Do we like them?

Do we like Ren Zhengfei?

Our score: 4 out of 10. Little on the record about harm to LGBTQ+ people or women, little verified good, and a defence of Beijing's Xinjiang policy in his own words.

Ren Zhengfei is the founder of Huawei, the Chinese telecoms giant, and he has stayed a famously private figure. For a bloke this influential, there's very little in the reporting we could open about his upbringing or personal values, so this card leans on the company and a couple of interviews.

The big story right now is the courtroom. Huawei, the company, went on trial in Brooklyn in September 2026 on charges that include racketeering, bank fraud and trade secret theft. Prosecutors alleged that the company stole from American firms such as Cisco and T-Mobile and hid its Iran dealings from banks. Huawei pleaded not guilty and its lawyer told jurors the case is “about competition, not conspiracy.”

Ren is named in the coverage as the founder and as the father of Meng Wanzhou, one of 25 China-based employees prosecutors want to call as witnesses. The reports we read don't say he is a defendant, and no verdict is in. So nothing in that trial counts against him personally yet.

On the harm test, the sharpest thing we found is Xinjiang. In a December 2019 interview with The Globe and Mail he rejected the idea that Beijing owes an apology and said “Xinjiang is becoming stable, and its economy is now growing.” That is a defence of a policy that critics, including human rights groups, condemn, and it's his own words, not a smear.

We found nothing from him about LGBTQ+ people, women or climate, so there is no pattern to point to either way. We also couldn't verify any charity or kind acts in the sources we opened, which is why the good-person side stays at mixed rather than a pass. That's honestly the whole list.