Ren Zhengfei, Founder and CEO of Huawei, Conversation with the International Collegiate Programming Competition Foundation and Coaches and Gold Medalists (Full Text)
Huawei proposes a comprehensive intelligent strategy.
Ren
■ Thank you to the President of ICPC Foundation and more than a dozen coaches for bringing 58 gold medalists from various countries to our company for inspection and competition. We will continue to support your global activities and hope that through you we will bring mathematics, physics, biology... When the competition is introduced, we also sponsor and support it.
First, we are about to enter the fourth industrial revolution, the foundation is big computing power, today's young people, tomorrow may be the leaders of the fourth industrial revolution. The aim of our support competition is to build a stage for young people to blossom into life.
Teamwork is not only the basis for winning the competition, but also the basis for survival, and it is also the need for more prosperity for mankind. We need to work closely with each other, everyone comes together, inspires and squeezes each other, and new science and technology will burst out. This time, elites from 25 countries gathered together, we got to know each other, and we had a platform for common exchanges. Coaches and students, students and students, teams and teams can inspire each other, which may leave a fire, a spark, and young people bring the fire back to the motherland to light the fire of their own country. New science and technology will certainly create more social wealth, eliminate poverty, improve human life, and take the road of common prosperity.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is magnificent, and its scale is unimaginable. Today's young people are the leaders of the future era of big computing power, human society has great expectations for you, and the artificial intelligence revolution in twenty or thirty years will definitely see you shine brightly.
2. Huawei has always adhered to the principle of discovering and developing talents, but never monopolizing talents. Adhere to openness and embrace talents from all over the world. The development of the world is inseparable from the progress of technology and the exchange of talents, and faster speed and better talents are the basis of national prosperity. Huawei is willing to work with academia to cultivate outstanding talents in the information field, but it will never monopolize talents. After Huawei's training, learning, and growth, these talents will return to their motherlands in the future, which is also conducive to the revitalization of the information industry in various countries.
3. For the competition, we will support the development of long-term stability and sponsor the organization of global and regional competitions. Huawei is willing to sponsor ICPC coaches and participants to come to China for exchanges. Huawei's funding of the competition is not for Huawei's purpose. We must not only insist, but also increase our sponsorship of such events.
Support the holding of future ICPC global competitions in China, and invite outstanding players and coaches to visit China and see more. For example, Beijing, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Guizhou..., you can also go to Xinjiang, Tibet and other border provinces to feel, and some small counties are also very beautiful, it is worth visiting to understand China's industrial development and urban construction; Take the high-speed train and experience the speed of China's development; Drink coffee, eat barbecue, and feel the Chinese food and cultural atmosphere.
In addition to supporting or co-organizing global software competitions, we also support competitions in other disciplines, such as information, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, neural networks... In these disciplines, young people gradually begin to support and stimulate their interest in scientific research, thereby promoting the cultivation of talents in basic science.
4. We will open up campuses around the world to support ICPC competitions held on Huawei campuses, and also open R&D zones to everyone to invite young talents to experience Huawei's working environment.
Huawei is willing to open technical problems in the information field, internships, and research opportunities to outstanding young people around the world, help them get in touch with Huawei's device-and-edge cloud platform, and participate in the basic and cutting-edge exploration of climbing Mount Everest. It can also be through a variety of channels, such as organizing difficult challenge competitions, open seminars of Huangdanian Tea House, etc., so that young people can understand the challenges of industrial reality and win awards in breakthroughs, so as to save work-study time for better learning, and through this process, young people can grow better.
Live Q&A session:
Russian ICPC coach: I have been an ICPC champion coach for 10 years. Many companies support talent development, but may be less willing to support large-scale competitions such as ICPC because they do not have a direct relationship with the business. Since Huawei has set up a local resource center to support the competition, everything has changed a lot. I found that Huawei is not only about recruiting talent, but also about helping local communities to develop talent. We received great support from the competition department, and 25 people from my champion team joined various departments of Huawei. I want to ask, why does Huawei think that supporting the competition is so important for business development, or something that must be done?
Mr. Ren: Russia is a great country. Catherine introduced Western painting, music, philosophy..., and at the same time, China's Qing Dynasty followed the path of isolation, so Russia industrialized earlier than China. On this basis, basic theoretical research has been valued by the former Soviet Union, and great achievements have been made, such as Zhukovsky, Mendeleev, Lomonosov, Popov... For example, in the sixties of the former Soviet Union, a scientist Peter Uffimchev first discovered that the diamond facet had radio reflection function, but the former Soviet Union studied for half a day and felt that this thing was useless, why? Because it could not be done, it made no sense, so the mathematician's paper was approved for publication. But after the Americans saw it, it took 20 years to make the F22 stealth aircraft.
Although Huawei is a commercial company, it is not a mercenary company. For example, we are sincerely sponsoring the competition, not to acquire talent, and we will increase the sponsorship of the competition in the future. Just had coffee with Chairman Bill, we talked about how we hope to use you to combine information, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, neural networks... can lead to China. We can all support us if it doesn't matter to us. As Chairman Bill said, science and technology should be used to create more social wealth, eliminate poverty, and take the road of common prosperity.
Sun Teck (Associate Professor of the National University of Singapore, IOI member, Chairman of the Singapore Information Olympiad, former ICPC Team Coach): First of all, I would like to thank Huawei for its strong support in training our students and participating in the competition. Secondly, I would like to introduce two other competition organizations: one is IOI (International Informatics Olympiad), which is the downstream partner of ICPC, mainly to discover and cultivate talents. IOI encountered some problems, more than 90 countries joined, but still Cambodia, Laos, Brunei, Myanmar and many other countries have not joined, these countries need our support, which is also in line with Huawei's vision of spreading information technology and connecting the world. Countries that have joined the IOI also face some problems, such as not having enough resources to train students and therefore rarely winning awards, so they do not have the opportunity to participate in the ICPC, hoping that Huawei can help the development of the IOI. The other is the EGOI (European Women's Informatics Olympiad), which is dedicated to women, which is a good trend. Today, there is only one female student out of 58, accounting for less than 2%, and I hope Huawei will support how to achieve gender balance in the competition.
Mr. Ren: When Singapore was founded, Lee Kuan Yew set two most important policies, the first was that the national language was English, which connected a very large world; The other language is Chinese, Mandarin and simplified characters to be precise, thus connecting the two worlds. Today, when we conduct a computer race, we must unify the language of computers, unify the standards of the era of big computing power, and eliminate the barriers and barriers between us through our drinking coffee and communicating with us.
This time we have connected the 25 participating countries, and the spark can ignite the plain and ignite the fire of your country. Welcome coaches and young people, feel free to come to China, you have added many of our colleagues and friends to communicate and keep in touch. Today, you young people are our permanent partners. In addition to ICPC, we will also support IOI, as well as competitions in mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, neural networks and other disciplines, and jointly promote the cultivation of talents in basic science.
Meza (Professor of Computer Science and Director of ICPC Latin America, Polytechnic University of Santa Maria, Chile): I'm very proud that one Latin American competitor won this championship, and of course we have a lot of great students. Perhaps because there are relevant restrictions in the Americas, there are not many job opportunities in Huawei, does Huawei welcome Latin American talents to intern, for example, will there be some systematic support when coming to China?
Mr. Ren: Whether it is outstanding talents from Latin America or other countries, we welcome to Huawei. We have an online platform called "Huang Danian Tea House", where students can contact relevant experts to communicate, and if the experts feel that you should come to China to intern face-to-face, it is okay. To take a simple example, who invented the 5G that the United States is fighting with national efforts? Who invented the Polar code? It is Professor Aikan from Turkey. He published a mathematical paper more than a decade ago, and two weeks after publication, we found this article, and organized thousands of scientists and experts to study, analyze and engineer, and made today's world-leading 5G. So, where is there no grass in the world? There are good people everywhere, most likely in the United States, of course. Where geniuses come from, no one knows, welcome to communicate with our experts on the Internet.
Professor of Peking University and Director of ICPC East Asia Regional Competition: In the past ten years, it has been sponsored by American companies, but since Huawei began to sponsor global events a few years ago, we are very proud that Chinese companies can also come forward to sponsor global education activities. What are your expectations for higher education?
Mr. Ren: Not only should we continue to fund activities, but I think the funding is not enough, and we must continue to strengthen it.
Higher education should be tailored to aptitude, and should not always emphasize uniform teaching materials; Primary and secondary education, the slogan "Don't lose at the starting line", I think is incorrect, you can't let excellent students wait. China's education must be revitalized, Huawei has been formed by more than 7,000 high-nosed foreign scientists and experts, more than 13,800 international students, most of whom are doctors, plus more than 100,000 outstanding Chinese students in recent years, forming a research and development team, which has reversed the difficulties. If the United States closes some disciplines in the future and does not allow Chinese students to study abroad, then we can only obtain talents from Chinese universities, and universities cannot be homogenized.
French player: There is a scientific study called useless research, and it is said that it is useless because it is not known where it is applied in the short term, and this kind of research may be mainly done by universities rather than companies, but in fact, this kind of research is very important in the long run. What does Huawei think about this kind of useless research? Will Huawei invest in this kind of research?
Mr. Ren: What is science? The unknown is called science. Now everyone knows that the degree of liberalization in scientific research in the United States is relatively high. Before World War II, the basic research of the United States was very weak, basically relying on European theories to support its industry, aviation, aerospace... All from Europe. After the end of World War II, the United States found itself running behind Europe, because the United States basically did not have much basic theoretical accumulation.
American scientist Vannevard Bush, wrote a book called "Science: Endless Frontiers", proposing that the United States should study seemingly useless and distant things, that is, study a lot of "useless" science, and the United States has flourished in basic science since World War II. After the 90s, a professor at Princeton University in the United States called Stokes wrote a book "Basic Science and Technological Innovation: Pasteur's Quadrant", about how to gather "useless" science into useful through the exploration of applied traction science. In this digital age, the United States dominates the world, and we have jumped on the digital train of the times.
In today's era, the boundaries of science and technology are getting closer and closer, and the time for science to be transformed into technology is getting shorter and shorter, if we wait until the university fully studies the theory and understands, and then we go to technological development, there is no first-mover advantage and no competitiveness. So we ourselves have begun to attach importance to basic theoretical research, investing about 3-5 billion US dollars in basic theoretical research every year. We work alongside universities on these seemingly useless sciences.
Brazilian player: Because of US sanctions, Huawei has encountered a lot of difficulties in recent years, I want to know how Huawei responds and is it ready to be sustainable in the international market? And should relations with the United States be restored, or can relations with the United States continue to develop without restoration?
Mr. Ren: US sanctions are indeed pressure for us, but pressure is also motivation. Before the crackdown, we built the basic platform in the United States. After the US crackdown, we were forced to switch our platform to another platform, which was difficult. After four years of tackling tough problems and the hard work of 200,000 employees, we have basically established our own platform, and the platform of the United States may not operate on the same basis in the future, but the interconnection is certain.
Bangladesh: Will there be a chance for ICPC participants to join Huawei? What are the future career opportunities?
Mr. Ren: Our competition activities are completely academic and have nothing to do with joining Huawei. If you are willing to join Huawei, you can apply to our local human resources department, and we welcome outstanding talents from all over the world to join Huawei. With a population of nearly 200 million, the West had judged it to be the next newly industrialized nation. Now Bangladesh has excellent talents like you, which will slowly guide the country to faster development. But what is the basis for faster development? It's speed. I hope you will take the lead in bringing what you have learned back to Bangladesh and take the country's development to a new speed.
ICPC Mexico & Central America Regional Director: Some technology companies such as Oracle and Cisco have set up R&D centers in Mexico. I would like to ask if Huawei has any plans to set up R&D facilities in Mexico or Latin America in the future?
Mr. Ren: For the layout of overseas R&D, you need to ask the director of our 2012 laboratory, and we will bring your opinion back. Mexico has a splendid civilization, and modern people have not fully understood Mayan culture. Mexican civilization has very early origins, and we believe that this civilization will be present in all countries of the world. We may also consider there, but again depending on the specific deployment of the 2012 lab. In the past, our deployment was centered on the United States and distributed all over the world, but then the United States attacked us, and we took Europe as the center, gradually took Eurasia as the center, and Latin America went less. Latin America is also regulated by the United States, and we need to further evaluate the state of regulation.
Russian player: Huawei has so many people, how do you manage it to operate efficiently?
Mr. Ren: At the beginning of the company, I visited the United States to understand their management with IBM as the main body. First, IBM's enterprise goal management is to serve customers, and everything must be customer-centric, so that the enterprise has an overall sense of direction, and this sense of direction unites employees. Second, learning IBM's implementation of IPD is how to join the market and service representatives in R&D, IPD is a forward-looking leading organization to guide R&D forward. He then learned IFS, ISC finance and supply chain management from IBM. In this way, the process system is clear. The most important thing is the distribution issue, we will study where Huawei's wealth is and how it is distributed. We believe that wealth is in the heads of employees, and how much weight is weighed by the head, and how much you will be divided. Our distribution method is divided into three for labor and one for capital.
Icelandic player: I don't know if it's real or not, I heard that you are a fruit fan?
Mr. Ren: Because my daughter is studying in the United States, if she doesn't use apples, it will be very inconvenient for her to go to class. Let's not be exclusive, we often explore why Apple's products are doing well, and we can also see the gap between us and Apple. It is very happy to have a teacher, to have the opportunity to learn, to have the opportunity to make comparisons. If I'm a fruit fan from these perspectives, it's not too much. ■