Huawei's CEO Built an Empire. Trump Could Tear It Down

At the sprawling Huawei Technologies Co. campus in Shenzhen, the food court’s walls are emblazoned with quotes from the company’s billionaire founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei. Then there’s the research lab that resembles the White House in Washington. Perhaps most curious, though, are the three black swans paddling around a lake.

For Ren, a former People’s Liberation Army soldier turned telecom tycoon, the elegant birds are meant as a reminder to avoid complacency and prepare for unexpected crisis. That pretty much sums up the state of affairs at Huawei, whose chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, who’s also Ren’s daughter, is in custody in Canada and faces extradition to the U.S. on charges of conspiracy to defraud banks and violate sanctions on Iran.

The arrest places Huawei in the cross-hairs of an escalating technology rivalry between China and the U.S., which views the company, a critical global supplier of mobile network equipment, as a potential national security risk. Hardliners in Donald Trump’s administration are especially keen to prevent Huawei from supplying wireless carriers as they upgrade to 5G, a next-generation technology expected to accelerate the shift to internet-connected devices and self-driving cars.

Ren is a legendary figure in the Chinese business world. He survived Mao Zedong’s great famine and went on to build a telecom giant with $92 billion in revenue that strikes fear among some policymakers in the West. Huawei is the No. 1 smartphone maker in China, and this year eclipsed Apple to become the second-biggest maker globally, according to research firm IDC. Though it has a low profile compared with China’s Internet giants, Huawei’s revenue last year was more than Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Baidu Inc. combined. About half of its revenue now comes from abroad, led by Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The company’s high-speed global expansion has come under fire for years, starting with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States’s derailing of an acquisition in 2008. More recently, Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. have blocked or limited the use of Huawei gear. Japan’s wireless operators also plan to ban some Huawei gear, Kyodo News reported Monday.