Ren Zhengfei, founder and CEO of Huawei, has pronounced judgments on different occasions and more than once: his daughter Meng Wanzhou will not take over.
The heaviest denial occurred in an interview in February 2019. He looked at the BBC reporter, "She will never be a successor because she has no technical background".
Four years later, things changed. In the six months from today, Meng Wanzhou will serve as Huawei's rotating chairman for the first time. Huawei made it clear in its official statement that she was the company's top leader during this period.
The woman, who wears sophistication and high heels on every occasion, was once described by The New York Times as Huawei's "façade" and "an elegant and professional face in the tech giant that has long been opaque to the outside world." When she first appeared as CFO a decade ago, she was seen as evidence of Huawei's attempt to become open.
Now, she has jumped out of the label of "founder's daughter" and "Huawei façade" and has begun to truly participate in controlling this giant ship and facing the storm.
Text | Shinno
Editor | Zhao Lei Jin Zao
Operations | Chestnuts
Succession
On March 31, in the large lecture hall of Huawei's Shenzhen headquarters, a large crystal chandelier hung high. At the annual report press conference, Meng Wanzhou, dressed in a black suit, responded positively to the succession issue for the first time.
"The corporate governance charter has made it clear that we are the successor of the system, the successor of the system, not the successor of an individual," she said, adding that Huawei is a collective leader and will not tie the fate of the company to one person.
This response almost overturned Ren Zhengfei's previous statement.
After Meng Wanzhou was detained in Canada in December 2018, Ren Zhengfei, who has always kept a low profile, gave intensive interviews to dozens of Chinese and foreign media, stating over and over again that Meng Wanzhou would not become Huawei's successor. When asked if Meng Wanzhou would reassess her future development in the company because of her experience in Canada, Ren Zhengfei did not let up, "come back or be her CFO."
As a result, the CFO continued to serve, and at the same time, Meng Wanzhou was also promoted. On April 1, 2022, at the age of 50, she succeeded Guo Ping as the youngest rotating chairman of Huawei in history, alongside Xu Zhijun and Ken Hu, and officially took up duty today a year later.
In Huawei's current organizational structure, the position of chairman is more formal, and more symbolic duties such as serving as a legal person are performed. The rotating chairman is the center of power, and is the highest responsible person for the company's operation and crisis management during the rotation period, and is responsible for the survival and development of the company.
But the more striking face on the board is Ren. Until now, at the age of 78, he has held the role of director and CEO. Importantly, he also retains a veto that can be inherited.
According to Ren Zhengfei, as early as ten years before the rotating chairman was still called the rotating CEO, he "actually handed over the shift", did not exercise decision-making power in Huawei's operation and management, only exercised veto power, but in his view, the veto power is like the "sword of Damocles", easy not to use, until 2015 "did not veto a thing." In the future, this power can be inherited, but it will not be his own family, but will be handed over to the company's leadership team on a rotational basis.
▲ On the afternoon of March 31, 2023, Huawei's 2022 Annual Report Conference was held in Shenzhen. Meng Wanzhou spoke at the press conference. Photo / Live broadcast of the press conference
From "Princess" to "Hero"
Ren Zhengfei previously said that Meng Wanzhou would not take over, citing the fact that she did not have what it took to become a leader.
He believes that Huawei's successor must have technical insight and judgment of future technology and customer needs. Meng Wanzhou is "excellent in management", but as a leader, she must be able to show the way to the company like a beacon and see the future ten or twenty years from now, and she has "shortcomings" in this regard.
It is difficult to say whether Meng Wanzhou's lack of technical background can be made up in just a few years. Even Ren Zhengfei once revealed that she taught herself five or six homework during her time in Canada, "preparing to study for a 'doctor in prison'". But judging from the results, this special experience did change some things.
In the Chinese context, the public often refers to the children of entrepreneurs as "princes" and "princesses."
Meng Wanzhou is not exempt from vulgarity. For a long time, she has been known as "Huawei Princess", and even the office building where the financial system is located is called "Princess Building" by internal employees. Compared to the work and position of the CFO, the identity of the "boss's daughter" seems to be more prominent.
But this time back from Canada, her image in the hearts of many people has added a layer of "hero" filter. On the evening of September 25, 2021, the neon lights of Ping An Finance Center, the tallest building in Shenzhen, stood out in the night sky, with the words "Welcome Meng Wanzhou Home". After 1,028 days of residential surveillance in Canada, Ms. Meng finally landed in Shenzhen, choking up and greeting the people who came to greet her.
A month later, on October 25, Meng Wanzhou returned to work at Huawei's headquarters, and in the video transmitted back from the scene, the company's employees could not hide their excitement, surrounded her with three layers inside and three layers outside, and from time to time people shouted "goddess".
During the long period of "confinement", Meng Wanzhou's colleagues at Huawei built a "tall building" for her at the company's voice forum. Under a letter from Meng Wanzhou to all Huawei people on May 9, 2019, 50 pages and more than 3,000 messages were written with shouts and wishes for "Come on Mr. Meng" and "Late Boat Return Early".
On the homepage of the forum, there is still a picture of an airplane, with the text "No scars, where is the skin rough and thick, since ancient heroes have many tribulations" - Meng Wanzhou's experience in Canada was once described by Ren Zhengfei as a "tribulation". In his eyes, his daughter, who was shackled to her ankles and lost her freedom, was like a bomber in World War II, beaten to the point of being riddled and still insisting on flying, "If she returns, she is a hero, and I estimate that she may become a hero in the future."
▲ On August 18, 2021, local time, Vancouver, Canada, Meng Wanzhou attended the extradition hearing held in the Supreme Court of British Columbia. Photo / Visual China
Exploits
The scars in the "heroic" narrative are sacrifices made for the collective.
Some people think of the famous article "Touching the Dragon Says Empress Dowager Zhao" in "Warring States Policy", the son of Prince Zhao Chang'anjun who was designated as a hostage by the State of Qi - in the view of the minister Touching Long, even if the prince has a noble status, rich fortune, and no meritorious achievements, it is difficult to gain a foothold in the dynasty a hundred years after his mother Empress Dowager Zhao. But when he pledged to the Qi State and sacrificed his freedom to save the troops and make merits for the Zhao State, no one was unconvinced.
But fame is ultimately illusory. Meng Wanzhou may need something more solid to take the throne.
Cheng Cheng, who has worked in Huawei Finance for nearly ten years, feels that in the heart of his boss (Ren Zhengfei), the company may be more important than his daughter's future, "That is his life's work, if Mr. Meng is ready, I think (succession) will be a matter of course, if Mr. Meng's own business things are not up, trust will not make this decision."
An example that can be used as a reference is Meng Wanzhou's younger brother Ren Ping.
As early as around 2010, rumors that Ren Zhengfei intended to let his son Ren Ping take over the baton spread, and Huawei's official refutation of rumors was useless. That winter, Caixin founder Hu Shuli asked Ren Zhengfei, who "told his son's story of growth with some excitement, and his hobbies, ambitions and characteristics were impossible." Later, after Meng Wanzhou became CFO, he also specifically clarified that Ren Ping went to Huawei's Smartcom as the general manager, which had nothing to do with Huawei's main business.
Liu Ping, former vice president of Huawei, compared the siblings in "Huawei's Past". When he went to Huawei, Meng Wanzhou, who graduated from middle school, worked as a receptionist at the front desk of the company, "I knew at a glance that it was President Ren's daughter, who looked like President Ren", was easy-going, without the shelf of the boss's daughter, and the focus was on being very diligent, working and studying at the same time. And Ren Ping was "not as diligent as his sister", once called Ren Zhengfei, "Dad, to tell you the good news, I scored 60 points in one of my classes this exam."
When Meng Wanzhou first entered Huawei, she was not sheltered by the identity of the "boss's daughter". In 1993, at the age of 21, she started with the most basic "handywork", first sitting at the front desk as a telephone operator, and always dialing the wrong number when she was in a panic. Later, I got into contact with finances, went to Moscow on a business trip, and when I exchanged dozens of bundles of rubles for US dollars, I changed 100 dollars less.
After stumbling along the way, she became CFO in 2011 after serving as the company's international accounting director, chief financial officer of Huawei Hong Kong, and president of the accounting management department.
According to Huawei's official account, since 2003, Meng Wanzhou first established a globally unified Huawei financial organizational structure, processes, systems, and IT platform, and later implemented the IFS (Integrated Financial Service) reform in Huawei's global market, leading the establishment of five Huawei accounting sharing centers, covering and supporting Huawei's global accounting work, and promoting the completion of Huawei's global centralized payment center in Shenzhen.
The significance of the establishment of the financial system is to operate the throughput of this huge empire with higher efficiency and lower cost. In the 2017 New Year, Meng Wanzhou looked back on Huawei Finance's achievements with pride: "Accounting has realized a 7X24-hour circular checkout mechanism, making full use of the time difference advantage of our shared center, and under the same data platform and the same billing rules, the shared center relays the checkout operation, which greatly shortens the calendar days for checkout." The 24-hour system automatically schedules the checkout data on a rolling basis, and the 170+ systems are seamlessly connected, processing 40 million rows of data per hour, and the sharing center 'never sets' circular checkout, supporting the timely acquisition of business data of more than 130 representative offices at the fastest speed. ”
The system saves people's time, and Huawei's finances have more important tasks.
Cheng Cheng, who has experienced the whole process, said that Ren Zhengfei and Meng Wanzhou's requirements are that all finances must understand the business and "be able to rush forward to the customer", whether it is negotiating with customers, optimizing contract terms, or running banks, focusing on financing key projects, these may be the work of account managers and product managers in other companies, Huawei's finance must be done, and many BP positions are also backed by operational performance KPIs.
In his view, this is closely related to Huawei's internal culture of paying attention to combat merits, "the so-called battle merit is whether you can get customers", and it is good to say that all rewards and promotions have been done. On the other hand, if the customer does not get it done and the goal is not achieved, "it is very embarrassing." In Cheng Cheng's view, Huawei's style is highly consistent with the entire company, "the goal must be completed, otherwise you will be killed."
What is a competent CFO? Ren Zhengfei said, "If the CEO steps down, the CFO can take over as CEO at any time", so that he is qualified. This sentence is precisely Meng Wanzhou's current situation.
▲ Figure / Visual China
At the helm in the storm
After the thunder of sanctions struck, Huawei fell into the darkest moment.
On March 28, 2022, Meng Wanzhou made her first public appearance after returning to China, Huawei handed over an annual report with revenue falling by 28.6%, an important reason is that the supply chain continues to be under pressure, encountered multiple rounds of US sanctions, Huawei's mobile phone, PC and other businesses have been greatly affected.
In August of the same year, when the summer heat had not yet dissipated, Ren Zhengfei announced that the entire company's business policy would shift from the pursuit of scale to the pursuit of profit and cash flow, "taking survival as the main program, and shrinking and closing the entire marginal business", which made many people gasp for a lot of breath.
"We were in the middle of a storm, but we continued to run in the rain." At the annual report meeting on March 31, Xu Zhijun, who is about to end this term of rotation, set the tone for Huawei's 2023. Although at the end of last year, he said that Huawei was exiting "crisis mode", but the Huawei handed over to Meng Wanzhou still has to travel through the storm.
The most watched is the core numbers on the earnings report. Revenue barely changed, but net profit fell 68.7% to $35.6 billion. This is not even more dismal after deducting the continuing income from the sale of subsidiaries last year.
Looking specifically at each sector, throughout 2022, it will contribute more than 40% of the operator's business, and the growth will almost stagnate; Revenue from Huawei's terminal business, including hardware such as mobile phones, fell 12% to 214.5 billion yuan. Only enterprise revenue, including cloud computing and ICT hardware, was a bright spot in Huawei's annual report, which increased by 30% year-on-year to 133.2 billion yuan, and the contribution rate continued to increase.
On the eve of the release of the annual report, Huawei's new board of directors was elected, and more new faces entered the center of power. Most of the new members on the board of directors are leaders in Huawei's core business, involving HUAWEI CLOUD, digital energy, software and hardware, ICT solutions, HR, and supply.
Huawei hopes to mobilize crack troops and strengthen the heart of "fighting more food" on the table. The problems pushed to Huawei's management are only many. Chip inventory is close to running out, some reporters urged these old talks, but it is also the most concerned question - when can Huawei mobile phones use 5G chips? Xu Zhijun was reluctant to say more, and directly said: It depends on when the US Department of Commerce licensed, licensed, Huawei immediately completed 5G, and can also make folding screens.
Before officially taking the helm, Meng Wanzhou also frequently appeared on various occasions and entered the role of rotating chairman in advance.
On February 7 this year, she led a team to visit two central enterprises in Beijing, first signed a strategic cooperation agreement with China National Building Materials Group, the world's largest comprehensive building materials industry group, and then visited China Huaneng Group, hoping that Huaneng would "give Huawei" a "topic" and that the two sides could continue to deepen cooperation in digitalization, coal, new energy and other fields - in the past, these occasions to visit heavyweight customers were generally Ren Zhengfei himself; Now, the heavy responsibility of expanding Huawei's circle of friends is given to Meng Wanzhou.
To some extent, with Meng Wanzhou's current influence, she can already stand alone. Although Huawei's most powerful person is still Ren Zhengfei, Meng Wanzhou, who has entered the highest decision-making circle, is not only Ren Zhengfei's daughter, she can already represent Huawei.
Not long after Ren Zhengfei's "cold breath theory" was said, she returned to her alma mater, Duyunyi Middle School in Guizhou, in the beginning of the school season last September, and made a footnote to the general direction of the shrinking front through a speech, "The future is not saved, the future depends on continuous investment and the continuous struggle of talents." In other words, Huawei still needs talent, and will still invest in attracting talent, but talent must also be able to continue to strive and be responsible for results.
Cheng Cheng's observation is that Meng Wanzhou not only continued Ren Zhengfei's ideas in her external statements, but also formed her own style. Ren Zhengfei likes to use very popular and crude words to tell employees a deep truth, but Meng Wanzhou seems to plan to implement Xiao Qingxing to the end, almost every speech and article will quote ancient poetry, or spread large paragraphs of arrangement, crepe.
Golems and shadows
In an interview with Euronews in November 2019, Ren was asked again, "Who would you like to see to replace you in the future?"
"If we talk about handover, in fact, we have completed it for many years, not now." His answer sounded a little tired, "The company is always running, and I'm just a puppet hanging in the middle." Don't worry about that."
The role of the "puppet" is understood by him to be in or out, and it does not have much impact on the company. Huawei's management system was learned from IBM, and the other consultant asked Ren Zhengfei a question: management change is ultimately to "kill" you, so that you have no power, do you have this determination? His answer is yes.
But from the actual operation of Huawei, Ren Zhengfei is like a shadow, everywhere.
The company was in a critical moment, and he rushed to the front line of public opinion. In the first 20 years of Huawei's founding, Ren Zhengfei was extremely low-key, hardly giving media interviews, and did not appear for the first time until 2013. But in 2019, after Meng Wanzhou was arrested, the then 75-year-old asked Huawei's public relations department to arrange more than 30 interviews for him, and the text was compiled into more than 200,000 words. Among them, the proportion of media from the United States, the party sanctioned by Huawei, is the highest.
He told reporters that this was done because "I want to stand up in times of crisis and do some proper publicity for Huawei."
And when there is a divergence in internal strategy, it is he who comes out to hit the nail on the head. In November 2020, Ren Zhengfei issued a document emphasizing that "Huawei does not build cars", and at the same time, the wording was very harsh, saying, "Who will make suggestions to build cars in the future, interfere with the company, can be transferred from the post, and look for another job", and indicated at the bottom of the article that this article will take effect from the date of publication and will be valid for 3 years.
On March 31, a few months before the last document expired, Ren Zhengfei issued a decision-making announcement again, emphasizing that "Huawei does not build cars" and "is valid for 5 years", and strictly requires that "Huawei" or "HUAWEI" should not appear on the publicity and appearance of the whole vehicle, and "Huawei Qianjie" and "HUAWEI AITO" are not allowed.
This decision directly pointed to the Huawei Smart Car Business Department, which is responsible for the brand, as early as February, many promotional materials of the company have already carried the word "HUAWEI". Yu Chengdong, the person in charge, seemed a little angry, and ran to the relevant posts of the voice forum that night to leave a message: "This era has changed, and this will only make it more difficult for us!" In a few years, everyone will understand! Leave it time to check! "After a while, this one disappeared again.
Huawei may be able to leave Ren Zhengfei, but Ren Zhengfei cannot completely abandon Huawei, and Meng Wanzhou still has a long, long way to go before she can really take the helm of Huawei.
▲ Shenzhen, Huawei Group Headquarters. Photo / Visual China
(At the request of the interviewee, Cheng Cheng is a pseudonym)
Resources:
[1] Huawei Voice Community
[2] Value as the guideline: Huawei's financial management outline
[3] 1028 days passed, Meng Wanzhou's 8 sides. People of the Day
[4] Meng Wanzhou declassified the truth about her family and Huawei for the first time.21st Century Business Herald
[5] Meng Wanzhou: From Secretary to Huawei's "Face".New York Times
[6] Mimi Ren Zhengfei. Caixin
[7] Huawei's conquest. Caixin
[8] We compiled 200,000 words of interview transcripts of Ren Zhengfei and found many little secrets. Beijing News, Tencent News
The article is original by Daily People, and infringement must be investigated.
![Ren Zhengfei rarely talks about children: they all rely on their own efforts, and the person I am most sorry for is my children![fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)