Meng Wanzhou, CFO of Huawei Technologies which has been captured by Canadian authorities earlier this month, is not an ordinary business executive.
As the daughter of the founder of the Chinese technology giant and possibly the successor of his company, Meng Wanzhou’s arrest increased the bets of already complicated trade relations between China and the United States (US).
This mid-40-year-old woman is a father of Ren Zhengfei, a former Chinese military planner, and Meng Jun, daughter of a senior government official in Sichuan, China. From the marriage, Ren also has a son named RenPing.
After divorcing Meng Jun, Ren Zhengfei married Yao Ling andhad a daughter, Annabel Yao, a computer science student at Harvard University, according to the South China Morning Post.
Huawei was founded in 1987 by Ren Zhengfei and for the next three decades has developed into the largest smartphone and telecommunications equipment producer in the Panda Country.
Since joining Huawei more than 20 years ago, Meng’s roleshot away from just helping at sales fairs became a central figure in the company’s leadership. However, there are still questions whether he will eventually take over his father’s position later.
Meng, who has other titles Cathy and Sabrina, decided to use his mother’s last name at the age of 16.
Although he had brief experience in China Construction Bank after graduating from college, he spent all his tenure at the company the father had founded.
In 1997, he took a break in his career to get a master’s degree from Huazhong University of Science and Technology and returned one anda half years later to be positioned in Huawei’s finance department.
There is a lot of speculation in local companies and media that the presence of Meng and his younger brother at Huawei is part of their father’s succession planning.
Ren Ping was considered strong enough to become the nextleader at Huawei to the point that his father wrote an internal email in 2013,which firmly dismissed the speculation. In his email, Ren Zhengfei outlined anumber of qualities that a company successor must possess, including vision, character, and industry-specific knowledge.
