Ren Zhengfei (; born 25 October 1944) is a Chinese entrepreneur and engineer who is the founder and CEO of Huawei Technologies, the world's largest manufacturer of telecommunications equipment and second largest manufacturer of smartphones located in Shenzhen, China. He is a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Early life
Ren was born on October 25, 1944, in Zhenning County, Guizhou. His grandfather Ren Sanhe () was a master chef who was an expert in curing ham from Rendian Village (), Pujiang County, Zhejiang. His father, Ren Musheng (), courtesy name Moxun (), failed to complete university studies when Ren Zhengfei's grandfather died a year prior to his graduation.
During the Japanese occupation, his father migrated south to Guangzhou to work in a military factory of the Nationalist government as an accounts clerk. After 1949, his father was appointed as the president of No. 1 Middle School of Duyun () where he met Ren Zhengfei's mother Cheng Yuanzhao (), who was a senior teacher at the school; his elder brother became a member of the CCP in 1958. Ren has five younger sisters and one younger brother.
Ren's first wife was Meng Jun (孟军), the daughter of Meng Dongbo (孟东波), a former deputy governor of Sichuan Province. They had two children: daughter Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟) and son Ren Ping (任平), both of whom initially took up their mother's surname Meng Ping (孟平). After their divorce, he married Yao Ling (), with whom he had another daughter, Annabel Yao, who is 25 years younger than Meng Wanzhou. As of December 2018, Annabel is a ballet dancer and a computer science student at Harvard University and made a high-profile debut at Le Bal des Débutantes in Paris in 2018. Ren married for the third time to Su Wei (苏薇), who was reportedly his former secretary.
Despite being Huawei's CEO, Ren is a supporter of Apple and stated that the "iPhone has a good ecosystem and when my family are abroad, I still buy them iPhones, so one can't narrowly think love for Huawei should mean loving Huawei phones."
Ren's eldest daughter, Meng Wanzhou, is deputy chairperson and chief financial officer (CFO) of Huawei.
Education
He spent his primary and junior high school in the mountain village near his home.
In 1960, there was a serious famine in Guizhou Province. At this time, Ren's family was starving. In order to support his family, Ren implemented a strict system of food distribution in his family. In order to cope with hunger, Ren often went to the mountains to pick wild fruits instead of grain.
He always wore a single layer coat because of poverty in high school. In his third year of high school, no matter how hungry he was, he did not eat the rations of his family. Thanks to this, none of his brothers and sisters starved to death. In order to solve hunger, Ren mixed rice bran and vegetables together to eat, which he stopped when his father found out. With the Chinese gaokao approaching, Cheng Yuanzhao (程远昭) gave him a scallion pancake every morning even though he was poor. Ren later thought the pancake was crucial to his future achievements.
In 1963, 19-year-old Ren Zhengfei was admitted to Chongqing Institute of Architectural Engineering (later merged into Chongqing University) to major in HVAC. Cheng Yuanzhao made him two white shirts and a pair of sheets, which accompanied him through four years of college.
In 1966, when Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution, Ren, who was studying in college, received a letter mentioning that his father had been overthrown and criticized for his experience working in the Kuomintang's 412 military factory. Ren boarded a train surrounded by Red Guards who were asking the passengers about their background. Because he replied that his father was a teacher, Ren was pushed off the train by them, so he had to walk home.
Ren told his family that there were also "infights" in college, and basically no one took classes, but his father told him that knowledge was important and encouraged him to use it to help his brothers and sisters.
After returning to college, Ren taught himself computers, digital technology, automatic control, logic, philosophy and three foreign languages. Ren collected leaflets and sent them to his mother to encourage his father who was in trouble. In one piece of paper, there is a passage from Zhou Enlai (周恩来): "cadres should seek truth from facts. If they are not, do not admit it at random. Things will always be figured out." Cheng Yuanzhao passed this passage on to his father. Because of this note, his father didn't commit suicide. In 1970, he obeyed the policy of all college students leaving school to join the army for training.