When the Chairman and founder of Huawei, Ren Zheng, started in 1987 to establish a small company worth $ 6,600, he did not know that it would grow into a giant in communications around the world and that he would become one of the richest people in the world. His personal wealth is estimated at $1.7 billion, and his company employs 180,000 employees distributed all over the world.
Cheng sometimes tends to isolate, but he recently started speaking to journalists to defend his company, amid increasing pressure on it from the United States and other countries due to security concerns about Huawei's role in building 5G networks around the world. And the nature of the company's relationship with the Chinese government.
It is expected that the company's annual profits for this year will reach 125 billion dollars, equivalent to 96 pounds sterling.
"We'd rather stop Huawei's business than harm the interests of our customers," Cheng said. He added, "Although I support the Chinese Communist Party, I will not do anything that may harm any other country."
And he added, "Some in Western countries believe that Huawei's products have a certain ideological character, and this is absurd. We provide telecom companies with equipment, and the equipment does not have an ideology."
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Ren Zheng (b. 1944) studied engineering at Chongqing University in China, then joined the Research Institute of the Chinese People's Liberation Army at the height of the turmoil caused by the country's Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. And "there was chaos almost everywhere, including in the agricultural and industrial sectors."
At that time, each person was allotted only a third of a meter of cloth, and it was barely enough for patches, so I did not wear clothes without patches when I was young.”
When he became an engineer, he was sent to help build a garment factory in Liaoyang, northeastern China.
"It was harsh conditions," Cheng said. "Our house was dilapidated, so we were constantly cold, temperatures were dropping to minus 28 degrees, vegetables were not available at all, and meat and cooking oil were very limited."
And he continues: "I was happy, however. Many books were criticized in many parts of the country, and the factory was one of the few places where one could read. We had to read to understand how the equipment worked."
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In 1978, two years after the death of Chinese leader Mao Zedong, Cheng joined the Communist Party after he had invented a basic tool for use in testing advanced equipment in a garment factory, which he had not been allowed before due to his father's association with the side National loser in the Chinese civil war, as he put it.
His father was imprisoned in the 1960s for "going into capitalism," a pejorative term used to refer to those who were trying to restore capitalism.
Cheng had hoped to reach the equivalent of a lieutenant colonel in the army, but the opposite happened and he was discharged from the army in 1983 when China reduced the number of engineer officers.
After moving to Shenzhen, southern China and working in the fledgling electronic sector, he finally managed to accumulate enough money to found Huawei.
Ren Zheng has two daughters from his first marriage, Meng Wanzhou and Meng Peng, both of whom work for Huawei. They used their mother's last name to avoid drawing unnecessary attention to them.
Also, his daughter, Annabelle Yao, who was born with his second wife, is studying computer science at Harvard University. She is also a ballet dancer and is active on the social networking site Instagram.
Zheng's third wife, Su Wei, was his former secretary.
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Last December, the Canadian authorities arrested his eldest daughter, Meng Wanzhou, the company's financial officer at the request of the United States, amid allegations that the company was involved in connection with trading companies in Iran.
Cheng said he is confident that the judicial systems in Canada and the United States will reach a "fair conclusion" and added that as a father to Meng Wanzhou, he "misses her very much."
It may come as a surprise, given the war of words over trade between Washington and Beijing, that Cheng is a fan of US President Donald Trump. .
"The company is owned by thousands of employees in the private sector, which means that it can greatly serve our ideas and serve the interests of society," Cheng added.
Despite US pressure on countries not to use Huawei products, he says he is optimistic about the future.
"As long as we develop acceptable products, there will be customers who want to buy," Cheng said.
