华为我们不知道的一面
2023 年 9 月 11 日
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/techland/side-huawei-we-don%E2%80%99t-know-206789?page=0%2C1
尽管经常受到西方政策制定者和专家的谴责和怀疑，但该公司的起源和独特的治理体系却鲜为人知。
通过钱德兰·奈尔
中国在短短三十年的时间里迅速崛起，成为世界第二大经济体和全球强国，这是二十一世纪迄今为止最重大的故事。 不幸的是，与此同时，令人恐惧的西方国家也产生了极大的担忧，西方国家与全球主流媒体一起，为这个国家惊人的发展速度描绘了一幅丑陋的图画。
这一进步最明显的体现之一是华为，一家中国公司，现在是全球最大的电信设备制造商。 然而，该公司的发展却伴随着西方尤其是美国的恐惧和不信任，美国认为该公司对美国国家安全构成潜在威胁。
华为所谓的恶名很大程度上可以归结为两件事。 首先，该公司实际上运营良好且极具创新性，这一事实令西方人深信自己的技术优势以及技术创新与特定政治/文化价值观之间的关系，并感到不安。 第二种观点认为，因为它是一家中国科技公司，而且其创始人是军人，也是中共党员，所以它一定是由中国政府控制的。 后一种观点表明人们对现代中国，尤其是中国商业生态系统与国家之间的关系了解甚少。
由于对华为的起源、方法论以及与中国股份的关系缺乏了解，使其成为反复出现的目标。 华盛顿有必要更多地了解这家公司以及它是如何成为第一的。
华为的起源
对于那些不了解 1949 年中华人民共和国成立后中国国内斗争的人来说，值得记住的是，即使在 20 世纪 70 年代和 80 年代，中国的部分地区饥荒也并不罕见。 江苏省就是这样的地区之一，那里的人们被迫在森林中寻找浆果、坚果和任何他们能找到的食物来生存。 请记住，这也是邻国香港（以及新加坡）看到麦当劳和肯德基等快餐变得无处不在的时期。 中国这段时期持续的贫困和苦难是由于持续不断的内部斗争和未能支持国家的考虑不周的政策造成的。
这个时期成长起来的一个人就是任正非。 由于家里很穷，他放弃了一些微薄的口粮给兄弟姐妹吃，而是用米糠拌着吃，以维持自己的生活。 他常常去森林里采摘任何可以供家人生存的食物。
早年的奋斗生活促使他作为一个年轻人踏上了一段最非凡的旅程。 任正非在学习建筑和工程学后加入了中国军队。 在为社会做出贡献的愿望的推动下，他最终带着更大的创业计划离开了军队。 他自学了计算机和其他新兴数字技术的工作原理。 在几次创业失败后，1987年，43岁的他最后一次掷骰子，创立了华为，意为“致力于中国，有所作为”，旨在销售程控交换机。
从很多方面来说，该公司现在都是世界上最受认可的品牌之一——部分原因是其创新和市值，部分原因是卷入了西方和中国之间的地缘政治斗争。
任正非的贫困和绝望故事与当今科技巨头许多创始人的故事形成鲜明对比。 它还应该提供有关公司的弹性、其充满的积极性以及计划如何承受当前外部压力的线索。 华为新智能手机的推出，展现了华为成功突破美国制裁、自主创新的能力，引发广泛关注。 同样，尽管没有成为全球头条新闻，该公司最近也宣布推出自己的企业资源规划软件，结束了对甲骨文软件的依赖。 预计会有更多的创新，这证明了古老的格言：需要是发明之母。
华为为何如此创新？ 要理解这一点，需要了解该公司的三个方面及其运营方式，这为观察者提供了见解。
华为的治理和所有权体系
人们常常错误地认为华为是中共的商业延伸，其运作方式也类似，其创始人任正非拥有绝对权力，密切监督着一个自上而下的等级制度。
现实却截然不同。 这家私营公司是 100% 员工持股的公司，任正非持有公司 0.7% 的股份。 这种治理结构是华为独有的，借鉴了对世界各地最佳实践的广泛研究，并根据其需求进行了定制。
公司实行集体领导、多重制衡的运作模式，股东代表和决策机构成员均由民主选举产生。 股东大会是公司的最高决策机构，决定公司增资、利润分配、选举董事会、监事会成员等重大事项。 职工代表由工会委员会组成，职工代表委员会是工会履行股东责任、行使股东权利的职工载体。 有投票权的持股员工以每股一票的方式选举委员会，委员会随后以一人一票的方式选举公司董事会和监事会。 这些活动是透明的，甚至对所有员工进行直播。
作为华为的创始人，任正非的影响力和权威来自于他的成就所获得的尊重——这是一种中国特有的组织和谐与秩序的方法，植根于尊重长辈和领导的文化。 虽然任正非对董事会决策拥有否决权，但有记录表明，他只行使过几次这项权利，而且通常是在技术和业务方向上，这在世界上大多数私营公司中都很常见。 他在内部被描述为一个更喜欢通过全公司范围的演讲分享他的愿景和想法的人，这些演讲作为方向制定的指导。
建立这样的治理结构的主要动机是确保公司的长寿并使其实现可持续增长。 作为一家私营公司，华为能够设计长期结构并设定目标，能够专注于其核心愿景和使命——包括客户和员工。
虽然近期制裁对华为智能手机业务和短期利润造成影响（2022年净利润同比下降69%），但华为持续进行战略投资，投入更多资金用于研发（研发） ）。 2022年，他们将收入的25%投入研发，相当于1615亿元人民币，绝对值超过美国以外的世界上任何一家公司，占收入的比例也超过科技巨头。 相比之下，全球最大的研发支出亚马逊和 Alphabet 同年将其收入的 14% 左右投资于研发。
尽管无法在全球范围内推出高端5G手机，但智能手机业务部门并未裁员。 这也是一种经常被误解和不被重视的文化差异，员工被视为家庭的一部分。 所以，当困难来临的时候，大家都会忍着，进入“生存”模式。 新款Mate 60、Mate 60 Pro、Mate 60 Pro+以及新版可折叠手机Mate X5的推出，证明了这一策略的智慧。
华为的治理结构使其能够对公司、设施、研发和员工进行再投资，即使在业务低迷和外部压力时期也是如此。
向世界学习和全球开放的文化
华为基于孔子集体韧性的传统，强调艰苦奋斗，这使其能够吸引那些坚信自己能够克服障碍并创造解决方案的人才，以最好地实现公司“以客户为中心，为客户创造价值”的官方目标。 ” 员工不仅受到所提供的经济奖励的驱动，还受到使命感和致力于寻找问题解决方案的需要的驱动。 该公司的吸引力使其能够吸引中国最优秀的人才。
在制定公司目前的公司治理模式时，值得注意的是，华为领导层花了大量时间研究世界各地成功、持久的公司的治理模式，包括日本家族企业以及法国、德国和日本的企业。 美国。 他们积极思考不同模式的优缺点，吸取成功和失败的教训，将这些想法为华为量身定制。
华为监事会的设计就是一个很好的例子。 它从德国公司治理结构和 Fredmund Malik 制定的治理原则中汲取灵感。 不过，华为的架构与德国企业不同，股东代表坐在最高层。 此外，监事会不仅对董事会进行监督，而且在公司不同层级的领导梯队建设和制定公司运作规范方面发挥着积极作用。
尽管经常受到西方政策制定者和专家的谴责和怀疑，但该公司的起源和独特的治理体系却鲜为人知。
通过钱德兰·奈尔
员工的参与也是独一无二的。 监事会和董事会成员全部为华为员工。 董事会提名的股东代表还必须对公司做出贡献并表现出必要的领导技能。
五年前，类似的学习不同模式的思维被运用到继任者计划和轮值联席主席制度的建立中。 华为非常重视培养公司内部的领导者。 为了实现它想要的系统，它研究了采用类似方法的老牌公司的不同领导结构，包括家族创办的公司。
该公司相信，通过留住顶尖人才，它可以克服任何一个人的局限性，并提供制衡。 华为目前有三名轮值联合主席。 当联席主席下班时，他们会访问其他国家，会见员工，了解业务，最重要的是，有思考的空间和时间，这是非常重视的。
华为开放的世界观和对其他文化的欣赏在其位于东莞市的研发园区中得到了最淋漓尽致的体现。东莞市被称为“欧洲城市”，该园区有 30,000 名员工在仿照 9 个不同欧洲国家的 12 个不同“村庄”工作。 修剪整齐的花园环绕着欧洲最著名的城市和建筑的真人大小复制品，包括凡尔赛宫、海德堡城堡、阿姆斯特丹和维罗纳。 村庄里星罗棋布的餐馆和咖啡馆，体现了任志强对咖啡文化的推崇。 还有电动火车服务，因此无需在校园内开车。 该园区的概念是设计竞赛的一部分，并因其独特性而被选中，使其有别于通常的科技公司或中国风格的设计。
该组织及其员工显然仍然热衷于促进全球文化交流和学习非中国的成功模式。 著名观察家已经注意到了这一点。
致力于社会义务并做出改变
许多人可能会惊讶地发现华为将可持续发展视为其业务重点的一个组成部分。 它有四项可持续发展战略，所有这些战略都与其愿景和使命相一致：数字包容、安全可信、环境保护以及健康和谐的生态系统。 每项战略都与公司的业务和产品开发相结合。 例如，华为的产品和解决方案越来越多地旨在帮助企业及其客户减少能源消耗和二氧化碳排放。
虽然该公司确实发布了年度可持续发展报告，但这些报告并不符合典型的西方 ESG（环境、社会和公司治理）或 CSR（企业社会责任）报告。 同样，该公司也不太重视慈善事业，也没有设立基金会或慈善机构。 相反，它利用其技术投资开发具有成本效益和可持续的解决方案，并与当地和多边合作伙伴合作，以在需求最迫切的国家实现其目标。
以 TECH4ALL 为例，这是该公司的长期数字包容性计划，致力于开发创新技术和解决方案，以实现包容性和可持续发展的世界。 他们应用人工智能和云来学习濒危动物、雨林和湿地的声音，远程监控和防止非法狩猎和伐木。 该应用程序已在拉丁美洲和欧洲的许多国家使用，并且具有在其他领域部署的潜力。
另一个例子是乡村之星。 作为其对农村发展和弥合数字鸿沟以促进偏远地区发展的承诺的一部分，华为投资创新更简单、更小型的数据传输技术。 RuralStar 解决方案允许在简单的杆上而不是专用塔上建造基站，具有低功耗功能，可以使用六个太阳能电池板供电。 RuralStar 被广泛认为是偏远和农村社区最环保、最具成本效益的解决方案之一。 值得注意的是，与传统上仅关注高密度城市地区相比，为农村地区提供服务的商业决策导致利润率估计下降 30%。 在全球范围内，该技术为拥有数千名居民的小村庄提供服务，与传统解决方案相比，成本降低了 70%。 继2017年在加纳首次试点后，已有60多个国家实施了RuralStar，超过5000万农村地区人口受益。 以此类项目融资为例，2020年在加纳，交通部和加纳电子通信投资局与中国进出口银行签署融资协议，华为将为加纳部署2000多个RuralStar站点，为加纳提供2000多个RuralStar站点。 为超过 340 万人提供语音和数据服务。
在推动数字化的目标下，华为还持续投资绿色转型。 除了在自身运营中显着增加可再生能源的使用（比 2020 年增加 42.3%）之外，产品能源效率的提高也是其创新过程中的一个重要指标。 一家公司报告称，自 2019 年以来，其主要产品的能源效率提高了 1.9 倍，这反过来又帮助其客户和行业合作伙伴减少碳足迹。
更广泛地说，华为的数字电力技术正在全球许多太阳能发电场部署和使用。 这个想法是用比特来管理瓦特，以帮助更好地生产清洁能源并减少排放。 截至2021年底，华为数字电力已帮助客户发电4829亿千瓦时，节省电量约142亿千瓦时。 这些努力已减少近2.3亿吨二氧化碳排放，相当于种植了3.2亿棵树。
选择履行社会承诺并采取具体步骤实现使命宣言之外的企业愿景的能力对于华为来说是相对独特的。 当企业努力实现 ESG 目标并克服短期优先事项与可持续增长投资之间的根本紧张关系时，华为通过将其产品和服务视为可持续发展的关键推动者，致力于克服这些挑战。 它致力于开发信息和通信技术，以减少碳排放，推广可再生能源，并为循环经济做出贡献。 华为在自身运营中努力推动节能减排，更多使用可再生能源。 这是可能实现的，因为领导团队内部达成了共识，做出了与其可持续发展议程相一致的战略选择，投资于长期目标的愿望，以及创新新产品以实现可持续发展目标的能力。
一家不会消失的公司
华为在全球舞台上的成功基于卓越的创新能力，这表明中国有很多值得世界其他国家学习的地方。 然而，这一成功是通过开放策略和向他人学习的意愿实现的。 该公司的批评者正忙于回应最近的事态发展，应该引起注意。
钱德兰·奈尔 (Chandran Nair) 是全球明日研究所 (GIFT) 的创始人兼首席执行官。 他是《废除全球白人特权：后西方世界的公平》一书的作者。
The Side of Huawei We Don't Know
September 11, 2023
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/techland/side-huawei-we-don%E2%80%99t-know-206789?page=0%2C1
Though often condemned and suspected by Western policymakers and experts, the company’s origins and unique governance system are poorly understood.
China’s meteoric rise in the short space of thirty years to become the second-largest economy in the world and a global power has been by far the biggest story of the twenty-first century. It has also unfortunately been accompanied by a great deal of worry by a fearful West, which together with the global mainstream media, has painted an ugly picture of the country’s remarkable pace of development.
One of the most visible manifestations of this progress is Huawei, a Chinese company and now the world’s largest maker of telecoms gear. Yet the company’s growth has been accompanied by fear and mistrust from the West—particularly from the United States, which regards the firm as a potential threat to U.S. national security.
A great part of Huawei’s supposed infamy can be boiled down to two things. The first is that the company is actually very well-run and extremely innovative—a fact that Westerners, convinced of their own technical superiority and the relationship between technological innovation and a particular set of political/cultural values, find unnerving. The second is the view that because it is a Chinese tech firm, and its founder was in the military as well as a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), it must be controlled by the Chinese government. This latter view demonstrates how little is understood of modern China, especially the relationship between China’s commercial ecosystem and the state.
This lack of knowledge relating to Huawei’s origins, methodology, and relationship with the Chinese stake makes it a recurring target. It would behoove Washington to know more about the company and how it came to be first.
Huawei’s Origins
For those unaware of the struggles within China after the creation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, it is worth remembering that even in the 1970s and 1980s there were parts of China where famine was not unusual. One such region was Jiangsu province, where people were forced to forage in the forest for berries, nuts, and anything edible they could get hold of to survive. Bear in mind that this was also a time during which neighboring Hong Kong (and Singapore, too) saw fast food like McDonald’s and KFC become ubiquitous. This period of persistent poverty and suffering in China was a result of ongoing internal struggles and ill-considered policies that failed to support the country.
One man who grew up during this period was Ren Zhengfei. His family was so poor that he would forgo some of his meager rations so that his siblings could eat, and would instead mix his meals with rice bran to sustain himself. He used to go into the forest to pick anything edible for the family to survive.
An early life of struggle motivated him as a young man to embark on a most remarkable journey. Ren joined the Chinese military after studying architecture and engineering. He eventually left the army with bigger entrepreneurial plans, driven by a desire to contribute to society. He taught himself the workings of computers and other nascent digital technologies. After several failed forays into business, and in a last roll of the dice in 1987 at age 43, he formed Huawei, meaning “committed to China and making a difference,” with the intention of selling program-controlled switches.
The company is now, in many ways, one of the most recognized brands in the world—partly due to its innovations and market capitalization, and partly for being caught in the geopolitical struggle between the West and China.
Ren’s story of deprivation and desperation stands in stark contrast to that of many of the founders of today’s tech giants. It should also provide a clue into the resilience of the company, the sense of positivity that it is imbued with, and how it plans to withstand current external pressures. The launch of a new smartphone, demonstrating that Huawei has managed to overcome U.S. sanctions and can innovate by itself, has drawn rapt attention. Similarly, although it did not make the global headlines, the company also recently announced the introduction of its own Enterprise Resource Planning software, which ends its reliance on Oracle’s software. Many more innovations are expected, proving the old adage that necessity is the mother of invention.
What makes Huawei so innovative? Understanding this requires looking at three aspects of the company and how it is run, which provide insights for observers.
Huawei’s Governance and Ownership System
It is often wrongly assumed that Huawei operates as a commercial extension of the CCP, and is run similarly, where the founder Ren Zhengfei holds absolute authority, closely overseeing a very top-down, hierarchical system.
The reality appears rather differently. The privately-held company is 100 percent, employee-owned with Ren holding 0.7 percent of the company’s shares. This governance structure is unique to Huawei and draws from extensive studies of best practices from across the world, customized to suit its needs.
The company operates under a collective leadership model with numerous checks and balances, where shareholder representatives and those sitting in decisionmaking bodies are democratically elected. The shareholders’ meeting, the company’s premier decisionmaking forum, decides on the company’s major matters such as capital increases, profit distribution, and election of the members of the board of directors and supervisory board. Employees are represented by the Trade Union Committee, and the Representatives’ Commission is the employee vehicle through which the Union fulfills shareholder responsibilities and exercises shareholder rights. The shareholding employees with voting rights elect the Commission on a one-vote-per-share basis, after which the Commission elects the company’s board of directors and supervisory board on a one-vote-per-person basis. These events are transparent and even live-streamed to all employees.
As the founder of Huawei, Ren’s influence and authority comes from the respect he has gained for his achievements—a particularly Chinese approach towards organizational harmony and order, rooted in a culture of respect for elders and leaders. While Ren carries veto rights on board decisions, it is a matter of record that he has exercised this right only a few times and typically on technology and business direction, as is common in most privately held firms anywhere in the world. He is depicted internally as one who prefers to share his vision and ideas through company-wide addresses that serve as guidance on directionmaking.
The main motivation for setting up such a governance structure is to ensure the company's longevity and to enable it to achieve sustainable growth. Being a privately held company has allowed Huawei to design structures and set targets for the long-term, able to focus on its core vision and mission—inclusive of customers and employees.
While recent sanctions have impacted Huawei’s smartphone business and short-term profits (there was a 69 percent year-on-year decline in net profit in 2022), Huawei has continued to make strategic investments and devoted even more capital to research and development (R&D). In 2022, they invested 25 percent of their revenue in R&D, equivalent to 161.5 billion yuan, more than any company in the world outside America in absolute terms, and more than the tech giants as a percentage of revenue. For comparison, Amazon, the world’s biggest spender on R&D, and Alphabet invested around 14 percent of their revenue on R&D in the same year.
Despite not being able to launch high-end 5G phones globally, the smartphone business units have not laid off any staff. This is also a cultural difference that is often misunderstood and unappreciated, where the employee is seen as being part of the family. This is such that, when hard times arrive, everyone bears with it and goes into “survival” mode. The launch of the new Mate 60, Mate 60 Pro, Mate 60 Pro+, and Mate X5 which is a new version of its foldable phones, is a testament to the wisdom of this strategy.
Huawei’s governance structure is what allows it to reinvest in the company, its facilities, R&D, and its employees, even during times of business downturn and external pressures.
A Culture of Learning from the World and Global Openness
Huawei’s emphasis on hard work, based on the Confucious tradition of collective resilience, has enabled it to attract talent who firmly believe they can overcome obstacles and create solutions that best achieve the company’s official goal of “Staying customer-centric and creating value for customers.” Employees are not driven only by the financial rewards on offer, but also by a sense of purpose and the need to be engaged in finding solutions to problems. The company’s appeal has enabled it to attract the best talent China has to offer.
In coming up with the company’s current corporate governance model, what is noteworthy is that Huawei’s leadership spent time studying the governance models of successful, long-lasting companies from around the world, including Japanese family-owned companies and corporations from France, Germany, and the United States. They actively considered the merits and weaknesses of different models, learning from lessons of success and failure, taking these ideas and customizing them for Huawei.
The design of Huawei’s supervisory board is a good example. It drew inspiration from German corporate governance structures and the governance principles developed by Fredmund Malik. However, Huawei’s structure is different from German companies in that the representatives of shareholders sit at the top. In addition, the supervisory board does not only supervise the board of directors but plays an active role in developing the leadership pipeline at different levels of the company and setting regulations for how the company operates.
Though often condemned and suspected by Western policymakers and experts, the company’s origins and unique governance system are poorly understood.
The participation of employees is also unique. All members of the supervisory board and board of directors are Huawei employees. It is also a requirement that shareholder representatives nominated to the board have contributed to the company and demonstrated the requisite leadership skills.
A similar mindset of learning from different models was applied to succession planning and the establishment of its rotating co-chair system five years ago. Huawei places an emphasis on developing leaders within the company. To achieve the system it wanted, it studied different leadership structures from established companies with similar approaches, including family-founded companies.
By retaining top talent, the company believes it can overcome the limitations of any one individual and provide checks and balances. Huawei presently has three rotating co-chairs. When co-chairs are off duty, they visit other countries, meet employees, learn about the business, and, importantly, have space and time to think, which is given a lot of emphasis.
Huawei’s open worldview and its appreciation for other cultures are most dramatically reflected in its R&D campus in the city of Dongguan, nicknamed the “European city,” where 30,000 staff work in twelve different “villages” modeled after nine different European countries. Manicured gardens surround life-size replicas of the most famous cities and architecture in Europe, including the Palace of Versailles, Heidelberg Castle, Amsterdam, and Verona. Dotted across the villages are numerous restaurants and cafes, a reflection of Ren’s advocacy of coffee culture. There is also an electric train service so that no one needs to drive within the campus. The concept for the campus was conceived as part of a design competition and was selected for its uniqueness, setting it apart from the usual tech company or Chinese-inspired designs.
The organization and its employees clearly continue to have an appreciation for promoting global culture exchanges and learning from non-Chinese models of success. Prominent observers have taken notice of this.
A Commitment to Social Obligations and Making a Difference
Many might be surprised to learn that Huawei considers sustainability to be an integral part of its business priorities. It has four sustainability strategies, all of which are aligned with its vision and mission: Digital Inclusion, Security and Trustworthiness, Environmental Protection, and Healthy and Harmonious Ecosystem. Each of these strategies is integrated with the company’s business and product development. For example, Huawei’s products and solutions are increasingly designed to help the business and their clients reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions.
While the company does release annual sustainability reports, these do not adhere to the typical Western ESG (environmental, social, and corporate governance) or CSR (corporate social responsibility) reporting. Similarly, the company does not place too much of an emphasis on philanthropy and has not set up a foundation or philanthropic arm. Instead, it invests in developing cost-effective and sustainable solutions using its technology and working with local and multilateral partners to achieve its objectives in countries where the needs are most critical.
Consider TECH4ALL, the company’s long-term digital inclusion initiative, dedicated to producing innovative technologies and solutions that enable an inclusive and sustainable world. They have applied AI and cloud to learn the sound of endangered animals, rainforests, and wetlands, to remotely monitor and prevent illegal hunting and logging. This application has been used in many countries in Latin America and Europe and has the potential to be deployed in other fields.
Another example is RuralStar. As part of its commitment to rural development and bridging the digital divide to boost development in remote areas, Huawei invested in innovating simpler and smaller technology for data transmission. The RuralStar solution allows a base station to be constructed on a simple pole instead of a dedicated tower, with low-power features that can be powered using six solar panels. RuralStar is widely recognized as one of the greenest and most cost-effective solutions available for remote and rural communities. Notably, the business decision to service rural areas comes at an estimated 30 percent reduction in profit margins compared with the traditional focus on high-density urban areas only. Globally, this technology services small villages of several thousand residents at a 70 percent cost reduction compared to traditional solutions. Following its first pilot in Ghana in 2017, over sixty countries have implemented RuralStar and over 50 million people in rural areas have benefited. As an example of how such projects are funded, in 2020 in Ghana, the Ministry of Communications and the Ghana Investment for Electronic Communications signed a financing agreement with Export-Import Bank of China for Huawei to deploy more than 2,000 RuralStar sites for Ghana to provide voice and data services for over 3.4 million people.
Within its goal to drive digitalization, Huawei has also been consistently investing in green transformation. Beyond a significant increase in the use of renewable energy within their own operations (a 42.3 percent increase from 2020), an increased energy efficiency of their products is also an important metric in their innovation process. A company reports a 1.9 times increase in energy efficiency in their main products since 2019, which in turn helps their customers and industry partners reduce their carbon footprint.
More broadly, Huawei’s digital power technology is being deployed and used in many solar farms globally. The idea is to manage watts with bits to help better produce clean energy and cut emissions. By the end of 2021, Huawei Digital Power had helped customers generate 482.9 billion kWh of green power and save about 14.2 billion kWh of electricity. These efforts have resulted in a reduction of nearly 230 million tons in CO2 emissions, equivalent to planting 320 million trees.
The ability to choose to meet its social commitments and to take concrete steps towards realizing its corporate vision beyond the mission statements is relatively unique to Huawei. At a time when companies are striving to meet ESG goals and overcome the fundamental tension between short-term priorities and investments for sustainable growth, Huawei works to overcome such challenges by seeing its products and services as key enablers of sustainable development. It is committed to developing information and communications technologies for reducing carbon emissions, promoting renewable energy, and contributing to the circular economy. Huawei strives to promote energy conservation and emission reduction in its own operations and to use more renewable energy. This is possible to achieve due to internal consensus across the leadership team to make strategic choices aligned with their sustainability agenda, the desire to invest in long-term ambitions, and the capacity to innovate new products that allow them to achieve their sustainability goals.
A Company That Isn’t Going Away
Huawei’s success on the global stage, based upon excellence in delivering new innovations, demonstrates that China has much to teach the rest of the world. Yet this success came about via a strategy of openness and a willingness to learn from others. The company’s critics, scrambling to respond to recent developments, ought to take note.
Chandran Nair is the founder and CEO of the Global Institute For Tomorrow (GIFT). He is the author of Dismantling Global White Privilege: Equity for a Post-Western World.
Image: Shutterstock.
