The Chinese Chip Giant That Could Be Nvidia's Biggest Threat

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1:49Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Jill Wazenthal. And I'm Tracy Alloway. Tracy, we recently did that episode with Mackenzie Hawkins talking about, you know, some of the geopolitics of AI and chips, et cetera. And when it comes to AI chips, it basically is NVIDIA and nobody else. But there is one other company that's clearly like lurking out there in the picture. Huawei. Yes. Right. So that was one of the things that came up, which is that, yes, NVIDIA has this huge dominance within AI. But, you know, there is this Chinese company, as you said, Huawei, that is making a lot of progress.

2:24If there's one area of concern or if there's one possibility that another company's tech could really sort of like form the backbone of AI, this is probably them. I find Huawei really fascinating as a company. So it's sort of this national champion. Yeah. And even the name, I think, means something like China has achievements or China is able to achieve or something like that. And yet it has these like really weird European headquarters, European style headquarters. I've seen these photos. Yeah. They look like French castles and things like that. And you hear all these stories about how aggressive some of the Huawei sales tactics are.

3:06There was the arrest of the founder, Rin Jungfei's daughter a few years ago. So there's just all this stuff going on and like kind of weird tensions. And I want to learn more about what this company actually is and what it does. Totally. A lot of mystery, a lot of perhaps paranoia, a lot of concern about what it does and who it is and its connection to the Chinese government, the CCP, et cetera. Anyway, we have to learn more if this is going to be the one company that could at some point in the future, threaten NVIDIA. And we really do have the perfect guest to talk about it. We are going to be speaking with Eva Do.

3:42She is the author of the fairly new book. It came out earlier this year, House of Huawei, The Secret History of China's Most Powerful Company. It's really an extraordinary book. I actually think, like someone asked me the other day, what are a few books you would read about China these days? And this is now, I think, sort of an instant classic. So Eva, thank you so much for coming on OddLots. Kind of perfect timing. Thank you so much for having me here. Actually, it's really perfect timing because just today, the founder of the company, Ren Jung-fei, gave an interview with People's Daily. And it's clear in your reporting, he does not do like a ton of media, et cetera.

4:19He's certainly not like Jensen Wang, always talking to the press. What do you take away from that, that suddenly there's a, I think literally just today or maybe yesterday, that there's a Ren Jung-fei interview with People's Daily? Yeah, so this is very, very rare for them to publish a full interview transcript with a private enterprise entrepreneur on the front page of the People's Daily, which is the party's mouthpiece and usually is chronicling what the nation's leader Xi Jinping and other senior officials are doing. And I think it really speaks to Huawei's sort of central role now in China's tech industry and not only that in diplomatic relations.

5:00This is the message to the United States and the world for them to put his words on the front page of People's Daily at a time when Huawei is very much in the crosshairs of the Trump administration. I want to ask the pressing question on my mind and then maybe get into other important stuff. But what is the deal with the European castle headquarters for this company that has sort of grown in tandem with the Chinese economy and is considered a national champion, national symbol in many ways? Why do they have French castles and like Greek statues as their headquarters? Yeah, this is one of the strange and amusing things about this company.

5:43They have this sort of larger-than-life campus that just mystifies people when they come to visit. They have like a replica of Versailles. They have a replica of the Castle of Heidelberg from Germany. And they have their R &D operations in these like European style castles. And it's very strange to people. And this has never been fully explained by the company. But in a way, it does show the level of their ambition. Like they are building sort of an empire far more than just what many people think of sort of a single tech company does. And its global footprint. The weird thing about Huawei is, you know, when we talk about these big Chinese industrial giants, typically, a lot of them are publicly traded.

6:29We're talking about BYD or Xiaomi or so forth or cattle, the battery company. And then it's also not a state-owned enterprise. You tell in the book the story of it was founded in Shenzhen in either the late 70s or early 80s. They explicitly decided not to go down the SOE road, unlike competitor ZTE. What is it, though? Explain, like, what is the structure of this company? This sort of gets to the heart of why I was so interested in this company, Huawei Technologies, in that if you really, if you understand how this company works, then you really do understand how China works writ large. And so it is this fusion between capitalism and the party-controlled Chinese economy.

7:13That's where Huawei sits. So it is registered as a private company and it is privately held. They have resisted listing on the stock market for decades, which means that they are able to take a longer term view. They don't have to deliver quarterly results. They aren't under the gun from investors to be profitable every single year, even though they are. So they sort of are able to plow more of their money into long-term R &D investments. And the other part of that is they do have national guidance under the party from Beijing as one of the nation's tech champions. And so it's kind of this fusion.

7:58How does competition with ZTE actually work? Huawei is this big, important, privately held company in China, but ZTE is part state-owned. I guess both of them have some sort of relationship, obviously, with the CCP. But how do they actually compete against each other? And I guess, how does the party actually view the purpose of that competition? Yeah, so Huawei and ZTE, they're crosstown rivals. They're both based in Shenzhen. They're sort of like siblings, how they've grown up. They're in some ways very similar in the types of products they offer and their global footprint. And this reflects how China has built its economy, which is it encourages this kind of competition among domestic companies.

8:47And they have to fight it out amongst themselves. And this pushes them to be more efficient, to be better. And Huawei largely has been the one who's won out. But there's competition everywhere, right? And there's competition in the United States. What is it specifically about the bones of this company that makes it unique in how cutthroat and competitive it is? I think Huawei is infused in this Chinese communist ethos of sacrifice towards a larger cause, towards the company's cause and the nation's cause in a way that is quite unique. And so one example will be, so in January 1996, there was this seminal moment in Huawei's history, which was its first mass resignation ceremony.

9:37And so Zhen Zhengfei essentially fired his entire sales department and made them reapply for their own jobs because he was unhappy with his performance. But the way he went about this was just very different than what you would see in a Western company. So each of the salespeople had to write up a resignation letter, and then they held a rally where all the employees took turns criticizing themselves. You had salespeople blaming themselves and pledging that they were going to sacrifice themselves for the company's success. And this gets to this communist ethos of self-criticism and sort of sacrificing your individual interests toward the national goal, which is really a key part of Huawei's culture.

10:24Tracy, would you do a self-criticism and sacrifice for odd lots and go up on stage in front of the entire team and talk about ways that you've fallen short? Joe, I do self-criticism every day. I would. It would take part in an odd lot self-criticism session in front of all of you. Okay, since we brought up self-criticism, which is very, very much a CCP thing, and everyone remembers the images and writings about self-criticism sessions in the 1960s, 1970s, what exactly is the connection between Ren Zhengfei, the founder of Huawei, and the CCP? I know he used to be a PLA engineer, I think. But other than that, what exactly is the connection?

11:11Yes. So the party plays an overarching role in China, including over the private tech sector. And so it is always, always there. So Huawei, since its early days, has had a communist party committee within the company, which is a normal thing and required in China, even for foreign companies like Walmart or Disney that are operating in China. And so this, throughout its history, has played a role in aligning the company's operations with national goals. And in some ways, doubles as an HR department in that they have a role and authority to fire people, to recommend people for promotion or vice versa.

11:55Yeah, this is really interesting. They also sort of police the behavior of at least the party members who work for the company? I think like you talk in your book about like, you know, they make sure that they're engaging in good moral behavior, like not gambling and stuff like that. Yeah, certainly. And so the party members are, it's not the majority of Huawei's employees, but a sizable proportion of the staff are party members and the party committee specifically is in charge of overseeing the moral guidance of these employees who are supposed to be leaders within the company. And every few years, there is this crackdown on immoral behavior within a company that aligns with nationwide crackdown.

12:39Thank you.

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13:49EasyCater, your business tool for food. To learn more, visit easycater.com slash podcast. Did my card go through? Oh no. Your small business depends on its internet. So switch to Verizon Business and you could get LTE business internet starting at$39 a month when paired with select business mobile plans. That's unlimited data for unlimited business. There we go. Get the internet you need at the price you want. Verizon Business. Starting price for LTE business internet, 25 megabits per second unlimited data plan with select Verizon Business smartphone plan savings. Terms apply. Can I ask a very, very basic question, which probably should have been my first question instead of asking about the castles.

14:33But what does Huawei actually do? And what did they start out making versus what they make and do now? So the way to think about Huawei is right now we live in this information economy and data is sort of the most valuable commodity in any nation now. And so Huawei is the company that builds the pipes that carry data, both in China and around the world. It's emerged as the most proficient company that does this, that builds the networks for both internet and phone data around the world. And in addition to that, it's also China's leading producer of chips, which right now are the heart of this AI revolution.

15:18And so the U.S. has NVIDIA and China's alternative is Huawei. And so they make telecom networks, they make the chips, and they also have expanded to like a wide range of other products, including consumer technologies like smartphones, smartwatches, and smart cars, the most recent one. Oh, I didn't realize. It's really amazing with these big Chinese tech giants. They really build everything. And I actually do think sort of aside here, it's interesting that like 10 years ago, there was talk about an Apple car and they spent a lot of time looking into getting into cars and it just sort of never materialized.

15:59And yet here you have these. Here's a company that was clearly late to the smartphone game relative to the Apple iPhone, which was the beginning. And now it's doing cars and watches and everything else and all the 5G gear and all the things that Apple doesn't do. It strikes me as very revealing. There's a comment from the founder that was, I think, dates back to the 90s where he said, a country without its own program-controlled switches is like one without an army. That strikes me as something that he identified, which now almost every country or everyone around the world is thinking. It's almost like he was 30 years ahead of his time.

16:35Because if you think about the anxiety in the U.S. about various technologies that we don't build here, if you think about the anxiety in Europe, et cetera, it really seems like that line is now becoming conventional wisdom among companies and governments all over the world. Yes, it really speaks to the role of technology and nations and its relationship to the governments in which there's always been this through line from technology to nations sort of control and surveillance operations. And so that is why Huawei has been sort of in the crosshairs of not only the U.S. government, but governments around the world is this role that it plays.

17:17So on this note, one thing I'm really curious about is how does Huawei actually make big decisions? So, you know, for instance, if it wants to launch a self-driving car, what does that discussion actually look like? And I guess like we just did an episode with Ricardo Hausman where we were talking about economic complexity and the idea of countries sort of jumping from product to a more complicated product and then a more complicated product after that. But I guess how much interrelation is there between all the things that Huawei makes? So Huawei's founder, Rin Yongfei, is still the leader of the company.

17:55And people have been anticipating his retirement for many years and it's still unclear when he will retire. And so for now, he is making those decisions. And under him, there are rotating chairs who take it's kind of a strange system. They take turns doing half year stints as Huawei's acting CEO. And so it is a collective decision that's being made about the company's broader strategy. And this is meant to provide consistency in the company's direction going forward, especially as they're looking to a future where Mr. N has retired. One of the things that I had forgotten about that you talk about in your book is how many big networking companies there used to be, even 10 years ago, but certainly like 20 years ago or 25 years ago around the dot-com bubble.

18:48And there's just all these names that I had – I can't remember the last time. Ericsson still exists, but it's clearly just nothing like what it used to be. There's 3Com and Palm and Nortel, Northern Telecom, and Lucent and Marconi. Like all of these companies that I just hadn't forgotten, I had forgotten about for years, these sort of makers of telephone gear and there's others too. And one I didn't realize, and correct me if I'm wrong, it basically seems like the reason we don't talk about any of those companies anymore is basically due to Huawei and Huawei specifically. It really was a story of all these different telecom companies ultimately losing out to Huawei.

19:29Certainly. So there was a period during the 2000s when Huawei just sort of mopped the floor with its competition around the world and ran a lot of these major companies out of business. And so Canada had Nortel. The UK had Marconi. These were gear makers who were making similar equipment to Huawei. And they all just went out of business within a span of a few years. And that's partly why officials in the West started ringing the alarm a few years ago, which was they looked around at the global market and it was all Huawei. It's just dominating this market. And in a way, for Western countries, it was sort of an own goal.

20:13They could have fought harder to keep their companies in this market, which is critical to technological development and critical to national security. But these companies all went under. And there's only a handful of companies in the world left that make this kind of equipment. So speaking of national security, you make the point towards the end of the book that Huawei's goals, they go beyond just shareholder returns. It's also concerned with China's place in the world and helping boost China's competitiveness and all of that. And obviously, there's that CCP link as well that we already discussed.

20:50But I guess my question is, what are the sort of strengths and weaknesses of having a corporate mission that goes beyond just pure profit? How does that actually affect the performance of the company? Well, for the most part, this has been very successful for Huawei and that part of why it's become number one in its field around the world and difficult to challenge is because it's not playing by these same rules where it needs to seek profitability and needs to maximize profitability kind of explicitly. that's not its main mission and it's not publicly traded. And so they can't take temporary losses and plow all their money into R &D in a way that like a publicly listed US company might find difficult to convince investors to put up with.

21:42Yeah, so it has allowed Huawei to become incredibly strong and incredibly competitive in a way that's difficult for Western rivals to compete with. I guess one major risk of this kind of alignment with Beijing is, you know, you become at the whim of China's government policies, which often comes in swings and often goes overboard. And Huawei is one of the few companies that has survived in such a strong state from the 1980s to the present day. And many companies have gone under in China under sort of these political winds. It does seem like there's a parallel between the trajectory of Huawei and also the current government under Xi Jinping.

22:31Ren Zhengfeng's own father was sort of cast out of the Communist Party or criticized or something like that. He was a persona non grata in some manner or another, much like Xi's own father. And yet Ren has obviously committed himself to China. Obviously, Xi is the president of the country. It does feel like there has been this sort of clear co-evolution. One of the things that you write about in your book that I thought was interesting is he was talking about like people who got sort of kicked out of the party. And he says, you know, if you get cast into the fire and you survive, then you become the phoenix.

23:04It really does seem like a story here about sticking with the party and sticking with the country even when you suffer personal misfortune because of it. Certainly. And Huawei's story in specific is China's story more broadly. The company was founded at the dawn of China's grand experiment with capitalism when it was starting to open up from purely socialist economy. And it's been in step with China's development ever since. And so its fate is intertwined with Beijing, probably more than ever now. And this has been something that Zhenzheng Fei has tried to resist at times to put some distance between himself and the government.

23:55But what they make, it's so critical for the nation's technology industry, so critical for national security that there's no way of really separating it. I was just about to ask about tensions between the company and the party, but can you give us some examples of where disagreement might arise or why Rin would want to separate Huawei a little bit from the CCP? Yes. So in the 1990s, Huawei went through this period where it was setting up a lot of joint ventures with state-owned enterprises across the country. That was its first big step to take over China's domestic market was through these tie-ins with local governments.

24:39And so during that period, there definitely was tension. There was definitely culture clash. So it meant Huawei had to be taking on all these new employees who were used to the slow pace of work in state-owned enterprises, you know, leisurely lunch, afternoon nap. And it was quite a shock for them coming to work at Huawei, which was a company where employees literally worked themselves to death in some cases. And that kind of martyrdom was sort of idealized. Can we talk a little bit about alcohol? Well, Tracy posted a story that was actually in the Wall Street Journal yesterday that there is yet another attempt by the Xi Jinping government to crack down on certain excesses.

25:26And there are some local government officials, and they consumed a bunch of bottles of baiju, and then one of them died that day. You also talk about this in your book, which is that like the sales culture was so intense and there was this expectation that the salespeople had to get more drunk than the colleagues or than the clients or that the clients never felt embarrassed by how drunk they're getting. Talk to us about alcohol and like all this drinking and partying that goes on. certainly so huawei through most of its history in china has had this reputation of a very bro culture which in china meant a lot of heavy drinking of hard liquor by joe which is this incredibly strong liquor and in china part of you're not missing anything you're not missing corporate culture of entertaining your clients is taking them out and getting just rip-roaring drunk.

26:27And as the salesperson, you're supposed to get more drunk than your client to show respect to them. And so you have these salespeople who really were suffering pretty severe health consequences of this heavy drinking. And at some point, the officials within Huawei, they were sending out like these stomach bombs to employees who had suffered stomach damage from getting so drunk doing their jobs. And this was sort of seen as a part of the personal sacrifice you do to further Huawei's goals to make that company succeed. Wow. I love how like a lot of people would think like partying as a salesperson is like one of the perks of the job.

27:14But I love the idea of like partying so hard and getting so drunk that it ceases to be a perk anymore. And it actually represents your sacrifice to the company because like you're blowing out your stomach and your liver in doing so to the point where the company needs to send you, send medicine out to the sales force. Yes, certainly. And you have these stories of salespeople, they're getting so drunk, They have to go and take a vomit break in the middle and then they come back and keep drinking whatever it takes to get the job done. That's how you win all those. That's how you win all those. Anyway, sorry, Tracy, keep going.

27:47As someone who spent a lot of time in Japan, I find the idea of people partying so hard it ends up being a sacrifice and something they don't want to do. Very, very relatable. Can we talk a little bit about tariffs and trade restrictions? So obviously, you know, since 2018, the first Trump administration, the U.S. has tried to put limits on exports to China and tried to, I guess, block some of China's technological development in various ways. A lot of those restrictions were carried through by the Biden administration. Some people would even say that the Biden administration was harder on Huawei than Trump.