Li, a certain person

A native of Zhenning County, Anshun City, Guizhou Province, he graduated from Chongqing Institute of Architectural Engineering and is the founder of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.

In 2018, he was named to the Central United Front Work Department and All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce’s list of “100 Outstanding Private Entrepreneurs of the 40 Years of Reform and Opening-Up,” and was also recognized as a China Economic News Figure for 2019. In 2019, he was included in Forbes magazine’s list of “Business Leaders of the Year in Global Operations.”

He has been recognized on prestigious lists including Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, one of the 100 Outstanding Private Entrepreneurs of China’s 40 Years of Reform and Opening-Up, one of China’s 50 Most Influential Business Leaders, and one of Asia’s 100 Most Powerful Businesspeople.

In September 1991, Huawei rented the third floor of an industrial building in HaoYe Village, Bao’an County, Shenzhen, to develop stored-program-controlled (SPC) switches. More than fifty young employees followed Ren Zhengfei to this dilapidated factory and embarked on their arduous, uncertain entrepreneurial journey. They divided the entire floor into four work sections—single-board assembly, power supplies, final testing, and preparation—plus a warehouse and a kitchen. Working around the clock under the heat of the machinery, they designed and fabricated circuit boards, built telephone switchboards, soldered components, wrote software, debugged, revised, and debugged again. Under these conditions, Ren Zhengfei visited the site almost daily to inspect production and development progress, hold meetings to discuss challenges, and assign tasks while coordinating solutions to myriad problems. During meal times, Ren Zhengfei and company leaders would join everyone for meals at roadside food stalls...