China is recalibrating its tech policy, elevating private enterprise to counter US export controls and drive innovation.

On June 10, 2025, as US and Chinese trade negotiators met in London for another round of tense talks, a different kind of negotiation was playing out on the front page of China’s People’s Daily. There, in a prominent and unprecedented display, appeared an extensive interview with Ren Zhengfei, founder of Huawei—a private entrepreneur given the kind of media platform previously reserved for the highest echelons of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Seasoned observers of Chinese politics recognized immediately that such editorial prominence would be impossible without the approval—likely the orchestration—of China’s paramount leader, Xi Jinping himself. The headline, “The More Open a Country Is, the More It Drives Us to Progress,” was more than a message about business. It was a political signal, a rallying cry, and a strategic recalibration in China’s approach to technology, private enterprise, and its contest with the United States.

A New Bargain Is Emerging Between Private Tech and the Party

For much of the past decade, China’s private tech sector has operated in a climate of uncertainty. The regulatory crackdown that began in 2021—targeting giants like Alibaba, Tencent, and Didi—sent a chill through the entrepreneurial class. Jack Ma, once the face of Chinese innovation, vanished from public view. Investment slowed, risk-taking waned, and the message from Beijing was clear: private capital would be tolerated, but only if it stayed within Party-defined boundaries.

But the world has changed. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the fragility of global supply chains. The rise of generative AI—first in the West, then in China—reshuffled the technological deck. Meanwhile, the US doubled down on export controls, blacklists, and restrictions on Chinese access to advanced chips. In this new context, Ren’s interview marks a recalibration. The Party is not relinquishing control over the tech sector, but it is signaling a new openness to private initiative, so long as it serves the national interest.

Ren Zhengfei’s prominence in People’s Daily is no accident. His credibility, forged in the crucible of US sanctions and the high-profile detention of his daughter, Meng Wanzhou, lends weight to the new narrative: private enterprise is not just tolerated, but essential to China’s technological future. As one Chinese commentator observed, “People’s Daily is using Ren Zhengfei’s voice to say: the country has not given up on private enterprise. In fact, private firms remain the main force in breaking through the technology blockade.”

Ren Urges Researchers to “Don’t Think About Difficulty—Just Do It”

Throughout the interview, Ren’s tone is stoic and defiant. He acknowledges the challenges—Huawei’s chips still lag behind the US by a generation—but insists that through “mathematics supplementing physics” and cluster computing, Huawei can still meet application needs. “Difficulty? Don’t think about it. Just work step by step,” he says—a phrase that has become a scientific-nationalist call to arms.

But Ren’s real focus is not on hardware, but on people—specifically, scientists and researchers. He tells stories of “lonely innovators,” from wartime agronomist Luo Dengyi to Nobel laureate Tu Youyou and geophysicist Huang Danian. Their work, he argues, was often dismissed as “useless” at the time, but ultimately laid the foundation for breakthroughs that changed the country’s fate. “If we don’t do basic research, we have no roots,” Ren says. “Even if the leaves are lush, a gust of wind will blow them down.”

Huawei, he reveals, spends a third of its $25 billion R&D budget on basic research—much of it with no immediate commercial payoff. This is long-termism with Chinese characteristics: a willingness to invest, to wait, and to endure setbacks in pursuit of technological self-reliance.

Huawei’s Unique Model Raises Questions About Whether It Can Be Replicated

Yet, as some Chinese analysts note, Huawei is not a typical private company. Its success, they argue, is inseparable from years of government support, preferential procurement, and a unique quasi-military culture. “Ren Zhengfei’s role today is similar to Rong Yiren in the early days of reform and opening up—a model enterprise benefiting from state resources,” says one policy expert.

Huawei’s relationship with the state is symbiotic. The government needs Huawei as a national champion, especially in the face of US pressure. Huawei, in turn, needs the state as a source of capital, contracts, and protection. This is not the freewheeling capitalism of Silicon Valley, but a kind of “state-guided entrepreneurship” that is uniquely Chinese.

China’s AI Strategy Is Pivoting With DeepSeek and a New Tech Frontier

The timing of Ren’s interview is no coincidence. China is undergoing a strategic pivot in artificial intelligence (AI), particularly generative AI. After initial hesitation—understandable given the regime’s preference for controllability over disruption—Beijing is now embracing AI development with renewed vigor. The rise of DeepSeek, a domestic large language model (LLM) approaching GPT-4 performance levels, has galvanized national ambition. It symbolically breaks the technological ceiling and boosts confidence that China can eventually outpace US technological barriers.

China’s approach to AI is characterized by a unique blend of state guidance, private-sector ingenuity, and open-source collaboration. The government has established a “National AI Team” comprising leading private enterprises and launched platforms for open innovation and data sharing. This ecosystem enables rapid scaling and dissemination of AI breakthroughs, in contrast to the more proprietary, closed models favored by US tech giants.

China Is Embracing Science Nationalism and Strategic Patience

A central theme in Ren’s interview is the emphasis on foundational science. He praises scientists like Tu Youyou, who achieved breakthroughs not through immediate commercial returns but through decades of patient effort. Huawei, Ren revealed, spends one-third of its R&D budget—about 60 billion yuan annually—on basic research, an amount rarely seen in the private sector. This long-termism echoes China’s growing emphasis on scientific sovereignty.

This message finds a historical echo in Deng Xiaoping’s 1978 “Science and Technology Conference,” which marked China’s post-Cultural Revolution commitment to science. Deng used science as both a political vehicle to consolidate power and a legitimizing tool to reboot modernization. Xi appears to be replicating that formula: using science and high-tech nationalism to shore up authority, foster public unity, and re-anchor the Party’s narrative amid slowing growth and global decoupling.

China’s Open Messaging Contrasts With Its Closed Political Reality

The article’s title—“The More Open the Nation, the More We Progress”—is clearly intended for international as well as domestic audiences. At a time when Washington restricts Chinese students, curtails cultural exchange, and enforces sweeping export bans on chips and AI tools, the CCP positions itself—paradoxically—as a champion of openness. Delivered through a civilian, rather than a bureaucrat, this message carries more persuasive weight.

Yet this rhetorical openness exists in tension with political realities. China remains tightly regulated, particularly in the information economy. Its AI laws are among the world’s most restrictive, emphasizing alignment with “core socialist values” and Party-defined content control. The message, then, is strategic: openness in technology transfer, scientific cooperation, and data access should benefit China’s ascent, but without surrendering political control.

The Interview Serves as a Domestic Call to Re-Engage the Private Sector

Beyond geopolitics, the interview is also a domestic mobilization device. In the wake of economic slowdown, high youth unemployment, and shrinking private investment, Xi is repositioning select private entrepreneurs like Ren as symbols of patriotic productivity.

The goal is twofold: rebuild trust between the Party and the private sector, and revive a sense of shared national mission. The narrative of “self-reliance under siege” is being used to forge cohesion. Ren’s appeal to long-termism and his humble acknowledgement of technological gaps serve to motivate a generation of engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs to endure hardship, shun complacency, and commit to national rejuvenation. However, as policy analyst Xu Haoran notes, “spirit alone cannot substitute for institutional support.” The “just work hard” mantra resembles Mao-era exhortations, but without corresponding reforms in IP protection, regulatory clarity, or capital access, it risks being mere moral theater.

Ren’s Remarks Are a Strategic Rejoinder to US Export Controls

Ren’s comments must also be read as a rejoinder to US export control policy. Since 2018, successive US administrations have tightened controls on semiconductors, AI chips, and high-performance computing tools. Huawei has been at the center of this campaign, first with its inclusion in the Commerce Department’s “Entity List” and later with broader bans on access to Nvidia’s A100/H100 chips.

Despite these efforts, China’s workaround strategies are multiplying. Clustered chip architectures, algorithmic efficiencies, and growing investments in domestic fabs are all part of a broader effort to neutralize the “chokehold.” As of 2024, Huawei has resumed 5G phone production, launched its own AI chips, and invested in domestic AI platforms. The People’s Daily interview functions as a counter-narrative: a declaration that sanctions may slow but cannot derail China’s technological rise. By featuring Ren’s voice, Beijing reclaims agency in the tech war, shifting from defensive posturing to confident rebuttal.

The US Should Compete, Not Isolate, to Stay Ahead in the Tech Race

The US strategy of restricting China’s access to advanced technology has yielded mixed results. While it has slowed China’s progress in certain areas, it has also spurred massive state investment, accelerated domestic innovation, and fostered a sense of national urgency. The emergence of DeepSeek and other Chinese AI firms demonstrates that China is rapidly closing the gap, sometimes by leveraging open-source models and state-guided collaboration in ways that the more fragmented US system cannot easily match.

The real risk for the US is not that China will copy American technology, but that it will surpass it in areas where Washington has grown complacent. America’s historical advantage has been its openness to talent, to ideas, and to risk-taking. But recent restrictions on Chinese students, scientists, and companies threaten to erode that edge.

If the US wants to stay ahead, it must double down on its own strengths: world-class universities, basic research, public-private partnerships, and a culture that rewards bold thinking. It must also recognize that scientific progress is global, and that walls—no matter how high—cannot keep out innovation.

The Bottom Line Is a Fragile New Normal Between the US and China

Ren Zhengfei’s front-page interview is a sign of China’s confidence, but also its pragmatism. The Party is not abandoning its control over the tech sector, but it is recalibrating—inviting private enterprise back into the fold, investing in basic research, and signaling openness to the world.

For now, the US and China are locked in a fragile new normal: rivals, but also partners; competitors, but also co-dependents. The danger is not that one side will win and the other will lose, but that both will retreat into self-defeating isolation.

In the end, the real test is not who can block the other’s progress, but who can build a system that is open, resilient, and capable of continuous renewal. That is the lesson of Ren Zhengfei’s interview—and the challenge for both Washington and Beijing in the years ahead.

About the Author: Jianli Yang

Dr. Jianli Yang is the founder and president of Citizen Power Initiatives for China and author of For Us, The Living: A Journey to Shine the Light on Truth and It’s Time for a Values-Based “Economic NATO.”

Image: Shutterstock

The post Recalibrating China’s Tech Nationalism: Takeaways from Huawei Founder’s People’s Daily Interview appeared first on The National Interest.