The origin of the umbrella is lost in the mists of time. They have certainly been around in some form for a couple of millennia, but didn’t start to become popular in Europe until the eighteenth century. They have ecclesiastic relations in what’s known as an umbraculum, a small canopy placed over someone like the Pope to indicate their importance.

Although often indistinguishable, umbrellas can be used either to shelter from rain or to cast shade in strong sunlight, while parasols are intended only for the latter purpose. This article concentrates on those used in rain, and its sequel next week will examine those for the sun.

Being more recent, umbrellas don’t appear to have featured in classical or religious narratives, and are seldom involved in those more contemporary.

In Edmund Blair Leighton’s A Wet Sunday Morning from 1896, a well-dressed man is sheltering a young woman under his umbrella as they walk away from church in the rain. There’s a little more depth to this simple story, with two young women enthusiastically watching the couple from the top of the church steps, although no one seems to care about the old widow left to walk behind the couple, alone and without any shelter.

Edgar Degas’ superb narrative pastel painting Waiting (c 1882) shows two women sat side-by-side on a wooden bench in a corridor or waiting area within the ballet of the Paris Opera. Sat to the right of the dancer is a woman wearing black street clothing, holding an unrolled black umbrella, and with black walking or working shoes. Degas here invites the viewer to speculate in constructing their own narrative.

As umbrellas are notoriously hard to handle in strong wind, they may be used to tell the viewer how windy it is.

Christian Krohg’s The Umbrella from 1902 is an unusual one-off: a view looking down from the window of a building on a lone woman. She’s walking up a rough earth track, strewn with rocks, in windy weather, and her umbrella has been blown out by a fierce gust.

The post-Impressionist Maurice Prendergast uses this jostle of multicoloured Umbrellas in the Rain (1899), seen here in Venice, for their visual effect in forming a brilliant arc across the painting.

The great majority of umbrellas seen in paintings simply tell the viewer that it’s raining.

It might not be immediately obvious whether the umbrellas in Louis-Léopold Boilly’s Pay to Pass, from about 1803, are intended to provide shelter from rain or sun. However, the family shown are just about to pay the man at the far left, so they can walk across the muddy street on the comfort of the wooden plank on which they’re standing. This spares them and their clothing a coating of mud from the street, and seems to have been common practice at the time.

Umbrellas grew steadily in popularity in Paris, and the painting below, Paris Street, Rainy Day from 1877, is probably the first masterpiece to show them in such widespread use. Gustave Caillebotte’s study for that finished work below has survived and is shown above.

As the rain continues to fall, all the larger figures in the painting are shown holding umbrellas, most of which are regulation black.

Realist artists like Jean Béraud painted street scenes in the French capital, in his case forming a Paris chronicle. Out in the provinces, painters like Nicolas Sicard were doing the same. Sicard’s Entrance to the Guillotière Bridge in Lyon (1879) captures the scene at rush hour on a wet day, as many are rushing around under the canopies of their umbrellas. Note how even the cab drivers are sheltering under umbrellas: those operating open cabs normally provided them for their passengers too.

Just before the Norwegian Naturalist Christian Krohg went to Grez-sur-Loing in France, he seems to have visited Normandy, where he painted this view of a Village Street in Normandy (1882). Its curved recession of umbrellas with disembodied legs is striking.

Jules Bastien-Lepage’s brilliant protégé, the tragically short-lived Marie Bashkirtseff, featured an umbrella in this, one of her best portraits, The Umbrella (1883). This girl’s tenacious stare at the viewer quickly becomes quite unnerving, an effect enhanced by the severe black background of the umbrella that she carries.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s The Umbrellas from about 1881-86 is packed not only with people, but also their umbrellas. In parts they are so crushed together that the taller pedestrians are raising them high, to avoid bumping into others. Together they form a dark blue-grey band between the people below and the grey sky above.

My final painting of umbrellas used to shelter from rain is one of Nikolai Astrup’s early works, Farmstead in Jølster (1902). Two women, sheltering from the rain under their black umbrellas, are walking up a muddy path threading its way through the wooden farm buildings, guiding a young girl.

入门级价位的车型或许是令车企设计师相当头疼的存在，毕竟想要在成本、体验、配置之间找到一个平衡的解法并不容易。

但各家车企向来对入门级车型却都相当重视，除了能够更好在年轻的潜在用户之中建立影响力之外，低价位的车型开发也能让车企在供应链管理和成本控制方面积累经验。

奥迪 Q3 曾经就被称为「年轻人的第一台 BBA」，借助 A3 和 Q3,很多人第一次建立了对奥迪的品牌认知。

历经两代之后，奥迪 17 日在德国发布了第三代的 Q3 车型，在外观、内饰和配置方面都做了不少调整。

大连屏和新拨杆

新款 Q3在社交媒体上被讨论最激烈的部分是——全新设计的拨杆。

新款 Q3 采用了怀档设计，将原本位于中央扶手的换挡杆转移到了方向盘后面，原先的部位保留了启动按钮、音量旋钮以及电子手刹，余下的空间则分配给了两个杯架、一个无线充电面板和两个 USB 接口。

新的拨杆并不是我们熟悉的样式，新 Q3 上的拨杆采用了双层设计，左侧拨杆的第一层上面放置了一个旋钮，用来控制前后雨刷的频率，第二层则可以上下拨动来控制转向灯。

由于在上面集成了太多功能，所以这个拨杆也显得格外宽大。

新的怀档之外，新款 Q3 的内饰也更换成了奥迪 Q6 e-tron 同款的设计，采用了全液晶的 11.9 英寸的仪表盘和 12.8 英寸的触摸中控屏设计，只是从目前奥迪发布的图片来看，数字仪表盘周围的黑边区域似乎有些过大了。

我们还注意到，奥迪传统的原型方向盘被更换成了新的上下平底的方向盘，方向盘上的按钮也从实体按键变为了触摸按键，同时中控台也经过了重新设计，上面的出风口被移到了屏幕下方。

新一代的奥迪 Q3 在内饰材质上有所改进，不仅在前侧的车窗上首次配备了隔音玻璃，还使用了更多的柔软材质，包括由 100% 回收聚酯制成的布料，以及由回收尼龙纤维制成的天鹅绒地垫。

在座舱内的其他配置上，奥迪表示新款 Q3 将提供多种选择，比如「带有 300 个激光切割孔的发光门板」和 420W 的高级音响系统。融入 AI 大模型的奥迪语音助手和辅助驾驶系统也将以选配形式提供。

还是我们熟悉的「灯厂」

新款奥迪 Q3 采用了全新的外观设计，与现款的 Q3 大相径庭，我们多少能从它身上看到新款 A6 Avant 的一些影子。

奥迪在新的 Q3 上面使用了分体式大灯的设计，上部的日间行车灯变成了更为纤细的形状，主体的矩阵式 LED 大灯组则被隐藏在一块熏黑的深色玻璃后面。据奥迪介绍，这个新的前照灯组包含多达 25600 个微型 LED 灯组，每个灯组的大小差不多是人类头发粗细的一半。

奥迪还在这个灯组中增加了一些安全功能，诸如当驾驶者打转向灯准备变道时，如果目标车道有车辆，灯组将会投射出一些提示信息。

新款 Q3 的尾灯由上部的可变 OLED 灯组和下方的 LED 灯条组成，车主可以从六种样式中选择尾灯呈现的样式，四环尾标也变成了可以发光的样式。

除了灯组之外，现款 Q3 也在前脸和尾部使用了和 Q5L 相似的大尺寸的蜂窝状格栅和扩散器造型。

此外，S line 运动套件将为新款 Q3 提供独特的保险杠样式和哑光银的包围装饰。

在动力部分，新 Q3 的低配版本配备的是一台 1.5L 的涡轮增压发动机和 7 速双离合变速箱，提供了 148 匹马力和 250 牛米的扭矩，其在日常使用中可以关闭四个汽缸中的两个来节省油耗。高配的版本的 2.0L 发动机则可以产生 261 匹马力和 400 牛米扭矩，并搭配有 Quattro 四驱系统。

此外奥迪 Q3 还提供了一台插混版本，此版本在 1.5L 的发动机之外搭配了一块 19.7kWh 的电池，在 WLTP 工况下的纯电行驶里程约为 120 公里，两者结合提供了 268 匹马力和 400 牛米扭矩，和燃油车型不同的是，混动车型搭配的是 6 速的自动变速箱。

奥迪还介绍了他们在新 Q3 上使用的自适应悬架和双气门减震器带来了「更好的驾驶体验」以及「车身与悬架的连接会更顺畅」，高配车型上也新增了「平衡」和「越野+」两种模式。

在安全方面，奥迪在驾驶辅助系统上增加了注意力和疲劳警告功能，在极端情况下，新的紧急助手会接管车辆，并将其停在路边。

新款 Q3 将在今年 9 月正式在欧洲上市，预计在 26 年年内由一汽奥迪引入国内，作为参考，目前在售的新款 Q3 车型国内起售指导价为 25.18 万元，实际终端价格约为 15.7 万元。

自第一代推出以来，奥迪 Q3 全球销量已超过 200 万辆，是我们最畅销的车型之一，在我们的产品组合中享有很高的地位。（奥迪 CEO 格诺特·多尔纳）

虽然目前国内市场的新能源渗透率已接近 50%，但是 BBA 们的燃油车销量也并没有想象中的少，奥迪目前在中国市场销量最好的车型是 A6L，5 月份销量为 13027 辆，Q5L 紧随其后，售出了 10982 辆，Q3 则售出了 2937 辆。奥迪 Q3 的主要竞争对手宝马 X1 5月份在国内的销量为 4780 辆，奔驰 GLA 和 GLB 加起来则售出了 3500 辆。

那么你觉得新款 Q3 这次变化如何，还符合你的想象嘛？

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（德国之声中文网）《南德意志报》发表评论写道，在稀土问题上，即便是世界上最有权势的领导人特朗普也显得软弱无力。和德国及世界其他国家一样，美国也在稀土方面高度依赖中国。甚至可以说，在稀土问题上，欧美国家已经被中国及其专制政府牢牢抓住了软肋。这篇题为《离了中国，寸步难行》的评论写道：

“中国对自身的垄断地位心知肚明，也愿意毫不留情地充分利用这种优势。过去几周以来，美国对此就有过切肤之痛。同特朗普的关税之争中，稀土被中国领导层当作了反制武器。他们下令减少了对美国的稀土出口。美国企业因此陷入恐慌。中国实施出口限制还不到两个月，福特就不得不关闭了一家工厂，原因是稀土制造的磁铁严重缺货。

“北京随时都有可能会改变主意”

现在，作为最新中美协议的一部分，中国表示愿意恢复稀土供应。但是，北京随时都有可能会改变主意，而且起因并不一定局限于特朗普会再度挥舞关税大棒。仅仅出于这一原因，就不应对中美协定抱持过高的期望。对欧洲来说，这也是一次深刻教训和警示。因为欧洲大陆的可胁迫性和美国一样严重。除非西方拥有了自主开采和精炼稀土的能力，否则这种随时可能受到胁迫的风险就不会发生改变。

其实，稀土问题绝非突如其来。早在中美贸易争端升级之前，地缘政治专家就已发出过相关的警告。依赖问题主要集中在稀土的精炼和深加工方面，在这一领域，中国的市场份额已高达90%。尽管如此，多年来西方在这一领域还是无所作为。现在，虽然已经有了在中国之外开采和加工稀土的尝试，但进展却极其缓慢。数周前，法国刚刚启用了一座将稀土加工成磁铁的工厂，这也是迄今为止，欧洲第一座此类工厂。”

《南德意志报》评论指出，长期以来，由于环保和节能等方面的限制，西方国家宁愿将稀土产业拱手相让。但要摆脱被“卡脖子”的尴尬，民主国家也必须具备推动稀土项目的能力，否则就将是政府的严重失职。

”但愿此次中美贸易争端，也能像新冠疫情时的‘芯片荒’一样，起到让人警醒的作用。当时，欧洲和美国都意识到，他们必须拥有本土的芯片产能，并立即采取了相应的行动。在德国的德累斯顿和美国的亚利桑那州，都已引入了芯片工厂。整个过程虽然并非一帆风顺，但却为务实的产业政策提供了成功的典范。

特朗普早就夸下了海口，声称他会将工业带回美国。但在许多工业领域，这种做法毫无意义，有时甚至是疯狂的举动。毕竟没有人会真的需要美国制造的玩具娃娃、烤面包机或者智能手机。但稀土的情况则大不相同，美国急需摆脱对中国的依赖。不仅是美国，其他国家也同样如此。垄断带来的权势地位令北京陶醉，而此次中美协定并没有改变这种现状。”

苦涩的现实

中美伦敦会谈之后，美国总统特朗普高调宣布，“交易成功，中国将恢复对美国的稀土出口”《商报》发表评论称，现在的问题是，欧洲企业是否也能从这项交易中获益？毕竟欧洲企业也曾深受中国稀土出口管制之苦。

“德国企业现在非常担忧：美国是否已就稀土资源争取到了优先采购权？那么，欧洲人怎么办？欧洲是否也需要同中国开展政治谈判，以获取稀缺原材料及其制成品的供应？中国会要求欧洲做出哪些妥协？下一次出于政治动机的断供又会何时发生？

一个必须吞食的苦果是，来自中国的原材料已经成为政治施压工具。专家们长期以来不断重复的警告，现在终于变成了现实。 

现在的当务之急是，联邦政府和德国经济界必须从中得出正确的结论：中国并不是一个可靠的伙伴。在北京看来，依赖性就是会被人拿捏的软肋。也正因为如此，多年以来，中国的专制领导层一直在致力于使本国经济摆脱对外依赖。

布鲁塞尔和柏林也不应再犯过去的错误，但凡遭遇北京的压力，就立即做出妥协，而是应当反其道而行之。过去，柏林总是惧怕来自北京的压力，以至于他们甚至忘记了，中国也同样依赖欧洲。与此同时，欧洲也必须尽快大幅度减少对中国的依赖。”

摘编自其他媒体的内容，不代表德国之声的立场或观点。

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© 2025年德国之声版权声明：本文所有内容受到著作权法保护，如无德国之声特别授权，不得擅自使用。任何不当行为都将导致追偿，并受到刑事追究

（德国之声中文网）中欧7月将举行峰会之际，《金融时报》引述四名消息人士称，欧盟拒绝在峰会前与中方举行高层经贸对话。

欧中经贸高层对话经常为欧中领导人会议奠定基础。消息人士称，今年的欧中峰会将于7月24-25日在北京举行。今年也是中欧建交50周年。

《金融时报》引述其中一名消息人士称，中方想要举行经贸高层对话，但欧洲方面认为所有谈判中都未取得进展。

欧盟去年对中国电动汽车加征关税，中国则针对欧盟白兰地采取反制措施。除相互反倾销调查外，消息人士向《金融时报》表示，中国对稀土的管制也是双边关系紧张的因素。

不过，也有一位欧盟官员向该报表示，欧中经贸高层对话是不定期举行，不一定总是在峰会之前。

《金融时报》还报道称，中国总理李强将出席中欧峰会，而不是国家主席习近平，也被布鲁塞尔视为一种拒绝。

中国外交部就此答记者问时表示，当前单边主义甚嚣尘上，中欧深化合作有利世界。“中欧一直就经贸等问题保持着沟通。”

相关图集：特朗普关税战2.0时间线梳理

2025年2月1日 ｜对墨、加、中加征关税：特朗普上任后首次大规模加征关税：自2月1日开始对美国三大贸易伙伴加拿大、墨西哥和中国加征关税。特朗普宣布对邻国加拿大和墨西哥进口商品加征25%的关税，指责两国未能阻止非法移民进入美国；对来自中国商品加征10%的关税，指责中国在芬太尼生产中扮演重要角色。

2025年2月10日 ｜加征钢铝关税 无例外豁免：特朗普2月10日签署行政令，对所有进口至美国的钢铁和铝制品加征25%关税，并取消加拿大、墨西哥和巴西等钢铝主要供应国的免税额度。

2025年3月26日｜宣布对进口汽车全面征税：特朗普于3月26日宣布，自4月3日起，对所有进口汽车与轻型卡车征收25%的关税。全球汽车供应链受冲击，日韩汽车产业首当其冲。受此消息影响，丰田、本田、现代和起亚等汽车制造商股价大幅下跌，总市值蒸发约165亿美元。

2025年4月2日｜宣布“对等关税”：特朗普4月2日在白宫玫瑰花园举行“让美国再次富有”（Make America Wealthy Again）记者会，宣布“对等关税”措施。美国对大多数国家征收10％的基准关税，但针对特定国家征收更高税额。中国、欧盟和越南分别面临34%、20%和46%的关税； 日本、韩国、印度、柬埔寨和台湾，分别受到24%、25%、26%、49%和32%进口关税的打击。

2025年4月9日｜暂缓关税90日 中国除外：特朗普4月9日在大规模“对等关税”上路不到24小时后出现政策大转弯，宣布暂缓征收“对等关税”90天，在此期间，税率将统一降至10%的基准关税。但中国被排除在暂缓名单之外，不仅如此，还将对中国的关税加码至145%，其中包含了美国此前指控中国打击芬太尼不力而征收的20％关税。

2025年5月4日 | 对美国境外制作的电影征收100%关税：特朗普5月4日以“国安威胁”为由，宣布将对非美国制作的电影征收100％关税，理由是要“拯救美国电影业”。

2025年5月12日｜中美关税战90天“停火协议”：美中高层在瑞士进行谈判后于5月12日发布联合声明，就90天的“暂停期”达成协议：美国对大多数中国输美商品加征145%的关税将在5月14日前下调至30%，30%关税里包括针对芬太尼问题额外施加的20％惩罚性关税；中国对美产品加征的125%关税则将降至10%。美中双边早前不断叠加的报复性关税，在这波协商中几乎都被取消。（图为美财政部长贝森特与贸易谈判代表格里尔出席美中贸易会谈）

2025年5月13日｜美大幅下调中国“小包裹”关税：白宫5月13发布行政命令，将从5月14日起将对中国低价值货物（不超过800美元）征收的“最低限度”关税从120%下调至54%，原计划的200美元固定费用征税方案被搁置，现行的100美元固定费用将继续执行。

5月23日 对阵欧盟：特朗普威胁自6月1日起对欧盟商品加征50%的统一关税。他同时警告苹果公司，若其在美国销售的手机是在海外生产的，将面临25%的关税。两天后，特朗普收回了对欧盟加征50%关税的威胁，他表示，与欧委会主席冯德莱恩通电话后，同意将美国和欧盟的谈判期限延长至7月9日。

5月28日 美国法院裁定特朗普对等关税“越权”：美国联邦国际贸易法庭裁定，特朗普今年4月2日对多国征收的对等关税，以及早前向中国、加拿大和墨西哥加征的报复性关税都属于“非法”。判决认定，特朗普征收全球关税的行为超出了《国际经济紧急权力法》（IEEPA）赋予总统的权限。美政府表示将对该裁决提出上诉。

5月29日 美国上诉法院暂准特朗普关税恢复执行：美国联邦上诉法院一天后推翻该判决，让特朗普的关税政策得以持续实施。上诉法院指出，为了审理特朗普政府的上诉，将先暂缓此前法院的裁决，并命令原告及特朗普政府分别在6月5日和6月9日前提交回应文件。

5月30日 特朗普全面上调钢铝关税：美国总统特朗普宣布将对全球钢铁和铝产品的进口关税提高至50%。中国是美国的第三大铝供应国。他指责中国未按约降低关税，取消针对稀土等产品的贸易限制。他说：“中国完全违反了与我们达成的协议。不能再做好好先生了！”

6月10日 美中谈判双方宣布原则上达成贸易框架协议：中国和美国官员在英国伦敦举行贸易谈判，经过两天的会议，6月10日，双方宣布原则上已达成贸易框架协议，以落实5月在瑞士日内瓦的共识、还有两国领袖上周的通话内容。特朗普在社交媒体Truth Social上表示，按照美中达成的新的贸易协议，美国将从中国获得稀土磁体。他还表示，将允许中国学生在协议达成后继续留在美国大学学习。

冯德莱恩：北京扭曲市场

正在加拿大出席G7峰会的欧委会主席冯德莱恩则向特朗普提议，联手应对中国的不正当竞争做法。

据德新社报道，在G7一次工作会议上，冯德莱恩称关税最终会由企业通过提价转嫁给美国消费者，她还批评说，关税会转移对中国存在问题的视线，同时给增长和创新带来不确定性。

冯德莱恩表示，北京的做法显示，并无意愿遵守国际体系规则。她说，其它市场开放的同时，中国则无视知识产权保护，并使用大规模的补贴，目标是在全球生产和供应链占据主导地位。冯德莱恩表示，这并非公平竞争，而是扭曲市场的行为。

冯德莱恩表示，从欧盟角度看，问题的根源在于中国2001年加入世贸组织而不是G7伙伴之间的贸易。她还表示，特朗普认为当前全球贸易体系运作失当，是对的。

冯德莱恩提议，共同应对当前与中国存在的问题，使用G7的谈判力。她说，七国集团占据世界经济的45%，知识产权收入占到世界的80%。他建议，改革世贸规则，加强供应链韧性以及科技和工业的领先角色。

（综合报道）

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打破中国的数据封锁

在“躺平”理念之前，中国民间就开始对抗盛行多年的“过劳文化”。这两项由一群中国年轻人在互联网上发起的中国项目，采用群众外包（crowdsouring）和开源项目的方式，它们借鉴的就是2019年发起的“996ICU项目“。这是一项反对中国互联网公司过度加班，中国程序员在2019年在代码共享平台GitHub上自行发起的开源项目。

Aaron Zhang是澳洲悉尼大学计算机专业的学生，最初他利用996ICU的编程代码，搭建了611study.ICU的网站，Zhang坦言自己编程水平有限，到了“牛马ICU”项目，团队已招聘到专业的网站开发工程师，页面也更为专业。

截至发稿前，该项目已收集了全国4962所公司企业的有效数据，投稿中甚至也包括国企和体制内的公务员。网站统计显示，每天工作在8小时以内的仅占6%，有37%每天工作时长超过12个小时。有79%的人需要每周工作6-7天。

与学生超时学习项目相比，职场超时工作的项目并没有造成轰动，或推动改革 。“压迫者和公权力的利益是相衔接的”，李颖解释，“工厂更大力度地压榨工人，（中国政府）他们才能从中获得更大的利益。”他觉得给“工人放双休”的希望渺茫。

不过在团队成员看来，ICU项目的深远意义在于打破了中国长久以来的“数据黑洞”。“大家都知道中国存在超时学习的问题，”Zhang说，“但没有渠道知道问题到底有多严重， 它的地区分布是什么样的。”

近年来，中国曾对外开放的官方数据，正逐步消失。而中国统计局已有的数据，可信度也遭怀疑，中国官方通告也承认，以“数据造假谋取虚假政绩问题仍有发生”。同时，中方还要求第三方数据提供商对外国实行更多限制，有智库表明，这将影响企业、政府和研究机构等对中国关键领域的研究。

从大图景看，这两个ICU项目找到了一个可能打破中国信息封锁的方式。中国民众通过VPN翻墙的方式，在谷歌文档上匿名填写学校和公司信息，每天上下学和上下班时间、每周上学和上学时间和每月放假天数，2024年学校自杀人数，长时间工作出现的问题等数据。这些数据会由团队内容审查员多次审核，标记分离出存疑的投稿，例如自杀人数过多和学习时长过高等。

无法否认的是，匿名性会使其数据准确度打折扣。蒋不在采访中承认，“数据的准确性和投稿者的安全之间会有一个永恒的矛盾”。为防止校方报复，投稿为匿名，也不会记录其IP所在地。他认为，如果有人存心编造数据，数据只要不是很离谱，的确没有办法辨别出来。 李颖分享给RFA关于这两个ICU项目的社区内部报告，也提及“自愿投稿的方式易使极端案例过度凸显”的局限性。

蒋不透露，他们在向联合国下属的非盈利组织反映中国儿童身心受迫害和中国劳工问题等。得到的反馈包括因其匿名投稿的性质，难以确定为可靠的信源。李颖解释，他们的合作并未因此受阻，他们还正在与其他人权组织接洽，暂不便透露细节。

用加密货币对抗极权

参与两个项目以来，阿朗一共得到了24万$Li币作为报酬。蒋不说，$Li社区里有加密币领域的专家分享如何更安全地把$Li兑换成现金，但身居香港的阿朗还有很多安全顾虑，担心中国政府会查出钱的源头，发现他与李颖的联系。直到约一个月前，他手头紧张，才决定兑换了少量$Li，他说自己心里多少有些忐忑。

2024年12月年末，李颖发行了虚拟货币迷因币$Li，以构建一个去中心化的海外中文社区，用于推广中国的新闻和言论自由。“迷因币”（Memecoin）名字源于“Internet Meme”(互联网的表情包)，“$Li”的标志也是“李老师”账户的头像，一只手绘虎斑猫。

在发币当天，这个极具个人色彩的$Li市值高达千万美金，然而随后就一路下跌，大幅贬值，现在仍为一种活跃的交易币，截至发稿前，市值约仅约200万美金。

李颖发币事件，很快在海外华人圈引发撕裂。有不少李颖的粉丝表示支持，而很多人也怀疑其动机。“白纸运动”的组织者和流亡者黄意诚在X上公开声明，与李颖“割席”，认为其在法律和道义上都有疑点，利用在白纸运动期间累计的民众信任，为自己发横财。也有人认为，李颖发行“李币”名为推广新闻自由，实为“割韭菜”、“老鼠仓”。

抱有怀疑态度的也包括后来的$Li社区成员。阿朗觉得，李颖最初发币的X推文中，提到要构建一个“去中心化的海外中文社区生态”，邀请人们加入筹备委员会，而这些概念很空泛，他最初担心，李颖想通过这个行动去骗钱，如果自己加入，“最终就可能变成了一个帮凶。”

蒋不最初听到这个消息，也觉得不可思议。像很多人一样，他觉得加密货币是“骗局和割韭菜”。他试图改变李颖的想法，劝导他这样会损害他的声誉。可没有成效后，纪录片导演出身的蒋不就想转而记录这个时刻。

3天，60多个小时，蒋不从巴黎飞抵意大利，记录下李颖发币的整个过程。蒋不说自己没有看到李颖从中套利。从网友们的质疑开始，蒋不发问了100多个问题，最终被李颖试图“用加密货币对抗极权的理想主义”所打动。结束拍摄后，蒋不参与了两个ICU项目，后来他决定购买$Li币，并捐赠给$Li委员会。此举引发博主和不少的批评，旅居日本的中国自媒体人王志安也怀疑，蒋不通过拍摄和采访获取获取内幕，毫无公信力，“串通李颖做老鼠仓”。对此，蒋觉得“纪录片没有态度，但我依然会对事情有自己的态度”，他不认同伦理问题。

“在华人社群里做领袖，是一件非常吃力不讨好的事。”李颖坦言，虽然最初想建立一个“去中心化的海外中文社区生态”，但他不得已被推上社群领袖的角色。但他发现，中国人普遍有一种”救世主“的心态，期待别人来拯救自己，而领袖又必须是像耶稣一样，自我奉献型。在自己遭遇过中方各种各样的威胁和打压后，李颖说自己失去了工作，国内的存款也被冻结，无法维系生计。2023年，李颖公布了自己在X上广告收益的分成，平均每个月568欧(约合4495人民币)，这远低于同年意大利人均月收入水平。

“在不接受外国政府资助的情况下，我不得已选择发行加密货币。”李颖说。据“李老师”X平台小号发表的声明，$Li发售总量为10亿枚, 价格由市场调整， 将成立一个基金会，其基金会持币19.5%，李颖个人持有2%。

这些质疑声，来自于加密货币的风险性和不可控性，另一方面也来自于$Li愿景中社区建设的超前性。“李老师就像半路杀出个程咬金，大家都是华山论剑的，点到为止，”蒋不这样形容李颖发币后建立起的$Li社区，“突然特别莽撞的冲出来，打破了整个规则的一个生物。”

蒋不的另一个身份——社群运动的组织者，他深知非营利组织的工作模式是找资金、做项目、写报告，项目常常受限于资金，项目推进往往很慢。”李老师凭空造出来一笔钱，项目周期很短，一个月就能滚动一个项目，用一种高效又节省成本的方式，每个人既获得一点物质的回报， 又有参与感， 蒋不感叹道，“这个事情简直太创新了。”

李颖认为，在被打压和威胁后，“发币”虽然在当初是一种不得已而为之的选择，面对众多非议，但他们还是成功组建了一个社区，发起了这些项目。“每次从从濒死边缘活过来之后，你会变得更强大。”

（因为安全原因，阿朗, Aaron Zhang为化名， 蒋不为网名。）

责编：许书婷

（德国之声中文网）美国政府针对短视频平台TikTok的禁令原定于本周四（6月19日）生效，现在有可能再次推迟。这项禁令要求TikTok必须出售其美国业务，否则将被禁止在美运营。

TikTok的母公司字节跳动是一家中国公司。特朗普政府以国家安全为由推动此项立法，但特朗普本人最近在接受NBC采访时表示，他“对TikTok心存一丝感情”，并愿意给予更多时间，“如果需要延期，我愿意延期”。

特朗普强调，已有一群买家准备向TikTok所有者字节跳动支付“一大笔钱”，购买TikTok的美国业务。他还一再淡化TikTok面临的风险，并表示他仍然有信心会找到买家。

独立分析师恩德勒（Rob Enderle）对法新社表示，特朗普“根本没有动力对TikTok采取任何行动”。法新社分析称，特朗普长期以来一直支持禁止或强制出售这一应用，但在看到该平台帮助他在去年11月总统大选中赢得年轻选民的支持后，他改变了立场。

已两次推迟

英国华威商学院（Warwick Business School）信息系统助理教授施韦塔·辛格（Shweta Singh）表示，TikTok“已成为中美科技竞争的象征，成为新冷战中争夺数字控制权的导火索”。

2024年4月，时任美国总统拜登签署一项法案，要求TikTok母公司字节跳动在270天内将TikTok出售给非中国企业，否则这款应用程序将在2025年1月19日后在美国被禁用。1月20日，特朗普上任后立即签署行政令，给予TikTok75天宽限期，之后又第2次延期至今年6月19日。

特朗普今年4月曾表示，如果不是因为华盛顿对北京征收关税而引发争议，中国本会同意出售TikTok。字节跳动证实正在与美国政府谈判，表示仍有关键问题需要解决，而且任何交易都必须“根据中国法律获得批准”。

算法何去何从？

知情人士称，潜在方案包括让现有美国投资者接手字节跳动在TikTok中的股份，组建一个独立的新公司。此外，甲骨文（Oracle）与黑石集团（Blackstone）可能加入成为新投资者，进一步稀释中国母公司的股权。不过，TikTok的核心资产——推荐算法的归属仍存不确定性。

TikTok的大部分美国用户数据已托管在甲骨文服务器上。该公司董事长埃里森（Larry Ellison）是特朗普长期以来的盟友。

尽管白宫尚未明确表态是否将再度延迟执行禁令，TikTok本周仍照常推出AI广告工具“Symphony”，供广告商将文字或照片转换为该平台的影片素材。据法新社报道，该新产品的推出标志着其业务运营未受明显影响。

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© 2025年德国之声版权声明：本文所有内容受到著作权法保护，如无德国之声特别授权，不得擅自使用。任何不当行为都将导致追偿，并受到刑事追究。

Eva Dou is the author of The House of Huawei, an excellent book covering the personal, economic, and geopolitical arc of Huawei, China’s most important company.

We discuss…

• The life of Huawei’s founder, Ren Zhengfei, who rose from Cultural Revolution disgrace to become one of China’s richest businessmen,

• How Ren built Huawei, and what makes their corporate culture unique,

• Huawei’s strategic entry into developing and high-risk markets like Libya, Iraq, and Iran, and whether the controversial deal with the UK is a threat to national security,

• How Huawei outcompeted Chinese state-owned telecom companies and eventually achieved national champion status,

• How Ren’s personal interest in foreign art, music, and architecture advances Huawei’s market share.

Co-hosting today is Kyle Chan, a postdoc at Princeton and author of the High Capacity Substack.

Have a listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.

Forged in Fire 浴火重生

Jordan Schneider: Eva, let’s start with the Cultural Revolution. How did it impact the future founder of Huawei, Ren Zhengfei, in his early years?

Eva Dou: Huawei’s founder, Ren Zhengfei, comes from quite a humble background. He grew up in rural Guizhou Province, where both his father and mother worked as schoolteachers. His father eventually became a principal, and they instilled in him the importance of learning and a love of reading that continued throughout his life.

At the same time, that academic background made them a target when the Cultural Revolution came around during Ren Zhengfei’s teenage years. His father had worked briefly for the Nationalists earlier in his career, making him one of the many people targeted during the Cultural Revolution. He was struggled against at his school, criticized by students, and eventually put in a labor camp.

This affected his entire family — Ren Zhengfei and all his siblings. It impacted their work prospects throughout his early career. He would later complain that he was unable to get the promotions that his peers received, no matter how hard he worked. His company Huawei is now considered case number one of a national champion in China, but he really started out on the outside of the system, looking in. That’s part of what makes his story arc so dramatic — how far he came.

Jordan Schneider: There are a number of passages that were really evocative for me. There’s this theme of suicide that runs through the book. Ren Zhengfei is an incredible workaholic with multiple divorces who at one point said he was excited to use Chinese national holidays to travel abroad and get more work done.

This connects back to his father’s experience during the Cultural Revolution. You have this line that said Ren Moxun 任摩逊, his dad, also considered ending his life, but he didn’t want to die before his name was cleared, as it would leave his wife and children with a cloud over them. Ren Zhengfei explained that if his father died, his children would have to carry this political burden. “He endured 100 tortures, but would not kill himself.”

Later, Ren Zhengfei said, “The Cultural Revolution was a disaster for the nation, but for us, it was a baptism. It made me politically mature so that I wasn’t a simple bookworm”

When you look at Huawei from the outside and see the handsets, AI accelerators, and base stations, at its core is this stupendously driven human being who was shattered to his core. There are many business stories in China where people come out of the Cultural Revolution — Xi Jinping as well — forged into these super-driven individuals. But obviously tens of millions of people didn’t turn out that way. Even the ones who did end up succeeding beyond their wildest teenage imaginations carry very deep scars that play out over the subsequent decades of their lives.

Eva Dou: Many people have pointed out that Ren Zhengfei, as an entrepreneur and business person, carries this pessimism with him that some attribute as one reason for Huawei’s success. He’s always looking at the worst-case scenario that could happen to his company. Even in the years when business was flush, he would warn his employees that something bad could always happen — they could go bankrupt at any moment and had to be prepared for anything.

These early experiences of facing life-and-death stakes and seeing how fickle the political environment and business can be really did inform him. In many ways, it helped make Huawei a company that could survive unexpected things, which we’ve seen through two Trump administrations and many unexpected developments.

Jordan Schneider: There’s a bit you have later where you talk about how he painted black swans everywhere once he built this giant campus. The Cultural Revolution was the ultimate black swan. Once you live through that, what’s a couple of sanctions violations?

Another illustration of the psychological jumps you have to make to process and move forward from living through that time comes from this incredible quote from his dad when reflecting about his experience being struggled against in middle school. You write: “One day, one of his old students visited him and recalled the struggle session where a classmate had beaten him with a wooden stick until it broke. Ren’s father smiled grimly. ‘I have to thank that piece of wood. Had it been sturdier, I surely would have been beaten until something was wrong with me.’”

It’s a lot. Kyle, are there other business stories that come to mind — aside from Xi Jinping and Ren Zhengfei, which we’ll be exploring in an upcoming episode with Joseph Torigian — about this kind of dramatic arc for Chinese business people?

Kyle Chan: What’s really interesting is that there’s a strong parallel between Ren Zhengfei’s worldview and the view of many Chinese entrepreneurs during these tougher years, as well as Chinese political leaders in their attitudes towards China’s development. This idea especially that we are operating in a very tough world, that we have to rely on ourselves, that there’s danger at every corner and risk, and what to do about that preemptively.

Jordan Schneider: On the arc towards being a national champion, Ren works for the PLA as an engineer for a few years, finally makes it into the party — which was a dramatic arc in and of itself — and then gets invited to this famous Deng National Science Conference in 1978. There, Deng Xiaoping essentially blessed everyone, saying it’s okay to start businesses and do science — you don’t necessarily have to live inside the system to serve the country. That was a big psychological unlock, almost in the way you describe how he reflects on that. Can you talk about these years? Let’s bring the timeline up through 1978.

Eva Dou: The first part of Ren Zhengfei’s career was as an engineer in the engineering corps for China’s military. During this period, he was largely low-key. Occasionally he would gain kudos from superiors for his work, but he wasn’t anyone famous by any means. He probably thought that’s where he was going to stay for his entire career, his entire life.

This abruptly changed because Deng Xiaoping decided to make this switch to begin the capitalist experiment in China. This was coupled with a dramatic downsizing of the military, and he was laid off from the military and sent to Shenzhen to work in this burgeoning private sector.

He’s talked about feeling very disoriented at the time. This was similar to the experience of many people in China who had been in a system that was only a planned economy and suddenly it was all different. They had new ideas, new fashion styles, and new trends coming in from Hong Kong over the border to Shenzhen. He had this sense that he was really far behind — he was already almost 40 at that time — in trying to adapt to this totally new world.

Jordan Schneider: You have this quote where Ren would later tell his colleagues that he’d wasted time during those years when he was outside the establishment, not as a party member. You can read this quote two ways: “I was a soldier for all those years I didn’t join the party. My life was full of adversity. When I think of all that wasted time, I wonder how could I have been so naive and ridiculous that I didn’t understand it all being about compromise and shades of gray."

On one hand, I see that as maybe this guy’s still kind of pissed that the party ruined his parents’ life. But also, there was no way he was going to be accepted as a party member, even though he was an engineer for the PLA, because of his class background — his nationalist background. What’s the right way to understand that quote, Eva?

Eva Dou: I agree, it’s a bit ambiguous. He does give this kind of counsel to his staff repeatedly through the years, advising them basically that politics is not fair. He’s told them straight out that life isn’t fair and you have to keep in line with the political system that we live in. He said Huawei is a Chinese company and it’s a requirement to be patriotic to be part of the company.

That’s informed partly by his earlier experience with the Cultural Revolution. But there’s another part that isn’t talked about much, which is the Tiananmen democracy protests in the late 1980s. It’s remembered largely as an event in Beijing at Tiananmen Square, but these protests were going on across the country. Some of the largest ones were in Shenzhen, where the young people there were very progressive, international, liberal, and bold. They held some of the largest protests.

That was at the time that Ren’s daughter, Meng Wanzhou, was in high school and about to go to college in Shenzhen. Those protests were quashed in Shenzhen as well as Beijing. That also informs the approach and worldview of Ren Zhengfei and other business people of his generation. They remember these things.

Jordan Schneider: It comes back to the thing that Kyle brought up earlier: to what extent does he really believe the nationalist stuff versus just being a business person who wants to do cool science and compete with Ericsson because that’s cool and will make you money and make you remembered?

You have all these quotes where they’re laying it on too thick at times with how much they’re using the nationalist angle and the national strengthening angle to motivate employees. But for anyone in that generation, there has to be some kind of internal narrative that not all is right in the state of Denmark. I don’t really know where to go with that.

Eva Dou: There is one comparison that I look at in the book. Before Huawei in the 1980s, China’s most promising tech company was this company called Stone Group. The founder of that company was bold and radical in his political beliefs. He actually supported the pro-democracy protests at Tiananmen, and it basically ended up with his company being wiped off the map in China.

He ended up having to flee the country shortly after the Tiananmen crackdown. He was never able to return to China again and has lived as an exile ever since. Ren Zhengfei’s generation of entrepreneurs grew up revering this company and these entrepreneurs, and they saw what happened there. Since then, it’s been taken for granted that you have to bend the knee to the political line to build a successful business in China.

Jordan Schneider: One of the interesting leitmotifs of this book is Huawei’s relationship to the state. The story that you talk about, and that Doug Fuller goes into more deeply in his book, is the fact that Ren actually kept the state at much more of an arm’s length than many of his competitors in the 90s and 2000s. He focused on export discipline and investing in R&D as opposed to the cheap, easy money that you can get from government contracts. That was the way he kept Huawei advancing at the technological frontier.

Let’s give a little sense of what the industrial upgrading arc that Huawei went on in the 80s and 90s looked like, and what decisions they made different from competitors who ultimately weren’t able to achieve the levels of greatness that Huawei did.

Kyle Chan: Just to jump in with some broader context here: with China’s effort to develop its own telecom equipment industry and its broader tech industry, there’s this really interesting connection between the role of the state and the role of these different businesses. At various times you have other companies, other state-owned enterprises like Great Dragon that were the real national champions originally. There’s this idea that some companies were seeking to form connections with the state, while others were actively presented as the spearhead for China’s technological and economic development versus Huawei at this time.

Now we know Huawei as playing that role much more prominently. But back in those early days, Huawei was one of many competitors and was actually the underdog. To build on what Jordan was saying, Eva, you had a great passage about how Ren Zhengfei was even worried about taking loans from state banks, wary about becoming too entwined with state interests and all the strings that are attached. Could you elaborate on some of those early years and eventually reaching that status that we now associate with Huawei of dominating the industry? Really, in those early days, that was a story that was still unfolding.

Eva Dou: Especially in those early days, China’s state sector — these state-owned enterprises — had a reputation of being very sluggish and uncompetitive, basically a place where people knew they would stay employed whether they worked or not. This was something that Ren Zhengfei knew meant the death of his company if they became like that. He was quite wary of being too intertwined with the state, especially in Shenzhen, which is where this capitalist experiment was beginning in China.

They saw themselves as different, as forging a new kind of business system than the rest of China. They would call the rest of China “the inland.” Huawei was very aggressive, very vicious in how they went about doing business and also in their expectations for their own employees. They were notorious for firing people summarily if they didn’t meet expectations.

For a while they were doing joint ventures with state-owned companies across provinces in China to try to expand their footprint. That was a big culture shock for the state-owned employees. You have these stories that they were used to taking their daily naps during the day when they got sleepy. Then the Huawei management would come in and clean house, and things would be totally different.

Jordan Schneider: I love the part where, when they start winning, the state-owned company is like, “Hey, come on, this is a private company. Why are we letting them win these contracts?” Can you tell that story? I really liked it.

Eva Dou: It was one of the local officials in Shenzhen who had written a memoir after he retired with some of his recollections of dealing with Huawei and these other companies. He talked about how the state-owned companies after a while started coming to him and complaining that he couldn’t just be supporting Huawei, that he should be supporting them too. He put them in their place and said, “Well, you guys have been getting these subsidies and all these benefits for so long. If you can’t compete with Huawei, you have to look at yourself and see why that is."

Jordan Schneider: They sell cheaply to get market share. Someone at Great Dragon complained to Shenzhen’s Science and Technology Bureau that the local government shouldn’t just support privately owned enterprises. I mean, sorry man, sucks to suck. You could have been Huawei in the 80s, but instead you let Ren do the thing.

We’re in the 90s now. Huawei is a going concern, on the up and up. There is this fascinating blend of Western culture and PLA culture that Ren tries to inject into the lifeblood of how Huawei operates. Can we talk about the different influences that he tries to incorporate and put into his company and how it does business?

Eva Dou: He and his deputy team really felt that they were forging a new kind of business model in China — one that was not the state-owned enterprise and also not purely the Western style of private enterprise. He was seeking wisdom from all different places in the mid-90s and late 90s when he was working on this.

Famously, IBM was the Western company that they hired as a consultant to teach them how to transform from a startup into a multinational company. There were just many things that Ren Zhengfei knew would take them too long to figure out on their own: How do you meet production schedules year after year? How do you plan product launches to remain on schedule? How do you manage your supply chains? They went to IBM and some other Western companies to try to learn this as quickly as possible. At the same time, he was also meeting with leading Chinese entrepreneurs to try to understand what the relationship to the state should be at that time.

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Jordan Schneider: In 2017, I was at PKU in grad school and they have all these recruiting events. Of course I’m going to go to the Huawei one, and they hand out this book that they put out, “The Huawei Way,” where it’s these chapter-long essays of employees reflecting about their experience in the culture. I’m sure you’ve read it.

It’s funny, Eva, because usually when you see business people and they’re defining a new corporate culture, it’s bullshit and they just want to look back on themselves as intellectuals and business innovators. But in all of my reading about Huawei and diving into this book, I mean it is a weird artifact, right? This company and the way it goes about things.

His openness to Western management practices, the eagerness to go overseas and localize while at the same time the wolf warrior, hardcore zaibatsu energy but also up-and-out and “we’re going to fire you if you don’t deliver" — all of that is not something that you see anywhere else and only comes from Ren personally pushing to synthesize his personal experiences and his drive to synthesize a new way of being from a corporate perspective. That’s one of the most fascinating parts of his story and your book in particular.

Eva Dou: In most countries, there are older businesses, businesses that have been around for many years to look back to. In China, just because of the Cultural Revolution, that was all wiped out and there was a sense they’re starting again and have both the privilege and the responsibility to build a new model. Ren has said many times that he wanted to build a company that could last for 100 years. It’s been very much an open question how you do that. It’s only been a few decades since the end of the Cultural Revolution really, so it’s still an ongoing experiment of building a private enterprise in China that can last for a century.

Jordan Schneider: Kyle, do you want to do the East Asia comparison? I think Samsung is kind of the closest analog from a crazy founder, hardcore founder perspective. What other parallels do you see?

Kyle Chan: There are other ones too, like the founder of Honda and also the founder of Toyota, breaking the rules in the early days, not being allowed actually to have a license to produce cars but defying that and then eventually becoming the star player in the industry. You see this again and again, and actually another strong parallel is just the expectations — these sky-high expectations that you get now in Silicon Valley.

I jokingly have talked to people about this book and said, “Wow, Elon Musk would love this approach to just hard charging, ‘Go to Mars’ mentality that Huawei seems to instill in its work culture.” Some of this is nuts and bolts of how you run an organization, but some of this really seems to be, “We can build, we can defy the EUV lithography export controls” — which we’ll get into later. But all those things are just mere speed bumps along the way to these greater global ambitions.

Jordan Schneider: When you read the early Apple stories of just the intensity and the near-death experiences, you get a bit from Steve Jobs at his most unleashed peak. But I really think Samsung is the closest comparison. They have a similar story in their arc to the one that you wrote about, Eva, where everyone signs their resignations and says, “I will sacrifice.” The importance to the country arc that ends up developing is not quite as present in a Tesla or a Honda as it is in a Samsung, which modernized an entire country for better or for worse.

Eva Dou: That’s interesting, the comparison to Samsung. Huawei’s mission has shifted over the years in that in its early days it was not trying to be a company like Samsung. In fact, Ren was very adamant that they were going to be very narrow in what they did — that they were just going to do telecommunications equipment. They didn’t want to be this sprawling multi-armed conglomerate because they felt they would end up not being good at anything.

It’s been a process where they’ve gradually expanded. During the 2000s they began making mobile phones and then smartphones. That was something that generated a lot of debate inside the company. Ren at the beginning was against it. He thought they were diversifying too much and was eventually won over by some of his deputies that this was the way to go. More recently, because of sanctions, they’ve been forced to make more of the nuts and bolts themselves, especially chips.

By how this worked out, they’re now a much more direct comparison to a company like Samsung — they have so many different lines of business. What’s interesting is they didn’t start out that way, and for many years that’s not what they wanted to become.

Jordan Schneider: It’s interesting also because this happens over the course of Ren getting older and older. He has this great line where you said he suspected that smartphones were overhyped. “We believe that the Internet has not changed the essence of things,” he told staff. “A car must be a car and tofu must be tofu."

But if he succeeded, which he did, in hiring all of these hard chargers who are going to want to spin up new industry verticals or whatever — just having them all fight for the same three slots running different verticals in telecom — is actually not sustainable. One of the remarkable things is that he was not stubborn enough to shut down these new business lines. His commitment to investing — what’s the number? Like 30% of annual revenue into R&D — some crazy stat which basically no other Chinese company did in the 90s and 2000s and even into the 2010s — is something where if you’re going to end up doing all that, then yeah, you’re going to end up wanting to branch out into new businesses and grow in different directions.

Kyle Chan: Speaking of branching out to new businesses, I was wondering if you could say more about this moment in Huawei’s rise where they’re getting into a whole bunch of different areas. While they began with switches and telecom equipment, they really started to expand into everything from undersea cables, and then eventually EVs, AI, and semiconductors. Actually, your book points out that Huawei was working on semiconductors from a very early stage and was quite important in China’s broader push into semiconductors. Could you say more about that period and what drove some of that expansion? What was that like for a company that began with such humble beginnings? This is part of the arc leading up to a $100 billion per year revenue business.

Eva Dou: One way to look at it is that their customers — their international customers — are often buying all these different things. From that sense, it makes a certain logic. Smartphones and telecom gear seem so different — one’s very specialized, one is for the consumer — but it actually ended up being a savvy way for them to get their foot in the door into markets where it was quite difficult to sell their telecom gear, such as Europe, because smartphones were seen as much less sensitive technology.

In countries where they weren’t able to sell telecom gear directly at first, they were able to sell small, cheap smartphones or mobile phones. Actually, the customer is the same — it’s these telecom operators who run these mobile shops, where, as a consumer, you would go in and buy a phone. That allowed Huawei to develop these relationships with these companies. In some cases, once they were selling phones, they were eventually able to sell the telecom gear.

Chips are a little different. It started out partly for cost reasons. For some cheap chips, they found they were able to save costs significantly if they were able to produce them themselves instead of relying on foreign suppliers. There’s probably a security component to that too. He said from an early time he’s pointed out the national security implications of telecom gear, and it probably helped assure Chinese officials if they were making some of their own chips. In fact, their early chips were often used for surveillance cameras. That was one of the early lines of business for their chips.

They’ve gradually found that one line of business can help the other line of business. They’ve expanded probably beyond what Ren would have been comfortable with back in the 1990s.

Spare Tires and War Zones

Jordan Schneider: I love this line from the head of HiSilicon in 2019, which is Huawei’s chip development arm, who said, “For years, the unit had worked on spare tires 备胎. But now, today is the decision of history. After Trump’s export controls on the company overnight, all the spare tires we built have become the main tires. Our years of blood, sweat, and tears have been cashed in overnight to help the company fulfill its commitment to keep serving customers."

It’s very emotional working at this place. On the one hand, you have these stories of people — one of the executives talks about how his annoying family will never forgive him for missing the birth of his two children. But on the other hand, it’s clear that for these employees this is not just a paycheck. There is a lot of life fulfillment and meaning that these folks derive from this work. Maybe I was a little too dismissive earlier about them laying it on too thick because, look, we’re in a country where religion isn’t really a thing and you’ve got to find it from somewhere to get you motivated enough to work 80, 100-hour weeks past the point where you’ve already met your creature comforts.

Eva, what are your thoughts on Huawei as a spiritual totem for its founder and employees?

Eva Dou: Definitely, part of Huawei’s success has been very much its founder’s charisma and his ability to motivate his employees to work incredibly hard and sometimes take enormous personal risks in working for this company. There is a spiritual component to it where he is telling them they can find meaning in helping their country become technologically sufficient in key technologies. The United States has been this bugaboo throughout its history that’s held up as a country that is hostile to China’s development, that wants to hold the country back and that they at Huawei would have to surmount.

Through the years some of that has sounded melodramatic and overblown. When the sanctions came down during the first Trump presidency, that made people believe that Ren wasn’t just overly scared, that he had indeed been preparing for what was going to happen.

Jordan Schneider: Another Elon parallel, right. The American company that gives the most spiritual energy to its employees to work really, really hard is SpaceX, with this incredible vision of making us an interplanetary species.

My favorite illustration of the truly devoted service to customers — not just the Chinese government — is during the Libya civil war. Literally everyone and their mother was pulling out of the country. The Chinese diplomats pulled out. Same with Bahrain when they were going through their civil disturbances. But Ren Zhengfei and Huawei were like, “No, we’re going to keep our engineers here. We signed some contracts. We’ll just have two businesses, one for the government, one for the rebels."

You have this great interview with the wife of one of these engineers saying, “Yeah, every time we call him, we hear gunshots in the background.” Libya is not this huge growth market, but it is a fascinating illustration of just how committed this company is to expanding and succeeding.

Kyle Chan: This is a really interesting segue because so much of this book is looking at Huawei’s trajectory over time in parallel with China’s. Some of these twists and turns and even geopolitical strategy at the company level mirrors that of China’s approach. Huawei, especially in the early days when it was really trying to establish itself internationally, was entering these markets that were a bit too risky or too volatile perhaps for some of the more established players. It gave Huawei an opportunity to start working outside China.

It parallels China’s efforts to develop relations with different parts of the Global South — Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America, Middle East — while gradually seeing ties with the West as being a longer-term project, but one that would be much harder to tap into early on.

Could you talk more about this opportunistic phase in Huawei’s trajectory in terms of its global expansion? Later on, when you see one of these maps of where Huawei ended up, it’s all red Huawei or ZTE 5G equipment all over the world. That’s the later endpoint, but along the way, what was Ren Zhengfei trying to do and how were they trying to make inroads piece by piece into the international market, culminating with the British Telecom contract, which gave them that kind of legitimacy that parallels China’s quest for legitimacy on the international stage?

Eva Dou: Certainly. Huawei’s international expansion can very much be seen as a proxy of China’s broader international relations effort over the decades. The company was founded in 1987, and at the beginning they only focused on the domestic market. Then in the mid-1990s, they started looking overseas.

At the very start, Russia was one of the first countries they looked at. That was partly through diplomatic help — the Chinese Foreign Ministry helped them go over for a trade show and helped smooth the way to their first very small contract there. At the same time, they were looking to countries in the Middle East and Africa in the early days.

There is some history of their eventual run-in with sanctions issues with the United States, which is that some of their earliest customers were countries where the major Western companies were a little more reluctant to go for whatever reason. That included Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea.

Then you get to the point where China is entering the World Trade Organization in the early 2000s. Huawei jumped on this trend of internationalizing. That was when you saw them start to push into developed markets, into Western markets more aggressively. Of course, it took many years for them to be established in Europe. But if you look today, there’s hardly any country in the world that doesn’t use Huawei telecommunications equipment to a greater or lesser extent.

Kyle Chan: In parallel with this rise, what’s really interesting is that as Huawei is expanding globally and as Huawei’s star is rising in China as a symbol, you have growing suspicions from the West, especially from the US, about what Huawei is doing and what its real relationship with the Chinese government is. There are concerns about surveillance technology. You have the rollout of smart cities and safe cities programs from Huawei. This ties into the very markets that Huawei is deciding to enter.

In the early years, as you mentioned, Iran and Iraq were some of the earliest cases of Huawei coming on the map in terms of US concerns about security. How did you see this reaction to Huawei’s expansion, especially from the US? You have congressional hearings later on, which is a high point of the book, a point of high drama, where Huawei and ZTE executives are brought in front of Congress to testify and answer basically a pretty tough interrogation session. Something similar happens with British Parliament to a certain extent.

There are growing suspicions rising almost right alongside Huawei’s growing prominence on the world stage. Could you describe some of that and where it’s coming from? Obviously Huawei’s own activities within China contribute to this. It’s not just what Huawei’s doing abroad, but later on, you were one of the earliest reporters on use of Huawei surveillance equipment in Xinjiang, for example. Could you tie all those different pieces together?

Eva Dou: The first incident where Huawei really got on the map for the US government was in Iraq in the early 2000s. Huawei was helping the local government and military build a fiber optic telecommunications network. If you think about it, these older systems where they’re using radio communications — that’s something that is more easily surveyed or hacked. That’s what the US government had been doing. They’ve been using it to keep track of what Iraq’s military was doing. Suddenly those conversations were going underground. Huawei was helping them build these fiber optic lines that ran underground and that were much more difficult to tap.

That was when George W. Bush gave the order to bomb those installations, which would force Iraq to use radio again. This was later explained by some US officials. That was something Huawei was doing for governments around the world, helping them build these more secure communications networks that were harder to survey for Western governments. That was how they came into conflict with the US at the start as a national security concern for the United States.

Later on this became other things. You mentioned Xinjiang and surveillance. Their surveillance systems became a significant line of business for them, both domestically and in countries around the world. These are the modern surveillance systems for an entire city. There are video cameras, but more importantly, there’s the software on the back — there’s facial recognition, there are AI algorithms to help track trends.

That is a more recent iteration, and what sparked the sanctions was the 5G generation of networks being laid out around the world and Huawei seeming poised to win an enormous chunk of those orders. That set off alarm bells in Washington at the time.

Kyle Chan: This gets to a whole question about the role of technology today and to what extent can we separate some of these core functions of what telecom equipment is supposed to do versus issues of data privacy and national security. I wanted to read a quote from the head of global cybersecurity for Huawei at a UK parliamentary hearing. He’s asked about whether Huawei’s telecom equipment could be used for surveillance and data collection and sending that back to China. His answer is: “It therefore does know where you are because it knows where the information is coming from. In that context, telecommunications networks from all vendors know where you are so as to connect you to those networks. Huawei’s equipment is no different from anyone else’s equipment."

This was just a question about whether Huawei’s telecom equipment can track you. His answer seemed to be, “Well, in order for a cell tower to work, that’s really what it does. It has to triangulate your position and make sure you receive and get the signal."

How much of this seems to become only a bigger issue over time? Now we have a whole bunch of questions about not just telecom equipment, but this has entered into many different domains. Everything from TikTok to connected vehicles, DJI drones. The latest one was TP-Link routers. It’s this growing concern from countries like the US about what will happen with data that’s passed through or collected through these systems.

Is there anything that Huawei could do to reassure the outside world, especially in the West? There was a really great example where Ren Zhengfei or a Huawei executive offered to share source code or do a tech licensing deal to just put it out there and say you can look through our source code and see what’s going on, if that’s any kind of reassurance. There are different ways of trying to deal with this issue. But to what extent is it just something like a Gordian knot that can’t be untied?

Eva Dou: The comparison to how US and UK policymakers have looked at this issue is pretty interesting, because until recently, they’ve taken very different approaches. The UK has taken the approach that these security risks can be mitigated, and we are comfortable with it. The US has taken the approach that this is an intractable problem — these security issues cannot be mitigated.

Cybersecurity experts in both countries receive very similar training. Ultimately, it is kind of a political question and a political answer of what kind of relationship you’re willing to have with China, what level of “risk” you’re willing to take on, and to what degree do you see China’s government as an enemy that needs to be blocked by all means necessary?

Until recently, the UK approach had been that they have this center where Huawei has its source code for its products and where UK officials, including UK intel officers, can go take a look at the back end and comb through it and resolve any cybersecurity concerns that they feel they have with it, and they were okay with it. Actually, today, a number of other countries do use this model, and they feel that mitigates whatever hacking risks that they feel there are.

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The US has been on the extreme end of the spectrum compared to other countries in feeling that these are unmitigatable risks that they cannot — that we just can’t use this equipment. That speaks partly to just how the US and Chinese governments see each other, that they see each other as direct rivals, whereas for other countries, it’s not the case.

Jordan Schneider: It’s funny, because there is kind of this spectrum, right, where you have these African countries and Malaysia being like, “Whatever, spy on me. What do I care? It’s not like I could stop them anyway. Might as well save the money with the Huawei kit.” Then we have the UK kind of in between. You’ve got this great back and forth between John Bolton and a senior UK security official saying, “What I don’t understand is why out of all the things — chips, AI, rare earth minerals, whatever it is — your administration has decided that a modest amount of base stations on hilltops in England is the epicenter of your new declared war on China. Why?"

"You got to pick something,” John Bolton replied, but that feels like a facetious response. The deeper one, which is the one you alluded to earlier, Eva, is that losing this entire industry of telecom broadly and base stations in particular to a Chinese player is something that the US couldn’t really countenance as the country that feels like it has more to lose from being spied on by China than even folks who maybe aren’t all the way at the side of Malaysia, but the UK that feels like they can kind of deal with it. Even if they can’t, how bad is it going to be? It’s not like they’re the ones upholding the industrial base of the liberal democratic order or what have you. Kyle?

Kyle Chan: It does tie into this question from the US side too of what are the motivations for each of these things? I see a lot of parallels for the EV industry. There’s a lot of debate about to what extent were the Biden era tariffs on Chinese EVs and then later on the connected vehicles ban motivated by security issues and to what extent was it motivated by economic competition issues about worrying about what will happen to American automakers and US auto jobs along the way.

That just puts the US in a different position than other countries when it comes to its relationship with China and Huawei and a lot of these other rising Chinese tech firms that seem to be now entering into spaces that US companies were comfortable being dominant in for a long time. There’s also that parallel with Europe too, taking a different approach, again with EVs. They have similar concerns, but there seems to be at least a greater interest in investment and production of Chinese EVs within Europe. All of that is just to say it’s a lot messier than merely “let’s block everything Huawei” or whatever, “anything goes.” There’s a full range of different approaches out there across the world.

Jordan Schneider: I want to talk a little bit about the organizational, senior management structure and how it pattern matches to the way the Communist Party structures itself. Can you talk a little about that, Eva?

Eva Dou: Huawei has for years adopted this kind of collective leadership model, which in many ways is similar to how China’s government is run. There’s a senior group of officials, both explicit and also unofficial, semi-retired officials who all have a role in deciding the direction of this company. On purpose, it is a little vague exactly where those lines are drawn of who’s in charge of what.

For now, Ren Zhengfei is still the top guy. He’s talked for years that he’s going to be retiring one day and now he’s in his 80s, and it’s still unclear when he’s going to be retiring. That’s going to be the big test for Huawei, of course, for any company — that initial, the first handover from the founder to the next generation of leadership and if they can keep the company running to the same degree of success.

Jordan Schneider: I want to close on the human arc a little bit. A lot of Western media makes fun of the Huawei campus. The fact that it’s kind of this Disneyland — it has a Versailles, it has a Kremlin, it has all these international styles. This moment that you write about, about him moving villages in middle school, you write that he was astonished when they moved to the county seat and saw a department store. It was the first time he saw a two-story building.

Then, a few decades later, he goes to the US for the first time, sees Las Vegas and thinks it’s the most beautiful city he’s ever seen. These giant buildings and the pyramids and whatnot. Then he builds this incredible company and decides that he wants to replicate all of these architectural wonders from the West. Not really from China, but from the West.

Just that arc of this boy whose dad was principal and was beaten to within an inch of committing suicide during the Cultural Revolution to go from having this really complicated, admiring, but also rivalrous relationship with the rest of the world and looking up to so much that the West has brought, but also really wanting to be able to compete and strive to stand at the same level, if not necessarily playing by all the rules that the Western countries and companies would want them to — that’s just a remarkable arc. That is probably the thing that’s going to stick with me most from this book. When Ren, who’s pretty old now, does end up passing from the scene.

Kyle Chan: This image of him from his early childhood days, really the rural boy from out in the provinces to then later on being able to be this savvy political operator at the national and international stage and basically getting on side with multiple Chinese leaders over time. You write about how he is going out doing deals with, from Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and now Xi Jinping.

We recently had that big meeting with the tech executives, Chinese tech executives meeting with Xi Jinping. Who was there, sitting in the very front and center, was Ren Zhengfei himself. Who could have imagined, probably not him from his early days, that he would be at the center of so much of the Chinese leadership’s ambitions, US-China competition tensions, and part of this story of China’s rise over time.

Eva Dou: It is kind of staggering, the distance he’s traveled since his childhood to where he is today, both personally, his company, and also China, that China is now a true technological competitor on the world stage. That’s part of what interested me in this project — just understanding how much has changed and how it changed.

As far as the palaces that you alluded to that Huawei has built on campus, Ren has said — it’s not only the Western media that critiques it, sometimes his own employees do. He’s talked about this and said, “You guys can gripe about these palaces, but we build them for the customers."

It’s not just him himself. This has been China’s experience, broadly, this transformation. When they bring government officials and telecom officials from across the nation to the campus, this is the same transformation that they are experiencing themselves. It is appealing to a certain part of his customer base, all the glitz and glamour. Most of his international base is the developing world. Huawei is famous for bringing foreign officials on these junkets and wowing them with both the campus and the food and the hospitality.

Jordan Schneider: Eva, are there any stories you want to share from the reporting of this book? In particular, I’d be curious about, in reading a lot of these memoirs and Chinese coverage of the company, what are the narratives that get a lot of play in mainland China that you don’t end up seeing written up much in the Washington Post?

Eva Dou: The most fun part of this was doing archival research for me and trying to find sources that even in China are a bit obscure. You do have the easy narratives, both the international ones about Huawei being a national security threat and within China, Huawei being this great company that’s getting better and better. Part of what I try to bring to this is the smaller voices.

I really enjoyed reading some local government officials’ memoirs in China. As Huawei has interacted with so many officials both within China and around the world over the years, I wanted to bring some of their recollections of the experience of meeting with Huawei, both good and bad. In China, as you know, there’s pretty strict censorship. In memoirs, when people are late in their life and no longer worried about keeping their job, they are a little franker sometimes in their recollections. That’s been an enjoyable part of this process.

Kyle Chan: I was astonished looking through the sources that you cite and the amount of material that you had to go through. I’m sure the sources that you cited are just the tip of the iceberg for everything that you were wading through and trying to sift through. You even chased down a Harvard Business School classmate of a Huawei executive and interviewed them. I was astonished by the lengths you went to really get to all the details of this story, including a ton that just has not been talked about before.

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Eva Dou: Thanks so much. The process of digitization of archival material around the world was really helpful in this project. So many times during the process, I thought about how if nothing was digitized and I had to go in person and just read each page one by one, how long would this project take? It would have taken years and years more than it did. It really gave me an appreciation of the earlier generation of researchers who were doing everything in analog, in person, archival research.

Jordan Schneider: But they didn’t have Twitter to distract them. Eva, how long do you think you’d last at Huawei?

Eva Dou: Oh my goodness.

Jordan Schneider: Say your 24-year-old self. We’ll give you a little boost of energy.

Eva Dou: Well then good. I probably could hack it a couple years, but they are ferocious in weeding people out.

Jordan Schneider: They’d catch on to you eventually.

Eva Dou: Yeah, probably.

Jordan Schneider: Is there a moment or a meeting that you wish you could have been a fly on the wall for?

Eva Dou: There are a few points in their early history where they changed the company’s structure or ownership and I’ve always been pretty curious about what exactly those conversations were. They started out as a private startup — it was a pilot program for private startups. No one knew how long that would last. At some point they shifted to where they were almost more state-owned for a few years and then they went back to being a private corporation.

Kyle Chan: One funny thing that stuck out to me is that Eva, you have pointed out the pronunciation of Huawei among Americans. So many people say “Wawei” instead of “Huawei.” Once you pointed that out, I can’t stop hearing that. People do it all the time and I don’t know where it came from.

Eva Dou: Part of it is the company itself. At some point their PR team was going around teaching people to say the company name this way.

Kyle Chan: That’s so interesting.

Eva Dou: Which is a curious thing.

Kyle Chan: Wow. It reminds me of Hyundai trying to be like, “We’re not Honda, we’re not ’Hi-yun-dai,’ it rhymes with Sunday.” It’s tough.

Eva Dou: They thought about changing the name in the early days when they realized it was so hard to pronounce for international audiences and they batted a few different things around. But in the end it seemed too difficult to change, and we’re stuck with Huawei.

Jordan Schneider: One of the daughters is a singer, right? We have to do that as our outro music. But are there — did Ren ever talk about liking music? Did he have any favorite songs or genres or anything?

Eva Dou: Interesting. I don’t know off the top of my head about music, but he’s always been an admirer of the arts and that comes from his parents and this desire to be a cultured renaissance man. That’s something he’s really encouraged with his employees — for them to spend their spare time cultivating themselves, listening to different types of music, looking at fine art, things like that.

Jordan Schneider: Cool. Aside from the architecture thing, which people are clear on, are there painters or writers? Give me a sense of the Ren Zhengfei cultural constellation.

Eva Dou: Well, classical style art is something he quite appreciates. There are stories of him collecting paintings from around the world and having his employees help him bring oil paintings over from abroad. He’s talked about his family quite liking Europe, liking to go to Europe on vacations. His youngest daughter grew up largely between the UK and China. He often talks about these cultural things to make a point, as part of his outreach to different markets. He talks about international culture that he likes probably more often than domestic.