Field Notes: Highlights from Huawei

https://a16z.com/2019/05/29/field-notes-highlights-from-huawei/

by yblu • 7 years ago

149 86 7 years ago

a16z.com

peaktechisnow2• 7 years ago

"...yet we are still very grateful to the American companies. They have made a lot of contributions to us."

And not always voluntarily :)

e.g. MacBook --> MateBook

onemoresoop5• 7 years ago

When I got one of those electric unicycles, I got mine from Inventist (Solowheel), I was shocked to learn how badly the company got ripped off in China. Since they were fabricated there, they copied the thing to a tee and hundeds of companies started making the same thing, some copies bad and dangerous, others improved. To summarize, the original company, Inventist, was attemped a mafia style takeover, I think they were offered a few mil USD which they refused. The gyro mechanism was based on some patented technology from Segway and eventually one of the chinese companies took over Segway.. Real story:( Things coming from China are now cheap but after they eliminate all the competitors they’ll name the price. Of course, US is not an angel either, they’re the ones to open the pandora’s box to cheap chinese labor, moved all their factories there to gain the short term profits by eliminating the cost of their own workers.

ggg2• 7 years ago

wait, they bought the company with the pattent? that's exactly what american capitalism is about!

apple bought fingerworks(?) and sat on top of their patents, refusing all license requests, until 20(?) years later they started working on the iphone. How exactly is the chinese abuse of patents any different?

you can't cry for solowheel without also cursing apple for the death of palm pilot and all other portables before the iphone (not to mention the awesome keyboard+touchpad fingerworks was delivering the months apple shut them down)

ne9xt• 7 years ago

exactly. Ask the guys at Nortel.

j_shi• 7 years ago

Seems by and large reasonable but notably doesn't address the elephant in the room: potential their hardware has built-in backdoors for China government access. Should be simple enough to provide at least basic assurances (a la Apple)

ohiovr2• 7 years ago

Backdoors come in red, white, and blue colors too besides just red and yellow. This isn't just whataboutism, as wannacry and the like show. We have no more accountability here or there. Traffic can be encrypted end to end anyway. Paranoia can be counter productive. If 5g became worthless during a military confrontation with china there are many other choices for emergency communication. Even mentioning this has me worried with a loose cannon in the executive.

mberger• 7 years ago

I would have liked to see a comment on the extradition of the CFO to the US.

mevile• 7 years ago

It touched on that. It said everyone worked overtime when that first happened.

yorwba2• 7 years ago

From the full interview https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/BkPvcbVU-ogZcWwFkKQqEw

抓我的家人，就是想影响我的意志，我家人给我的鼓舞就是鼓舞我的意志。女儿写给我的信说，她会长期做好思想准备，她也很乐观，我就放心了，减轻了很大压力。我要超越个人、超越家庭、超越华为来思考这个世界上的问题，否则我就不客观了。

Arresting my relatives is intended to affect my determination; the encouragement I receive from my relatives is to encourage my determination. My daughter wrote me a letter, saying that she will mentally prepare for the long term; she's also very optimistic; I'm relieved; this has reduced the pressure a lot. I want to go beyond myself, beyond my family, beyond Huawei and consider the problems of this world, otherwise I wouldn't be objective anymore.

dis-sys2• 7 years ago

Ren said his daughter (the CFO) is fully prepared to complete a PhD when locked up in prison.

onemoresoop5• 7 years ago

I would like to hear what they have to say about patent infringements and allegations that Huawei stole Cisco technology and sold it 10x cheaper.

ohiovr2• 7 years ago

I enjoyed this read. There is pride but there is humility too. We are separated by language difficulty. The 996 movement and this is a reminder to me that we are not all that different. They did not start the trade war, and everyone in my state desired low price goods for decades before it was suddenly wrong to have a trade deficit.

peaktechisnow2• 7 years ago

They started the trade war before it even began by not allowing key US companies with market access...Pretty sure they blacklisted Google and Facebook well before we blacklisted Huawei.

yourbandsucks5• 7 years ago

I'm not sure if you're aware, but "you must open your markets to our companies" is basically how a lot of colonialism and imperialism unfolded in China in the early 20th century.

joel_liu5• 7 years ago

Huawei and Facebook/Google case is not the same.

Huawei was put in the Entity list. That means two things.

1)Huawei can't sell any equipment or phone in the US. It's about market access. It's equal to Google/Facebook were denied to access the Chinese market if they don't obey the censorship policies. Huawei was also denied to access mainstream America market for a long time.

2)Huawei can't buy any components and services from any American companies. Even Google & Facebook are not accessible in China, they still have lots of business there.

So basically, Putting Huawei in the Entity list almost means to kill Huawei because Chips from American companies are important for their supply chain. It's not only about market access.

That's the reason many people in China feel very angry.

onemoresoop5• 7 years ago

The humility seems fabricated for PR imho. I might be wrong but from what I’ve been reading both US and China have double standards, are cunning and perverted. Neither is willingly going to change their ways just because. It’ll take more than that..

oh_sigh• 7 years ago

The United States does not have the power to call on all other countries to close the door to Huawei.

Sure it does. The US has the sovereign right to decide who it wants to do business with, and the right to say "if you do business with Huawei, we won't do business with you", and leave it up to other countries to decide which route they would like to go.

bshacklett• 7 years ago

Agreed. It's not likely to be handled so directly, but the people who do this negotiation are well able to make the point without saying the words. If chess was a good analog to the wars of old, poker is a more fitting analog to diplomacy today.

freewizard• 7 years ago

What made me particularly sick is when asked about over time working problem (996[1]), Ren's answer was: Huawei obeys the law and protect workers, but our workers have a calling, they won't be successful without their calling. Foreign scientists work even harder than Chinese scientists, many foreign scientists don't get married before 40s.

This is the finest propaganda I've seen recently, well matching the "Our great Patriot Farmers" tweet[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system

[2] https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/11282610666544087...

roenxi• 7 years ago

It isn't much of an exaggeration to say his company is under sustained attack by the United States. Control over telecommunications is a plank in the US's strategic dominance; if Huawei was based in Iran a WMD-found-boots-on-ground-needed incident might even be on the cards. There are 300 million people in the world who are notionally legally bound to try and make Huawei's life difficult.

I'm not sure I can begrudge him propaganda. The threats to him personally and professionally are huge.

eanzenberg• 7 years ago

Similarly, many large US tech companies are under sustained attack by China and have been banned for years now while copies have popped up.

xvector• 7 years ago

I'm not sure I can begrudge him propaganda.

I don't have any issue with begrudging an apparatus of an authoritarian surveillance state.

zucker42• 7 years ago

A great first step in encouraging technological openness would be dropping the Chinese Firewall[1,2]. Chinese companies have had a playing field slanted toward them for a while now. We should work toward open innovations in both the U.S. and China.

Don't get me wrong; I disagree with the recent U.S. approach and agree that it's not an exaggeration to call this an attack on Huawei, but we'll have far worse things to worry about than Google removing ad-blocking if we let the Chinese state dictate our online lives.

I don't think protectionism is the answer, but I don't think the Huawei CEO is being completely genuine in his presentation here. It was definitely interesting to hear his perspective though.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Firewall [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Websites_blocked_in_mainland_C...

seanmcdirmid• 7 years ago

Ironically enough, I remember Ren Zhengfei being referred to as “China’s Donald Trump” long before Trump was elected president, maybe in 2014 or 2013 (a coworker mentioned it to me over lunch)? I think he got this title by being outlandishly outspoken and overly patriotic.

Edit: never mind, it was another Ren (Zhiqiang rather than Zhengfei) https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-34350352

alexgmcm• 7 years ago

From my friends in Physics he seems to be correct about foreign scientists - but that's not something to be proud of or emulate.

It's just that since the Cold War the conditions in science have become rather awful.

devoply• 7 years ago

I dunno how much of this is P/R and how much is humility. If this was coming from a CEO of a Japanese company I would be much more likely to believe him. In the end it was his government's power moves that have started all of this. He's not at fault but his government sure is.

hangonhn• 7 years ago

What power moves specifically? Curious. I'm not saying the Chinese government isn't at fault because the asymmetry of market access isn't something that we should tolerate. But we did tolerate for a long time. So what I'm curious about is what happened to start this change.

DiogenesKynikos2• 7 years ago

The trade war was obviously begun by Trump. There are people who are already trying to rewrite history on this.

zaphirplane• 7 years ago

You don’t think they are involved in IP ah liberation. Benefit from the need a mainland partner to work in the mainland policy?

ngcc_hk• 7 years ago

So far it is a bad PR from America. Imagine some Chinese said :

“Your world is mine, my China is mine.

I can protect my market and none of you can access unless I approve it. Many don’t. Google, movie, ... security you know. But thous should not. you should not use security argument.

Or legal ... Try to sue government in court ... we are now in USA court but thou should not.

We have law on paper all Chinese are our spy. You should not.

You should free trade and you should not use national security or tariff like us.

As your song said Imagine there is no country ... I would not buy you should.

...”

Can we just use one yardstick. And not just make China great again.

Btw have time read about hk extradition law.

caddytodaddy• 7 years ago

I have a feeling the “spare tire” chips are chips they’ve been ripping off from Qualcomm et al, and now they have an excuse to make them. That would explain why he is framing it that they were just for a contingency, they never planned on using them.

They’ve done that many times in the past, but they’re too big to get away with it so easily now.

obiefernandez• 7 years ago

The last paragraph was fascinating...

My family uses Apple’s phones; Apple’s ecology is very good. When family members travel abroad, I would gift them an Apple computer. One can’t narrow-mindedly believe that if you love Huawei then you must only use Huawei mobile phones.
At present, public sentiment about Huawei is being spun in one of two ways. The first spin is that if you are patriotic then you should buy Huawei. The other spin is that Huawei has hijacked the patriotic sentiment of the people. [But this is just spin] after all, my own child doesn’t love Huawei [product], my own child loves Apple [product].

iliketosleep• 7 years ago

I was surprised by this too. It's not the type of admission a Chinese business leader would typically make. If it gains any traction of social media, the comment will probably be deleted.

dm37302• 7 years ago

If it gains any traction of social media, the comment will probably be deleted.

Please elaborate on why you think this. Is there past history or evidence of this type of behavior?

anqurvanillapy• 7 years ago

No, this very paragraph is even highlighted in many major social media in China. The public opinions are oriented that people should be wise about products of Huawei.

luminati• 7 years ago

This is a classic submarine PR hack to "defuse" the trade war, by showing an emphatic side. One can easily get away with such statements that can't be demonstrably proven and hence needs to be thrown away, since it's just noise in the context of the actual discussion (the US's sanctions on Huawei).

iforgotpassword• 7 years ago

Which part are you referring to? I think word that the CEO plus family use iPhones was out there for much longer than the huawei ban, so they either were planning ahead or it's actually true.

As for the PR hack I wouldn't go as far as calling it a hack... It just sounds very Chinese from my perspective. They do go full trump sometimes but usually there's this harmony thing going on. Keep in mind that this is the translation of an interview given to Chinese media, it was primarily directed at Chinese citizens.

narnianal3• 7 years ago

Why was this downvoted?

It is a very reasonable opinion about anything said in a cold war. You can even disagree with that assumption and still should consider that it might be just such a hack.

The strengths of western society is not being locked into one opinion. Let's embrace that more now that it also matters and is not just for self expression anymore.

pnathan• 7 years ago

I would love to read a full translation of these remarks - along with a color commentary regarding the cultural expectations of what a proper Chinese CEO is expected to say vis-a-vis what a proper American CEO is expected to say.

m3kw9• 7 years ago

I’m not sure if this spare tire is as potent as he is saying it is. His analog of nuclear weapons are his spare tires(home grown microchips). I’m not sure if it even makes sense given if they had it, they would save costs to use their own. On the other hand, if using their own chip means they can cause more security back doors, then that could be right, but it still doesn’t make sense.

jhanschoo• 7 years ago

I cannot help but read the CEO's comments in a strategic manner, where more than anything explicitly mentioned, they communicate an immense desire or even need for the company to be able to intensively work with US companies again.

Almost every comment noted makes a point to praise US companies or portray Huawei as a desirable and capable but non-threatening partner.

dm37302• 7 years ago

portray Huawei as a desirable and capable but non-threatening partner

Out of curiosity and for the purpose of expicitness, are you implying a mirroring of what is often alleged to be China's geopolitical strategy, ie: appear to be a non-threatening generous partner right up until the last moment? This is what is often portrayed in the recent debt-trap descriptions of China's activities in Africa, South and South-EAst Asia.

narnianal3• 7 years ago

Yes, please read it in a strategic manner. However also consider that a praise can be presented in different ways. Sometimes a company is praised to increase the company's pride. Sometimes it is praised to really show a need for cooperation. Sometimes it is praised in a manner that shows "we could work together but if not it's also fine". And sometimes such a representation is honest and sometimes its fake. So at least three dimensions in every sentence.

wangii2• 7 years ago

I'm annoyed by folks keep talking about Chinese govt. bans Google and Facebook whenever they see fit.

Let's be clear: no, thanks but no! We've got 1 big brother and really not interested 2 more.

pembrook• 7 years ago

Comparing the power the Chinese government holds over its people to American advertising companies that try to sell you consumer goods is laughable.

wangii2• 7 years ago

OK. how do you escape from the rule Chinese government? simple: go to another country. how could you escape from google/fb? welcome to China!

mensetmanusman• 7 years ago

Google can’t make you or your family disappear

ComodoHacker• 7 years ago

Google can make you disappear from the internet. Depending on who you are this might be good of very bad for you.

_iyig• 7 years ago

…on a Google and Huawei phone operating system:
Google and Huawei are discussing together how to implement a solution.

Curious what he means by this. Such cooperation may violate U.S. law.

joel_liu5• 7 years ago

          Forced-IP-transfer is a double-edged sword

This article is about Huawei and the trade war is the larger background. I had some entrepreneurship experience both in China and the States. "Forced IP transfer policies" is one of the core issues between the US and China. I'd like to share some thoughts about this issue from the perspectives of some entrepreneur friends in China. AFAICT, the real impact of the "forced IP transfer" is very complex. I didn't see any media report about it, so I share it here.

The perspective from media: "Forced IP transfer policies" is very unfair because it helps Chinese companies to get an unfair advantage. It's bad for foreign companies and good for Chinese economies.

The perspective from many entrepreneurs in China: "Forced IP transfer policies" is very unfair because it helps the foreign companies get an unfair advantage. It's bad for Chinese private companies and economies.

Here is the explanation from the entrepreneurs' perspective:

1) The most "forced IP transfer" happened in the Chinese-foreign partnership companies.

2) However, the partnership is between state-owned companies and foreign companies.

3) Most of the state-owned companies are very inefficient. The system makes people lazy and corruptive.

4) The partnership companies did get some technologies, often the older technologies. However, they also get benefits from the state, very cheap land, subsidies, etc.

5)From the perspective of local entrepreneurs: Benefits from state + Foreign tech and brand makes the already-strong foreign companies even stronger. They get double advantages. It's very hard to compete with them. To local entrepreneurs, the Chinese state-owned companies + Foreign companies partnership model kills many local private companies unfairly.

6) From the technologies side, the state-owned companies get some older technologies, but since the state-owned companies have their own issues like lazy, corruption. They didn't get a tech edge in the competition. The transferred technologies outdated very fast.

One example is the Auto industry. Most auto brands from the US is very successful in China, for example, Buick is not very successful in the US, but the overall sales in China exceeded 10M! Ford is also very successful in China https://thenewswheel.com/ford-sales-in-china-surpass-1-milli...

Did the "transferred technologies make them less successful"? It's really hard to say.

There is some "forced IP transfer" in some sectors, but the impact to the overall economies may or may not positive because it makes the local private companies in a very disadvantaged position. It's really a double-edged sword.

narnianal3• 7 years ago

I haven't seen it in other comments so let me add that interpretation as well:

It is not just an expression of a participant in a trade war between his and another country. It is also an expression of a politician who wants to become a father figure for his people.

It is very very risky to even hint at something like this in such times. It is not impossible that we see Xi Jinping taking apart Huawei at some point to beat a possible internal competitor.

Think about the admirable spirit one must have to put ones life on the line. Wow. That's more than Elon Musk or Ma Yun are doing.

And it also means he's either going crazy (unlikely) or that he has a lot of backing from political forces that try to undermine the Xi government from within. Let's hope he's more Cao Cao than Yuan Shu.

Field Notes: Highlights from Huawei

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