本文发表在美国《国家利益》杂志。作者：钱德兰·奈尔（Chandran Nair）是一位印度裔马来西亚商人和学者，独立智库“全球明日研究所”的创始人。（正文）。
The Side of Huawei We Don’t Know
我们不了解的华为的一面
Though often condemned and suspected by Western policymakers and experts, the company’s origins and unique governance system are poorly understood.
尽管经常受到西方政策制定者和专家的谴责和怀疑，但外界对该公司的起源和独特的治理体系了解甚少。
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.
中国在短短30年内崛起成为世界第二大经济体和全球大国，是21世纪迄今为止最重大的事情。不幸的是，这也伴随着西方的极度恐惧，西方和主流媒体对中国的惊人发展速度描绘了一幅可怕画面。
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.
华为就是中国进步最明显的代表之一，这是一家中国公司，现在是全球最大的电信设备制造商。然而，随着公司的增长，伴随着西方尤其是美国恐惧和不信任，认为该公司对美国国家安全构成潜在威胁。
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.
华为所谓的“恶名”可以归结为两点。首先是，这家公司实际上经营得非常出色，创新能力极强，——这一事实让西方人感到不安，他们深信自己在技术上的优势以及技术创新与他们特定政治/文化价值观是因果关系。其次是，由于它是一家中国科技公司，而且其创始人曾在军队服役并且是党员，所以（西方人认为）公司就是受政府控制。后一种看法表明，他们对现代中国特别是中国商业生态系统与国家的关系了解甚少。
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.
这种对华为起源、运作方式和与中国利益关系的无知，使其反复成为攻击目标。华盛顿方面应该先更多了解这家公司及其成长历程。
（译者：就这一点来说，这位学者的眼界并不算高明，美国当然知道你没多吃那碗粉）
Huawei’s Origins
华为的起源
it is worth remembering that even in the 1970s and 1980s there were parts of China where famine was not unusual.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.
值得记住的是，即便在20世纪70年代和80年代，中国有些地区仍然常有饥荒。任正非就是这个时期成长起来的，他家里穷得连最基本的口粮都不够吃，为了让弟弟妹妹能多吃点，他会省下自己那份微薄的口粮，用米糠来填饱肚子。他还经常跑到森林里去找可以食用的东西以维持全家生计。
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.
早年的艰辛生活激励着这个年轻人踏上了非常了不起的征程。任正非在学了建筑和工程后，参军入伍。他最终带着更大的创业计划离开了军队，这是出于对社会做出贡献的愿望驱动。他自学了计算机和其他新兴数字技术的运行原理。在几次创业失败后，1987年，43岁的他孤注一掷的成立了华为，意为“根植中国，有所作为”，打算销售程控交换机。
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.
如今，这家公司在许多方面已经成为世界上最知名的品牌之一，部分由于其创新和市值，部分是因为它被卷入西方和中国之间的地缘政治斗争。
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.
任正非的贫困和绝望的故事与今天许多科技巨头创始人的故事形成了鲜明对比。这也应该能够给我们一些线索，让我们了解这家公司的韧性，它所充满的积极态度，以及它如何计划抵御当前的外部压力。新款智能手机的发布表明了华为成功克服了美国制裁，并且能够自主创新，这引起了广泛而密切的关注。同样，尽管没有登上全球头条新闻，但该公司最近还宣布推出了自己的ERP企业资源计划软件，结束了对甲骨文软件的依赖。预计会有更多创新，证明了“需求是发明之母”这句老话。
What makes Huawei so innovative? Understanding this requires looking at three aspects of the company and how it is run.
什么使得华为如此具有创新性？要理解这一点，需要从三个方面来看待这家公司及其运营方式。
Huawei’s Governance and Ownership System
华为的治理和所有制结构
It is often wrongly assumed that Huawei operates as a commercial extension of the CCP, and is run similarly. 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.
人们经常错误地认为华为是作为中国的商业延伸运营的，并且运营方式类似。但实际情况似乎与此不同。这家私营公司100%由员工持股，任正非持有公司0.7%的股份。这种治理结构在华为是独一无二的，它研究和借鉴了全世界最佳实践，并根据自身需求进行了修改。
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 unx Committee, and the Representatives’ Commission is the employee vehicle through which the unx 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.
该公司实行集体领导模式，具有许多制衡机制，股东代表和参与决策机构的成员都是通过民主选举产生的。股东大会是公司最高决策机构，决定公司的重大事项，如增资、利润分配以及董事会和监事会成员的选举等。工会委员会作为员工代表，而代表委员会是员工履行股东职责和行使股东权利的平台。拥有表决权的持股员工以一股一票的方式选举产生代表委员会，然后委员会以一人一票的方式选举公司的董事会和监事会。这些活动对所有员工都是透明的，甚至进行直播。
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.
作为华为创始人，任正非的影响力和权威来自他通过成就获得的尊重，这是一种特别中国式的让组织和谐与有秩序的方式，植根于尊重长辈和领导者的文化。尽管任正非对董事会决定拥有否决权，但他只在极少数情况下行使这一权利，而且通常涉及技术和业务方向，这在世界上任何私人企业中都很常见的。在公司内部，任正非更喜欢通过公司全体演讲来分享他的愿景和想法，以此作为公司发展方向的指引。
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.
建立这样一个治理架构的主要动机是确保公司的长久发展，实现可持续增长。让华为作为一家私人公司能够设计长期发展的结构和目标，专注于其核心愿景和使命，包括客户和员工。
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.
虽然近期的制裁影响了华为的智能手机业务和短期利润（2022年净利润同比下降69%），但华为仍然持续进行战略投资，并将更多的资金投入到研发中。2022年，他们将25%的营收投入研发，相当于1615亿元人民币，在绝对数额上是美国以外的公司中最高的，从百分比来看也超过了科技巨头。相比之下，2022年亚马逊（全球研发支出最高的公司）和Alphabet（谷歌母公司）的研发支出约为营收的14%。
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.
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没有裁员。这也是一种文化差异，常被误解和低估，员工被视为家庭的一员。当艰难时期来临时，大家都会共同担当，进入“生存”模式。新款Mate 60、Mate 60 Pro、Mate 60 Pro+以及折叠手机Mate X5的推出，证明了这一战略的智慧之处。
A Culture of Learning from the World and Global Openness
向全世界学习、全球开放的文化
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.
华为强调刻苦工作，这源于儒家的集体韧性传统。这使得华为能够吸引到那些坚信自己可以克服难关、创造解决方案以实现公司“以客户为中心，创造客户价值”这一宗旨的人才。员工们不仅仅是被金钱奖励所驱动，更多的是由一种使命感和对寻找问题解决方案的参与感所推动。华为的吸引力让其能够聚集中国最优秀的人才。
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.
在构建华为现有的公司治理模式时，值得注意的是，华为的领导层花了时间研究全球成功且历史悠久的公司的治理模式，包括日本家族企业和法国、德国和美国的公司。他们积极考虑不同模式的优缺点，从成功和失败的教训中汲取经验，并根据这些想法构建华为的模式。
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.
监事会的设计是一个很好的例子。它的灵感来自德国公司治理结构和弗雷德蒙德·马利克的治理原则。但是，华为的结构不同于德国公司，股东代表位居最高位置。此外，监事会不仅对董事会进行监督，还在公司各级领导岗位人才储备，设定公司运营规则方面发挥积极作用。
译注：弗雷德蒙德·马利克，是一位奥地利的管理学家和组织顾问。他被认为是管理学领域的重要思想家之一。
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.
员工的参与也是独一无二的。监事会和董事会的所有成员都是华为员工。提名进入董事会的股东代表也必须为公司做出贡献，展现必要的领导才能，这也是一项要求。
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.
五年前，华为在制定接班计划和建立轮值主席制度时，也采用了从不同模式中学习的思维方式。华为非常重视公司内部领导力的培养。为了实现自己想要的体系，它研究了一些采用类似治理的已有公司的领导结构，包括那些家族企业。
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.
通过留住顶尖人才，公司认为可以克服任何个人的局限性，并提供制衡。华为目前有三名轮值主席。当他们不在岗时，会访问其他国家，与员工会面，了解业务，更重要的是，有时间和空间思考，这一点非常重要。
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. 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.
华为开放的世界观和对其他文化的欣赏最明显地体现在其位于东莞市被称为“欧洲城”的研发园区，这里有3万名员工在9个不同欧洲国家风格的12个不同“村庄”中工作。区别于常见的科技公司或中国风建筑。该企业及其员工一直非常重视全球文化交流，从中国之外的成功模式中学习。这一点已经引起了知名观察家的注意。
A Commitment to Social Obligations and Making a Difference
履行社会义务和创造价值的承诺
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.
许多人可能会惊讶地发现，华为将可持续性视为其业务优先事项的重要组成部分。它有四个可持续性战略，所有这些都与其愿景和使命相一致：数字包容、安全与信任、环境保护以及健康和谐的生态系统。每一种策略都与公司的业务和产品开发紧密结合。例如，华为的产品和解决方案越来越多地被设计出来帮助企业及其客户减少能源消耗和二氧化碳排放。
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 obxtives in countries where the needs are most critical.
虽然公司确实发布年度可持续发展报告，但这些报告并不遵循典型的西方ESG（环境、社会和公司治理）或CSR（企业社会责任）报告。同样，公司没有过于强调慈善事业，也没有建立基金会或慈善部门。相反，它投资于利用自身技术，开发成本效益高且可持续的解决方案，并与当地及多边合作伙伴共同努力，在需求最为迫切的国家实现其目标。
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.
TECH4ALL是华为长期的数字包容倡议和行动，致力于产生创新技术和解决方案，实现一个包容和可持续的世界。他们已经将AI和云技术应用于学习濒危动物、雨林和湿地的声音上，以远程监控，防止非法狩猎和砍伐。这一应用已经在拉丁美洲和欧洲的许多国家中使用，并有可能在其他领域部署。
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.
另一个例子是RuralStar（乡村之星）。作为致力于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，华为投资创新了更简单、更小的用于数据传输的技术。乡村之星解决方案可以在简单的杆子上而不是专用铁塔上建造基站，功率低，可以用6块太阳能电池板供电。乡村之星被广泛的认为是针对偏远和农村社区的最环保和最具成本效益的解决方案之一。
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,
值得注意的是，服务农村地区的商业决策与只重视人口稠密的城市地区相比，预计利润率会降低30%。在全球范围内，这项技术为数千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年在加纳进行首次试点后，60多个国家已经实施了该计划，超过5000万农村地区居民受益。
Within its goal to drive digitalization, Huawei has also been consistently investing in green transformation. 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.
在推动数字化的目标内，华为还一直在持续投资绿色转型，，其产品的能源效率提高也是其创新过程中的一个重要指标。公司报告称其主要产品的能源效率自2019年以来提高了1.9倍，这反过来帮助其客户和行业伙伴减少餐碳排放。
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.
更广泛地说，华为的数字电力技术正在全球许多太阳能电厂中部署和使用。其思想是用比特管理瓦特，以更好地产生清洁能源和削减排放。到2021年底，华为数字电力帮助客户产生了4829亿千瓦时的绿色电力，节省了约142亿千瓦时电量。这些努力让二氧化碳排放减少了近2.3亿吨，相当于植树3.2亿棵。
A Company That Isn’t Going Away
一家不会消失的公司
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.
华为在全球舞台上的成功，基于其在创新方面的卓越表现，证明了中国有很多东西值得世界其他国家学习。然而，这种成功是通过开放策略和愿意向他人学习的态度实现的。那些对公司持批评态度、并正在争先恐后回应最近事态发展的人应该注意到这一点。
