HUAWEI KEEN ON FOREIGN TALENT
Meng affair hasn't halted recruiting efforts
China may still be furious with Canada for having arrested a top executive at one of its highest-profile companies, but that hasn't stopped Huawei Technologies from unveiling a new drive to enlist talent from here and other Western nations.
One of the main targets will be “high noses” — Caucasians and other non-asian foreigners — its CEO says.
The plan was outlined in a speech by Ren Zhengfei, Huawei's founder and father of CFO Meng Wanzhou, that surfaced shortly after Meng ended more than 1,000 days of forced residence in Canada last month.
Huawei should turn graduate schools in North America and elsewhere into “recruitment centres,” where the firm can scoop up promising scientists at various levels, Ren said in the speech, according to a National Post-commissioned translation of it.
He suggested Huawei managers scan graduate theses and arrange coffee dates with prospective employees who might be willing to work in China. The idea is partly a response to the fact that the United States is issuing fewer student visas to Chinese citizens, lessening the flow of graduates back home, he said.
A text of the address — delivered in August — was posted on the company's internal employee website last week, a few days after CFO Meng flew back to China following her 2018 arrest in Vancouver on a U.S. extradition request. It was then leaked to regional media. “We must turn the graduate schools of North America into a recruitment centre, looking at graduate theses, going out to find talent and drinking coffee,” said Ren in Mandarin.
“This is not just the heads of institutes, but all levels of experts, attracting scientists, professionals, current students — go have coffee with them, and while connecting develop a resonance.”
He said U.S. restrictions on student visas means the flow of talented Chinese returning will “steadily decrease.” The company is also at a “critical moment for its survival and development” so should liberate its thinking and embrace the best talent of different ethnicities and nationalities, said the CEO.
“We must hire some `high noses' with `foreign firepower' and within three to five years move steadily from the previous `Eighth Route Army' towards globalization,” he said in apparent reference to the rough-and-ready Communist force that battled the Japanese in the Second World War.
Many international corporations recruit worldwide, and Huawei has a long history of hiring scientific and technology minds in Canada, where it has a large R&D operation.
A number of top researchers from Nortel, the defunct Canadian tech giant that once competed with Huawei, are now with the Chinese firm, noted Jonathan Calof, a University of Ottawa business professor. They include Huawei Wireless's chief technology officer, Wen Tong, who had been the head of Nortel's network technology labs.
But the speech also comes amid continued warnings from security agencies about Chinese attempts to siphon scientific expertise and knowledge away from the West.
Huawei is a private company but is strategically important to the Chinese Communist Party, so the recruitment plan likely reflects the party's overall approach to international expansion, said Ivy Li of Canadian Friends of Hong Kong, who analyzes Beijing's influence in Canada.
“This is very concerning and very interesting,” she said. “It tells us a very important strategic move of the CCP.”
Ren may be responding to growing wariness of Chinese citizens mining the West's scientific knowledge, and so is calling instead for “engaging with Western researchers directly,” said Charles Burton, a former diplomat in Beijing and fellow of the Macdonald Laurier Institute.
But he said the CEO'S use of the Chinese phrase meaning “high noses” is not offensive so much as a humorous colloquialism.
Huawei spokesman Alykhan Velshi said the speech simply reflects the company's longstanding push to recruit the best and the brightest internationally.
“Canada is known around the world for its skilled, educated and diverse workforce,” he said. “That's why we recruit here. Other companies may have cut back on hiring during the pandemic, but not us. We now have more than 1,500 employees in Canada, the highest in our 13-year history here.”