In November 2025, the International Collegiate Programming Contest(ICPC) Beijing headquarters published minutes from a meeting between ICPC President Ren Zhengfei, coaches, and winning contestants, revealing a stance toward the United States marked by rational pragmatism, respect, inclusiveness, and a clear preference for cooperation over confrontation. Against the backdrop of intensifying Sino-US technological competition, Ren’s remarks underscored a strategic commitment to mutual learning and constructive engagement, reflecting both a deliberate long-term vision and a broader civilizational perspective. This episode provides a concise yet meaningful lens through which to examine the evolving dynamics of global technological exchange and leadership.
Ren Zhengfei’s Tribute to America’s Enduring Tech Leadership
Ren Zhengfei has consistently acknowledged and respected the United States’ technological leadership, framing it not as a rival force but as a global public good from which all nations benefit. He has repeatedly praised American scientists and innovators—calling Geoffrey Hinton the “father of deep learning,” admiring Turing Award winner Richard S. Sutton, and lauding Google’s founders for creating Android, “which the whole world is enjoying.” He has further emphasized that the technological civilization created by the United States is “beneficial, not harmful,” urging that its continued development should be supported. His frequent references to foundational breakthroughs such as UC Berkeley Professor Chenming Hu’s FinFET structure—advances he says China “has not been able to catch up with for decades”—underscore his non-zero-sum view of global technological progress.
This attitude is rooted in his own formative experiences. Growing up in a poor mountain village in Guizhou, Ren’s greatest longing as a child was simply for books, and Western scientific works appeared to him like “fairy tales.” A worn and yellowed copy of Principles of Electronics became his only window to the outside world. When he founded Huawei, his youthful admiration for Western science translated directly into his business philosophy: to use the world’s best components and tools in order to build the world’s best products. Early Huawei equipment depended heavily on American technologies—from Texas Instruments chips and Oracle databases to IBM management systems. Engineers still recall that a single delayed shipment of American microwave amplifiers once halted an entire base-station project for half a month.
Ren’s reverence extended to the institutions that shaped modern information technology. His “admiration for Bell Labs surpassed love,” and he personally visited its exhibition hall and legendary workbenches, saluting John Bardeen as “a benefactor of all humanity.” He recognized that Bell Labs, supported for decades by AT&T’s monopoly profits, invested billions annually in research and produced fundamental breakthroughs—the transistor, laser, UNIX, the C language, and information theory—that became the foundation of the global information industry. China’s information sector, he observed, rose by standing on the shoulders of these giants, benefiting from the diffusion of advanced technology that allowed developing countries to focus on application and engineering rather than reinventing basic science.
At the same time, Ren drew lessons from the dynamism of the U.S. technology ecosystem. Companies rise and fall, sometimes spectacularly, but “the assets and talent remain in the United States; bankruptcy ties down only the legal entities.” The disappearance of a firm does not erase its knowledge. Mechanisms such as talent mobility, patent disclosure, open-source culture, and strong university research ensure that innovation is continually socialized and never wholly lost. For Ren Zhengfei, this constant regeneration—rooted in openness, competition, and the free flow of knowledge—is precisely what sustains America’s long-term technological vitality, and it is a model from which the world, including China, continues to benefit.
Ren Zhengfei on Huawei Sanctions vs. U.S.-China Decoupling
Ren Zhengfei draws a clear distinction between the sanctions imposed on Huawei and the broader relationship between China and the United States. He emphasizes that the U.S. restrictions apply specifically to Huawei’s use of components containing American technology, rather than representing a blanket prohibition on China or the global market. Most Chinese companies, he notes, remain fully able to access American tools, technologies, and ecosystems—an openness that continues to benefit China’s overall industrial development. By refusing to frame Huawei’s situation as a comprehensive technological confrontation, Ren avoids conflating a targeted corporate challenge with national-level decoupling.
This deliberate framing also underscores that Huawei’s push for technological self-reliance is not an ideological crusade but a pragmatic response to external pressure. Ren repeatedly cautions against interpreting Huawei’s predicament as proof of systemic separation between the two countries. His approach preserves room for cooperation between Chinese firms and American partners, and it avoids inflaming nationalist sentiment that could undermine China’s economic engagement with the global technology environment.
Ren’s 2019 remarks likewise reveal his pragmatic and unvarnished assessment of Huawei’s capabilities at the time. He openly acknowledged that Huawei’s smartphones lagged behind Apple’s in hardware performance, software ease of use, and broader user experience. When asked whether he was an Apple fan, he explained that his daughter, studying in the U.S., relied on Apple devices for practical reasons. For him, Apple served as a benchmark and a teacher—an example from which Huawei could learn and improve.
In public interviews, Ren has consistently reiterated that Huawei is simply a consumer product, not a political symbol. Purchasing a Huawei device, he stresses, should be a matter of personal preference rather than an expression of nationalism. Whether individuals choose Huawei or another brand, he insists, should not be interpreted as a political statement. Through this stance, Ren promotes rational consumer choice and a depoliticized understanding of global technology competition.
Ren Zhengfei’s Case for Open and Global Talent Mobility
Ren Zhengfei rejects the zero-sum logic of “talent poaching” and instead embraces the principle that global talent mobility ultimately benefits all of humanity. Commenting on the long-standing trend of the United States attracting international talent, he expressed neither grievance nor rivalry. Rather, he observed that the U.S. provides fertile ground for talent to flourish, and that the innovations created there—from Android to countless scientific breakthroughs—eventually diffuse worldwide and contribute to global technological progress. In this view, talent moving abroad does not equate to talent loss; value created anywhere enriches the entire technological ecosystem.
Huawei’s own stance reflects this openness. Ren emphasized that the company does not intend to engage in a high-salary arms race for talent, as such competition is unsustainable and counterproductive. Instead, Huawei seeks to build a global research network that allows scientists to work wherever they prefer. In a 2018 meeting with USTC President Bao Xinhe, Ren pointed to historical patterns of large-scale talent migration, such as the post–World War II transfer of millions of Jewish scientists and engineers that catalyzed Israel’s technological rise. Huawei, he argued, must be similarly open-minded: it will establish research institutions in any country where scientists wish to conduct their work. This approach has already led to the creation of specialized institutes in places such as Belarus and Ukraine and the recruitment of leading mathematicians, physicists, chemists, and AI researchers from around the world.
For Ren, what truly matters is not the location of scientists but the mechanisms that enable them to innovate. He highlighted the example of Huawei’s 5G standard, which originated in a mathematical paper published a decade earlier by Professor Erdal Arikan. To honor his foundational contribution, Huawei awarded him a special contribution prize—an act that Cambridge University now studies as a model of how basic research can swiftly translate into global technological standards. Such cases underscore Ren Zhengfei’s long-termist perspective: technological civilization is a shared asset of humanity, and the real determinant of progress lies in a society’s ability to access, absorb, and transform knowledge, not in claiming ownership over the people who produce it.
Contrasting China–US AI Pathways: Practical Innovation vs. Idealistic Pursuit
The development paths of artificial intelligence in China and the United States diverge sharply in philosophy, goals, and practical orientation. Ren Zhengfei has described this contrast as one between pragmatism and idealism. The United States—represented by OpenAI, Anthropic, and other frontier laboratories—tends to prioritize theoretical exploration, pursuing Artificial General Intelligence and even Superintelligence in an effort to probe fundamental questions about the nature of intelligence, humanity, and society. Progress is judged by conceptual elegance, theoretical originality, and breakthroughs at the limits of scientific knowledge.
In contrast, China’s AI strategy, exemplified by Huawei, is decisively problem-oriented and scenario-driven. Rather than pursuing AGI as an abstract end, China emphasizes practical solutions for industry, agriculture, healthcare, and transportation over the next three to five years. This approach focuses on verifiable economic value—cost reduction, efficiency gains, improved safety—and measurable social benefits such as inclusive medical services and risk-reduction in hazardous industries. It reflects a systems-engineering mindset: technology is valuable only insofar as it solves concrete problems. Ren Zhengfei stresses that this path suits China’s national conditions and guards against expending resources on pursuits disconnected from real economic needs.
This pragmatism is visible across China’s digital infrastructure. China operates the world’s most extensive high-speed rail system and continues to expand it by more than 8,000 kilometers annually. Emerging 5G-R wireless dispatching systems aim to support trains traveling at 450 km/h and 30,000-ton heavy-haul freight operations, each requiring real-time safety monitoring, dense communication, and complex scheduling algorithms. The scale of the future rail network—potentially 300,000 to 400,000 kilometers—will demand advanced optimization, control theory, and operational research, forming a vast arena for high-end mathematical and engineering research. Similar pragmatism appears in the evolution of the 12306 ticketing system, now one of the world’s most capable real-time transaction platforms.
China’s 5G infrastructure—representing roughly 60% of global base stations—supports equally transformative innovations in healthcare. A single portable ultrasound probe in remote Tibetan pastures can transmit real-time imaging data thousands of kilometers to specialists in Shenzhen, enabling detection of diseases such as hydatid cysts. This integration of low-latency networks, AI-assisted diagnostics, and remote medicine illustrates how scenario-focused innovation can deliver profound social value where equipment and expertise are scarce.
Ultimately, the two national approaches form a complementary global landscape. The United States pursues long-horizon breakthroughs grounded in philosophical inquiry and fundamental science, while China advances a model of minimum viable intelligence applied at massive scale to reshape core industries. Ren Zhengfei acknowledges the legitimacy of the American path but argues that China must follow a concrete, problem-driven trajectory that accelerates real-world impact. Together, these contrasting paradigms reflect differing national priorities, institutional environments, and conceptions of what AI should achieve for society.
China’s Path to Progress: Emphasizing Openness and Global Learning
Ren Zhengfei consistently emphasizes that China’s development must be rooted in openness rather than isolation. He argues that wealth should be “high-quality,” built through learning from the strengths of all advanced civilizations and actively participating in global exchanges. Reform and opening up, he notes, allowed global knowledge and practices to flow into China, helping shape the nation’s modern achievements. If China closes itself off or exports low-quality products that damage its reputation, its international market—and therefore its progress—will inevitably suffer.
From this perspective, Ren positions globalization as the most efficient pathway for national and technological advancement. Independent innovation, in his view, is a necessary fallback when external options are blocked, not a strategic end in itself. What China should pursue is “high-quality openness”: competing globally on technology and product excellence rather than intensifying internal competition within its own market. He even describes Huawei’s cooperation with the ICPC as a crucial channel for reconnecting with the global technology community through the energy and talent of young people.
Ren further cautions against allowing geopolitical pressures to push China into abandoning globalization. Temporary external constraints, he argues, should not justify a retreat into unilateral self-reliance. In non-frontier fields, self-sufficiency is achievable and sometimes necessary; however, in cutting-edge, uncertain domains where research directions remain unclear, global cooperation is indispensable. China must excel not only in the engineering that takes technologies from “1 to 10,” producing world-class and affordable products, but also in the scientific breakthroughs that take ideas from “0 to 1.” In both dimensions, openness to the world remains essential.
China’s AI Strategy: Prioritizing Application Impact Over Standards
Ren Zhengfei’s guidance to countries such as Indonesia, Mexico, and Romania underscores a strategic focus on application-driven leadership rather than competition in foundational computing or large-scale AI models. He emphasizes technologies that China has already validated and can modularly export, including port automation, BeiDou centimeter-level positioning, and ship electromagnetic mooring. This contrasts sharply with the U.S. AI strategy, which centers on defining core model architectures, open-source frameworks like PyTorch, evaluation benchmarks, and security protocols—essentially controlling AI at the “operating system level.” China’s approach prioritizes creating a demand-solution-ecosystem loop, addressing tangible infrastructure, agricultural, and healthcare challenges in developing countries, thereby achieving de facto standardization through practical application rather than theoretical dominance.
Ethically, Ren advocates a developmentalist perspective, prioritizing urgent socio-economic needs over distant existential risks. While acknowledging the long-term uncertainties associated with AGI, he insists that such uncertainties should not impede current development efforts: “We cannot stop making other efforts today just because there is that future.” This contrasts with the mainstream American discourse, which emphasizes AI’s existential risks and uncontrollability, often amplified through dystopian media narratives. Consequently, China frames AI as a tool to accelerate modernization, emphasizing inclusive growth, social stability, and the mitigation of unemployment through re-education programs. In contrast, U.S. AI ethics discourse focuses more on individual rights and global governance, reflecting differing national development stages and priorities.
China’s organizational logic further reinforces its application-centered strategy. Ren highlights the synergy between national, industrial, and educational actors, leveraging university-enterprise cooperation and talent pipelines through competitions such as ICPC. Educational restructuring, supported by state-led infrastructure investments in 5G, fiber optics, and computing networks, enables geographically decentralized online learning while maintaining rigorous tutoring and mentoring systems. Re-education programs transform technological disruption into human capital opportunities. By contrast, the U.S. relies primarily on market-driven innovation, with less systemic coordination between government, academia, and industry. While organizations like DARPA and NSF foster collaboration, the hollowing out of manufacturing and overreliance on financial incentives have limited the development of practical AI application scenarios.
In summary, China’s AI strategy integrates state support, enterprise-driven application, and university-based talent development into a resilient, tightly coordinated innovation ecosystem. By contrast, the U.S. emphasizes theoretical leadership, market-driven research, and regulatory discourse. China’s model demonstrates a pragmatic path to global AI influence, achieving scenario-specific leadership and de facto standards without pursuing hegemony in underlying AI theories.
China’s Layered Breakthroughs Counter U.S. Full-Stack Dominance
China’s strategy of “layered breakthroughs and differentiated competition” represents a deliberate and effective response to the U.S. model of full-stack dominance. Rather than attempting to surpass the United States simultaneously across all technological dimensions, China focuses on building asymmetric advantages in dynamic capabilities—such as system integration, scenario adaptation, cost control, and rapid iteration. This approach reflects a strategic distinction between absolute strength and relative decline, accepting temporary setbacks in bottleneck areas while accelerating innovation in domains that can be independently advanced.
Ren Zhengfei’s reflections on Huawei’s limited computing power under U.S. sanctions illustrate this mindset. He views current bottlenecks as temporary, emphasizing that engineering ingenuity can overcome linear limitations, and distinguishes between fundamental science and applied technology. While breakthroughs in core theoretical fields may still rely on global collaboration, Huawei and China more broadly prioritize applied technological transformation, leveraging platforms such as Ascend, MindSpore, and industry-specific AI solutions, alongside pioneering efforts in emerging areas like StarFlash, 5G-R, and multimodal industrial AI.
At a broader level, China’s AI strategy exemplifies a resilient development paradigm, embedding technology deeply into social and economic processes. By integrating market efficiency with social goals—whether through improving healthcare access for remote populations or optimizing high-speed rail systems—China demonstrates a model of civilizational innovation that emphasizes enhancing human and systemic capacities rather than pursuing purely predictive or replacement-driven technological strategies. This dynamic, socially embedded approach positions the Chinese model not only as sustainable but as a viable alternative path for AI-driven modernization, highlighting the potential for multiple civilizational approaches to coexist and learn from one another.
Final Thoughts
In the context of intensifying Sino-US strategic competition, Ren Zhengfei has maintained uncommon strategic composure and a mature sense of civic responsibility. He neither inflates hostility nor indulges in narratives of decoupling; instead, he converts external pressure into disciplined motivation without allowing resentment to distort Huawei’s developmental logic. Acknowledging the U.S. technological lead while responding firmly to sanctions, he emphasizes that technology transcends borders, knowledge thrives through openness, and global progress depends on shared advancement. His stance—learning from American strengths, addressing structural differences in the two countries’ AI development models, and pursuing a cooperative vision for humanity—offers a development philosophy that rises above antagonistic framing. In a turbulent era, such clarity, openness, and constructive orientation may constitute the most enduring form of core strength.