Huawei Senior Vice President Chen Lifang said: Paratroopers are born to be surrounded

Hello, new colleagues! Welcome to join Huawei at this time. I know that everyone is very concerned about some of Huawei's current hot topics. As an employee who has worked in the company for 25 years, I would like to share my thoughts and opinions on the current situation based on my personal understanding of Huawei and my experience of Huawei's spirit.

The development of human society has always been problem-driven

Before the birth of the earliest Egyptian and Sumerian civilizations, local people mainly lived a hunting and gathering life. With the changes in the entire air flow and climate, drought became the biggest environmental and survival problem for people. What to do? So people migrated to the Mesopotamian Basin and the Nile River and settled down. From hunting and gathering to settled agriculture, this is a completely different way of life. But when facing survival problems, humans dared to change themselves to adapt to the environment. This is the source of the oldest civilization of mankind. The same is true for our Chinese civilization. According to legend, when the descendants of Yan Emperor and Huang Emperor lived in the Yellow River Basin, they encountered flooding of the Yellow River. Our ancestors began to build water conservancy projects and dredge the Yellow River, which enabled the continuation and development of Chinese civilization.

Therefore, from the perspective of the development history of human society, social progress is driven by problems. If humans take the initiative to respond to and actively solve the problems and difficulties they encounter, they will be able to create a new civilization and promote better progress and development of mankind.

In the face of such historical logic, as a commercial company, we also have the confidence and determination to face any difficulties and problems encountered in the development process.

Huawei has grown amid internal and external challenges

People often talk about "Huawei's winter". The "winter" at that time was not only about difficulties in the external market, but also about the loss of internal talent and technology. At that time, some foreign funds entered China to start companies, offering good conditions to attract talents, and poached many people. At the same time, some R&D managers of Huawei took the company's product codes and other commercial secrets, technical materials and employees to start businesses outside. Overall, that period was quite dangerous for the company, and it was truly "internal and external troubles."

However, I think no matter how big the difficulties are, they are not as big as the difficulties encountered at the beginning of entrepreneurship. Huawei was a "three-no" company at that time, with no funds, no technology, and no background. Mr. Ren started the business with a few people. The entrepreneurial environment at that time was very difficult. Huawei started as an agent to sell products of a Hong Kong company, but later the other party cancelled the agency and suddenly stopped supplying. Later, we encountered funding problems in our own R&D, vicious competition in the market development, cross-cultural problems in the process of globalization, etc., but we have overcome them all with determination.

In the process of dealing with these internal and external difficulties and challenges, Huawei has gradually developed its corporate culture and values, and has been forced to form a sustainable development mechanism. First, it is a collective leadership and governance mechanism based on the premise of adhering to common values. Second, it is a development mechanism that focuses on strategic opportunities to build a sustainable leading advantage. Third, it is a distribution mechanism that adheres to the principle of more work, more pay and uses reasonable value distribution to stimulate greater value creation. At the same time, because we were born in China, we must always hold ourselves to strict standards, especially in the process of globalization, abiding by laws and regulations, and operating in compliance, which is the cornerstone of Huawei's development. All of these are derived from the summary of challenges and hardships, and also support Huawei's continuous success.

Paratroopers are born to be surrounded

As for the series of political suppression actions against Huawei by the United States in recent times, I think the company can cope with it. This is not the first time, nor will it be the last time. For more than a decade, the United States has never stopped suppressing Huawei. In 2012, the US Congress even launched a special investigation against Huawei. However, we have seen that most Western countries have not followed the pace of the United States. Western public opinion has not been one-sided, and has objectively reported Huawei's value and contributions many times. In fact, external pressure has once again given us an opportunity to inspire our will, strengthen our density, consolidate our unity, and make us more capable of fighting.

This also makes us realize that in the process of continuous development and strengthening, we must be fully prepared mentally and correctly understand the challenges and difficulties we face. Only in this way can we take effective response measures and methods based on scientific cognition, and in the unpredictable future, even if extreme changes occur, we can remain calm and carry forward the past.

There is a famous saying in Band of Brothers: "Paratroopers are born to be surrounded", because paratroopers are the troops at the forefront. Similarly, if we want to pursue leadership, the road to success is also full of thorns. Therefore, we must have the determination and confidence to coexist with challenges and excellence, keep learning and innovating, and absolutely dare to try and explore, be able to endure hardships, fatigue, and fall, not care about success or failure at a moment, and have the courage to hold our heads high in difficulties and hardships, and be indomitable in the face of thorns.

During World War II, an Il-2 fighter plane was beaten like a sieve and riddled with bullet holes, but it still insisted on flying and finally returned safely. Therefore, we say that without scars, there is no way to have thick skin. Heroes have always suffered many hardships!

Firmly believe that the earth is round, and you will be able to create history

At the end of the 15th century, Spain and Portugal had emerged as two powerful countries in Western Europe and were eager to trade with China and India in the East, because porcelain, silk and spices from the East were very popular in Europe. However, the land route to the East was blocked by the powerful Ottoman Empire and Italy.

Relying on their belief in the theory of the spherical earth and their yearning for Eastern countries, the navigators firmly believed that the earth was round and that they could reach the destination by sailing westward around the earth, even though they had no accurate maps and did not know the exact locations of China and India. After two centuries of voyages and explorations, they finally created the era of great ocean navigation.

The United States has launched a series of political suppression against Huawei, but we firmly believe that we can survive it, and we are deeply convinced that we can even reach a new level.

Because we have chosen to work hard for the development of science and technology and to contribute to the progress of human society. This is our ideal, a universal value choice, a pillar of justice, and a great mission call. Human society is on the road of scientific development, which is also the well-being and dignity of mankind. Therefore, as long as we continue to devote our collective wisdom and scientific spirit to this, we believe that we can gain more power and support from justice and kindness. This is our belief.

In Huawei's 2019 New Year's speech, it was said that extreme unfairness would push us to become the world's number one. But how can we become the world's number one? I learned and summarized two points from Ren's speech. The first is that the direction is roughly correct, and the second is that the organization must be full of vitality.

Huawei has made a judgment that human society will definitely enter a world of intelligent interconnectedness. So how can we realize this world of intelligent interconnectedness? We think that we must first connect everything, in a simple and transparent way. This is the correct development direction that Huawei has determined.

In addition, we also talk about investing in multiple paths and stages. Regarding multiple paths, for example, during the Age of Exploration, there were Columbus and Magellan who went west to try to circumnavigate the earth and reach India, and there were Dias and Vasco da Gama who went south and then east. Huawei's multiple paths are the same, and there are different investment methods on different paths. Regarding multiple stages, there are Columbus and Dias who explored in the early stages, and Magellan and Vasco da Gama who explored in the later stages. At Huawei, there is the A-stage team that makes scientific prototypes, the B-stage team that makes commercial prototypes, and the C-stage team that makes multiple scenarios.

Once the direction is roughly correct, organization is the key factor. Huawei has entered a more standardized management era and has gradually become a particularly mature and fully functional organization, which has greatly helped the company achieve a revenue of 100 billion US dollars in 2018. This stable and orderly organization is sustainable and replicable.

In the past two years, we have also started to make some organizational management changes, which we define as "managing heaven and earth". "Heaven" refers to values, and "earth" refers to the public service platform. We provide a very mature and easy-to-use platform while maintaining unified values, so that all businesses between "heaven and earth" can flourish according to their characteristics.