Huawei Founder & CEO Ren Zhengfei hosted a 1-hour 45-minute discussion with George Gilder (futurist and venture capitalist) and Professor Nicholas Negroponte (co-founder of the MIT Media Lab), at the company’s Shenzhen headquarters.
Some key takeaways:
- Ren did not expect such a ferocious attack by the U.S. government
- Ren expects the U.S. blacklisting to wipeout US$30 billion in sales growth, however, overall sales will be flat for 2019 and 2020 at around $100 billion.
- Ren said overseas smartphone sales will dip 40%
- Gilder said the U.S. is making a terrible mistake with the Huawei ban. Gilder said the entire Internet is facing a security problem. This is a technical problem, not a political problem.
- Negroponte said we are facing a cultural problem. He although described the Huawei ban as a mistake, and that the world must learn to collaborate.
The video was streamed live and posted by CCTV.
The panel’s moderator invited questions from the international press but Ren did not respond to a question from CNN regarding China’s censorship of the Web and the blocking of Google and other American firms.
