Across Huawei’s four-decade history, Chinese policy support for the company has never wavered, even as a number of other Chinese companies have folded amid political purges and policy fads.FRED DUFOUR/AFP/Getty Images
Eva Dou is a Washington D.C.-based journalist and writer. Her book, House of Huawei: The Secret History of China’s Most Powerful Company, is a finalist for the 2026 Lionel Gelber Prize, presented by the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy.
The phrase “industrial policy” is in vogue, as countries seek to imitate and compete against China’s breathtaking economic rise. Public debate has gravitated toward the flashy numbers: boosting trade flows, changing tariff rates, earmarking billions of dollars for key sectors, and setting targets for job creation. But a close study of the rise of China’s most formidable technology company, Huawei Technologies, reveals that several more esoteric factors also play a role in tipping the balance between failure and success.
As governments around the world embrace industrial subsidies, history shows that simply throwing cash at problems isn’t enough. China’s state-subsidized projects have overwhelmingly been failures, if success means the creation of a world-leading company. What differentiates the successes like Huawei, which has reached the global frontier in multiple sectors, is uncommon leadership. Similarly to Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei’s has inspired a great many people to dream the same dream. Apple insiders spoke of Mr. Jobs’ “reality distortion field,” his preternatural ability to convince himself and those around him of almost anything, through unshakable will and compelling rhetoric. This was similar to the effect that Mr. Ren had on staff and associates. Huawei outperformed peers using the same inputs, often surpassing what should have been possible on paper. In practice, this meant engineers sleeping on floors under their desks while pulling all-nighters, salespeople going to shocking lengths to win clients, and staffers risking their lives in war zones to uphold commitments to customers. Meanwhile, Chinese government officials, charmed by Mr. Ren, granted unusual regulatory exceptions and reshuffled budgets to support the company.
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Also worth considering is the extraordinary fact that across Huawei’s four-decade history, Chinese policy support for the company has never wavered. The number of other Chinese companies that have folded amid political purges and policy fads are too numerous to count. It’s a reflection that Huawei’s core business is bonded to the nation’s identity and trajectory in a profound way – enough for political will to endure through all intervening current events.
Huawei was founded in 1987 as a telephone-switch maker, just as China was beginning an audacious societal transformation from an impoverished, agrarian nation to a modernized urban economy with its sights on becoming a global high-tech power. This has been modern China’s overarching story, and it could not have happened without the nationwide installation first of land line telephones, then of the internet, then mobile networks for smartphones – all underpinned by Huawei’s technologies. It did not end there. Huawei’s role in building infrastructure abroad became intertwined with Beijing’s diplomatic power as China internationalized following its accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001. In the AI era, Huawei again stepped up to the plate, delivering the nation’s leading AI chips. In any country, officials would do well to consider what types of long-term projects can best hold up against changing political winds in their unique political environment and historical tradition.
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Another factor that tends to be overlooked is that Huawei’s executives planned for the company’s longevity since its early days. Mr. Ren repeatedly told staff his goal was for Huawei to survive at least 100 years. This unusual mentality stopped executives from making decisions that could have precipitated an early collapse or loss of competitiveness. Huawei resisted a stock-market listing and spelled out in its company charter that profitability was not its goal, but rather becoming a world leader. Mr. Ren studied management theory obsessively, hiring international consultants to ensure he avoided common pitfalls that caused companies to fail as they scaled up.
Not all of Huawei’s strategies call for imitation. Its history includes documented cases of intellectual property theft, official bribery scandals, accusations of age discrimination by former staffers, and a corporate culture that valorized employees risking personal health and safety for the company’s bottom line. In China’s censored media landscape, Huawei suppressed negative news. And as many Canadians recall, Beijing has come out to bat for the company in alarming ways, including retributive detention of two Canadian nationals in 2018.
We stand at a historic moment that is both scary and exciting. The advent of powerful AI technologies has shaken loose the established world order. Corporations and nations that are early in identifying what their competitive advantages will be in this next era stand to unlock untold fortunes and safeguard the livelihood of their citizens. This moment calls for uncommonly gifted strategists to see clearly. And it calls for uncommon leaders to harness the dreams and energies of their peoples to summon new and better realities into existence.