Li,某某

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 “List of 100 Outstanding Private Entrepreneurs Commemorating 40 Years of Reform and Opening-Up,” jointly compiled by the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee and the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce. He was also recognized as a China Economic News Figure for 2019 and, in 2019, was included on Forbes magazine’s list of “Business Leaders of the Year: Global Business Leaders.”

He has been recognized on prestigious lists, including Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World, 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 Greatest Business Figures.

In September 1991, Huawei rented the third floor of an industrial building in Haoye Village, Bao’an County, Shenzhen, to use as a research and development site for stored-program-controlled switches. More than fifty young employees followed Ren Zhengfei to this dilapidated factory, embarking on an entrepreneurial journey fraught with challenges and uncertainty. They divided the entire floor into four work sections—single‑board assembly, power supplies, final testing, and preparation—plus a storage room and a kitchen. Under the sweltering heat of the machinery, they worked around the clock, designing and fabricating circuit boards, assembling telephone switchboards, soldering components, writing software, and repeatedly debugging, revising, and retesting. In such conditions, Ren Zhengfei visited the site almost daily to monitor production and development progress, convene meetings to address pressing difficulties, and coordinate tasks to resolve a wide array of issues. During meal times, Ren Zhengfei and company leaders would join everyone at a roadside food stall for a communal dinner.