The Paper: Other Huawei executives have stated that Huawei is able to continue serving customers. Will the US ban affect your major customers and business? How will you respond?

Ren: We will certainly be able to continue serving our customers. Our mass production capacity is huge, and adding Huawei to the Entity List won't have a huge impact on us. We are making progress in bidding worldwide.

Our growth will slow down, though not by as much as everyone imagines. In the first quarter of this year, our revenue grew 39% over the same period last year. This rate decreased to 25% in April, and may continue decreasing towards the end of this year. But the US ban will not lead to negative growth or harm the development of our industry.

NetEase: Speaking of Plan B, how much has Huawei invested in this plan over the years? If Plan B is not put into use, will Huawei continue to invest in the plan?

Ren: We have invested so much that I cannot give a concrete figure. For both Plan A and Plan B, the budget and headcount were allocated together. Previously, Plan A received most of the budget, but now most of the budget will be allocated to Plan B. I don't know exactly how much the budget is. Every report I receive is several pages long. And instead of asking questions about every single component, I just do a general review. Making a plan is just one step. We have to identify the key phases for each component. So we are preparing little by little. Otherwise, we would not have hired 80,000 to 90,000 R&D engineers.

qq.com: How long will this tough situation last? Will this be a turning point in Huawei's development?

Ren: You are asking the wrong person; you should ask President Trump this question. I think there are two sides to this. Of course, we will be affected, but it will also inspire China to develop its electronics industry in a systematic and pragmatic manner. In the past, China threw a lot of money at developing the industry, but it turned out that this approach didn't work. To build bridges, roads, and houses, maybe it's true that we just need to invest money, but to develop chips, money alone is not enough. We need scientists, physicists, and chemists as well. Under such conditions, it is very difficult for China to succeed by relying on its own innovation, so why not take a cross-border approach to innovation? We can establish innovation centers in many countries. We can establish research centers in any locations that have the capabilities we need.

Science and Technology Daily: You've mentioned that developing chips requires not only money but also physicists and mathematicians. As a company, Huawei, as well as you personally, have repeatedly talked about basic education and basic research, and we also know that Huawei focuses on this area from some of your advertisements. What specific actions is Huawei taking in basic education and basic research? What kind of support will this provide to Huawei's future development?

Ren: First, we have 26 centers of expertise for R&D globally. We currently have over 700 mathematicians, 800 physicists, and 120 chemists working at Huawei. We have an Institute of Strategic Research, which provides a large amount of funding to well-known professors at top universities around the world. We don't expect return on this investment. The way we sponsor research is similar to how investment works according to the US Bayh-Dole Act. It's the universities that benefit from the investment. By doing so, we will work with more scientists researching technologies at different stages.

5G standards are widely considered to have a huge impact on society. Few people would imagine that they originated from a mathematics paper written by Turkish professor Erdal Arikan over a decade ago. We discovered this paper two months after its publication. Then we started to do research, perform analysis, and apply for patents based on this paper. Thousands of Huawei employees have been involved in this research. It took us a decade to convert the math paper into technologies and standards. We have the most 5G standard-essential patents in the world – about 27% of the total.

Professor Arikan is not a Huawei employee, but we sponsor his lab so that he can take on more PhD students, whom we also support. We also sponsor a university professor in Japan. He once had four PhD students, all four of whom later joined Huawei but continued to work at his office. Then he recruited four more PhD students to work for him, with all eight working for him at the same time. All those papers belong to them, not us. If we need to use their academic outcomes, we need to pay them. This approach is similar to the US Bayh-Dole Act. We use such approach to work with more scientists.

China Business Journal: I have two questions. First, the consumer business now accounts for the largest part of Huawei's revenue, followed by the carrier and enterprise businesses. What proportions do you think these three businesses will take in Huawei's revenue in five or ten years' time? Second, in the current situation, how would you define the future role of HiSilicon in Huawei?

Ren: The role of HiSilicon is a support team to Huawei, one that moves forward in tandem with the operating team of the company. It can be likened to a fuel truck, a crane, or a field medic that moves forward together with the core operation.

As for our three business groups, we don't take the view that the most profitable one is the most important. Only the department that is responsible for building network connections will be able to become number one in the world. It is the very department that has come under attacks from the US. I have compared it to a badly damaged aircraft. Actually, we have realized that this department does not face as many difficulties as others because it has been preparing for a long time. Our 5G, optical transmission, and core network technologies are free from the pressure that is being put on this department, and these technologies will be the world leaders for many years to come.

People's Daily: I have a question about R&D. Huawei has invested heavily in R&D. In which areas will you focus your future investments? What technological preparations will you make?

Ren: We have been working on a single point for three decades. At first, we had several dozen and several hundred employees focusing on this point, then we had tens of thousands, and now we have over a hundred thousand. We have been focusing all of our energy on this same single point, which inevitably results in breakthroughs. Every year we invest 20 billion US dollars in R&D, and no listed company has ever had the courage to invest so much money into a single area like we do.

We have been working on the information transmission domain. Our Consumer BG works on the "water taps", while our Carrier BG works on the "pipes". The harder we work on this domain, the more likely it will be for us to lead the world and maintain our position. In addition, we will continue to increase our investment in R&D.

I do not think that some downward pressure on our financial performance will affect our investment in R&D. Our employees are not greedy; they have enough money to make ends meet.

Rumor has it that Huawei will engage in automobile manufacturing, but that's not true. Our connected vehicle products serve world-leading carmakers, and mainly include vehicle-mounted computing and electronics products. This may develop into a huge industry. We work with companies in the automotive industry to achieve autonomous driving. However, putting Huawei's logo on a car sent by our partner does not mean that we will manufacture cars. We will not randomly enter other domains.

21st Century Business Herald: What do you think is the essence of Huawei's management philosophy?

Ren: Huawei has no philosophy. Personally, I have never studied philosophy or carefully read any philosophy book. If there really is such a thing as Huawei philosophy, I would say it is to "stay customer-centric and create value for customers".

This is because our money comes from our customers' pockets. There are three ways to obtain customers' money. The first is to rob, which violates the law. The second is stealing, which is not the right way, either. If you stole money, you would be detained in the police station. The third is to have our customers willingly give us their money. To make that happen, we must provide them with quality goods and services that they need. That's our one and only secret of success.

Xinhua News Agency: What kind of company does Huawei want to become in the future? Or which direction does Huawei want to move along?

Ren: We will not allow capital injection. Besides that, we are open to discuss anything.

Guancha.cn: Regarding the ownership structure, Huawei has taken a totally different path compared to other major technology companies in East Asia, such as Samsung Electronics and TSMC. In these companies, foreign entities or individuals hold at least 50% of company shares. This type of ownership structure means Western capital can obtain capital gains from leading Eastern Asian companies like Samsung Electronics and TSMC. What's your view on the differences here and the topic of capital gains?

Ren: I'm not interested in capital, so I haven't done any research about that. If Western media outlets are interested in it, they can do the research themselves. But no matter what, I will not let external capital enter our company. The problem for our company now is that we earn too much money. This is partly because we cannot lower prices. If we lowered our prices, the market of other companies would be squeezed and Huawei would share the fate of Xiang Yu, the Hegemon-King of Western Chu, eventually failing. So we cannot do this as an industry player.

In this regard, Apple is a role model. It's like an umbrella beneath which many small companies shelter and survive. If Apple charged low prices, there would be no other mobile phones in the world. With the excessive money that we earn, we use some of it for strategic investments, but we don't seek horizontal expansion. Instead, we use it to fund universities and scientists. At Huawei, we have scientist conferences which bring together numerous leading scientists from around the world, which I think is a miracle. 

Huawei contributed to the story.