Leo Sun : "I think western corporates better accept China’s rise rather than denying it."

Leo SUN came to France in 2003 among the first group of people to start Huawei Technologies in Europe. He then served as the CEO of Huawei France from 2007-2011, bringing the company to the market leader in France with 350 million euro annual revenues and 750 employees. Later on, he was appointed as the first President of Huawei's Public Affairs Office in Brussels at a critical time in dealing with the strategic relations of European Union institutions from 2011-2014.

He started his own company LoginChinese in 2015 after leaving Huawei. LoginChinese provides authoritative Chinese language education combined with traditional pedagogy and e-learning solution for companies, institutions as well as individuals.

Inevitably encountered with multi-lateral relations in various sectors in his work, Leo is a seasoned expert in Euro-China relations. Here is what he has to say.

What brought you to starting LoginChinese in the first place? What was the underlying motivation?

I’ve spent more than 13 years working and living in Europe. From my first mission of setting up Huawei’s French subsidiary to my last post of establishing strategic relations with both public and private sectors for Huawei in European Union, I have been engaging with numerous business leaders, politicians, policy makers, regulators from all across Europe. What stroke me the most in our interactions, is their astonishing limited and biased knowledge about China despite their often top-class education and intelligence. It is understandable to have such a situation today, due to the simple fact that China has been growing into a major global player quite recently, and culturally far away from western world. However it is not reasonable to take this situation for granted while doing nothing to improve it, especially from the western side. It is out of question that the correct cognition of China is necessary for anyone who wishes to extend the influencing arena globally as of today. China is just too significant to ignore. The language is undoubtedly the first means towards understanding China, not just because it has a conversational function, but by nature it is the infrastructure of an old civilisation, and quite a lot of western people have realised that. The number of children studying Chinese in western countries has increased considerably during the last decade, notably among the elites. I, therefore, started LoginChinese after leaving Huawei, with a long-term goal of facilitating the understanding of two sides I am most familiar with.

In your opinion, can you give us a perspective on why understanding Chinese is so important for European people? ?

There are many ways of saying this, but I would like to explain it in a most pragmatic perspective from an European position: European people are often astonished when I say to them that in China, we read their history, literature, philosophy and so on. Evidently, same thing can not be said in Europe. People generally know very little about Chinese civilisation, even among elites.

I call this phenomenon as “cognition deficit”. This deficit is somehow even expanding: Chinese education is the most competitive and selective worldwide on account of our population. Nowadays, the smartest students in China read European history, understand European behaviour and mind-set, study abroad, speak perfectly English and even other European languages, and of course they know those of China well enough. Conversely, despite that no one in Europe can deny that China is an inevitable subject to deal with in next decade, little effort, or fairly speaking, not enough effort is made among European youth to understand it. In this case, if the young generation of Europe remains indifferent to China, how will they compete with their Chinese counterparts in 10 years’ time? And even for pleasure of exploring the full spectrum of the civilization of the whole mankind, it’s such a big loss to have this “cognition deficit”.

Speaking of the misconception about China, can you share with us an anecdotes ?

My former employer, Huawei Technology, is a very successful company. It has grown from a trivial local switchboard trader to the global leader in telecommunication industry in only about 30 years. However, the impressive achievement has been suspected by the West from almost the first day. In some mainstream western media, Huawei has been portrayed as a company, whose success can only be attributed to its supposed complicity with Chinese government, or some other unfair practices, which made Huawei’s development in Europe extremely difficult. Even so, Huawei still won its clients by its products and services in Europe in spite of the public suspicious.

I was questioned, challenged or even confronted so often about the reason of the success of Huawei, both in France and in European Union. In those case, I would say to them, basically, what you are telling me is that you think there is only one way to achieve such a success of a Chinese company. You think there is no such a way for a brave and intelligent Chinese entrepreneur bringing together some more than 100,000 Chinese young people, who are all equally or even more intelligent and well educated; they wield their resources and exhaust their brains just to accomplish what they believe in the company; they care about their customers truly by heart and focus on making their product better day after day, You don’t think this could also be a possibility? If you don’t, it is your loss because not only are you contradicting the belief of open market and free trade that the West has been advocating , but also denying the fact which will most likely make you lose competitiveness bit by bit.

Quiet frankly, the reason behind this mentality, in my opinion, could be explained as western world’s complex in face of China’s rise. It is hard for them to accept a Chinese company’s global success considering that China was a rather backward country only a few decades ago, the same mistake Chinese had made two hundred years ago.

As far as I am concerned, though, I think that for their own good, western corporates better accept China’s rise than to deny it. If a company assumes its Chinese rival’s competitiveness is due to government’s assistance, instead of improving its own technology and optimising its own operation, it resorts to protectionism from its own government. I am afraid it’s a wise mentality to hold. In a word, Europe should be aware and prepared that there will be more and more world-class corporates coming from China, Huawei might be the one of the first to appear, but certainly not the last one.

What is the next step of LoginChinese?

2017 is an important year for us. We are about to launch other projects in combination with the current Chinese language program in further facilitating European people understanding towards China. The product development is underway, both offline and online. For those who are interested, please stay tuned, we won’t disappoint you.

#China #Huawei