Ren Zhengfei

Ren Zhengfei is a Chinese businessman and former engineer in the People's Liberation Army who founded the telecommunications equipment maker Huawei in Shenzhen in 1987 and has led it as chief executive for most of its history. Under his direction Huawei grew from a small reseller of imported phone switches into one of the world's largest suppliers of telecommunications network equipment and smartphones, while remaining a closely held private company with an employee stock ownership structure that Ren has described as central to its culture. His daughter, Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, was detained in Canada in 2018 on a United States extradition request tied to sanctions violations, a case that drew international attention to the company during Ren's tenure.