big to manage and companies are going global.
"Professionals are needed. Leaders with global vision are needed. But Chinese CEOs prefer to work life-long like Li Ka-shing. What they need are assistants rather than successors," he said.
When the 82-year-old Li was suddenly hospitalized in 2006, shares in his listed companies immediately sank.
In a joint study conducted on 250 companies controlled by Chinese families in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore, Joseph Fan, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong found that successions tended to go along with major declines in the stock value of these listed companies.
"If you hold shares valued at 100 yuan ($15) five years before the succession, the value will drop to 40 yuan by the time the company announces a succession," he said.
"It's a very challenging task. Most Asian companies have not done well. Those that have done well took 15 years to plan a succession," Fan said.
More than planning, succession requires founders to look deep at their lives and families too. "How many times they return home to eat, how many mistresses and children out of wedlock they have all these matter," he said.
Even if succession is well planned, the ferocity of the business environment in China posed extra challenges to companies, he said.
A change in local government officials, unforeseen recession or macroeconomic changes, or starting the succession in a hostile business environment can find companies unable to turn against the tide.
When Party member Lou Zhongfu first built Dongyang-based Zhejiang Guangsha Co Ltd in the 1970s into the multi-industry group it is today, he had the foresight to show his two sons the ropes in the hope that they could take over from him when he retires.
However, the listed Zhejiang Guangsha Co Ltd performed poorly over the years, which were predominantly affected by uncontrollable events. When the Dongyang local government changed hands in 2001, 2005 and 2007, even the well-connected Lou had to rebuild 'guanxi' several times over while watching the company's debt rise due to various outstanding infrastructure projects.
Since 1993, Guangsha Group has invested 400 million yuan in the construction of infrastructure such as Dongyang Children's Park, Xishan Park, Guangsha Baiyun Culture City and Tiandu City Huanle All Season Park.
The listed company performed poorly in the stock market over the years and reported losses of 177 million yuan in 2005 and 272 million yuan in 2006. In the same year, the company found itself embroiled in credit scandals over defaults involving large loans.
In 2010, the listed Zhejiang Guangsa started to install a new set of board members and is expecting to turn the corner, backed by an experienced team.
Fan expects fights for control of Chinese mainland companies to be more severe than their other Asian counterparts due to a vacuum in values in current Chinese society.
"We used to say family businesses tend to survive up to the third generation. With poor family governance, businesses in China can only last one generation," he predicted.
He predicts that most of the Chinese entrepreneurs may sell their businesses before retirement and transfer their capital out of the country.
"It's very unfortunate if this were to happen. You can sell assets but not brains. Intellect could not be passed down to the next generation," he said.
In addition, the one child in most Chinese families mean that it will be tough going for entrepreneurs to pass on to family members.
It's understandable that most founders of businesses in Asia and Europe desire to keep them within their families and partly also because of fear of betrayal.
The boardroom battle for control of Gome Electronics is a perfect example of an outsider hired as a professional to run the business who tried to seize control from founder Huang Guangyu, Fan said.
It's not surprising that most founders of companies believe that blood runs thicker than water.
Huawei's President Ren Zhengfei had almost similar experiences too. He promoted Li Yinan, a bright young executive, to be his second in command and potential successor. However, Li left Huawei in 2000 to start a rival company, which was later bought by Huawei in 2006.
For the first time, Huawei began disclosing biographies of its board directors in the group's 2010 annual report in order to be more transparent and "adopt a market-oriented corporate governance structure as part of its growth strategy".
While companies can outlive their founders, founders cannot live for centuries.
Visitors walk past Huawei's booth during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, February 27, 2017
© REUTERS / Eric Gaillard
Huawei Crackdown: China Prepares Law That May Ban US Tech Firms From Its Market − Report 
