On the 22nd, a 40-minute drive from Shanghai Hongqiao Airport revealed Huawei's Lianqiuhu (练秋湖) Shanghai Research Center, featuring 3 to 5-story North American-style buildings. Opened in October last year, the complex has 105 buildings that already house 28,000 people, including 25,000 researchers. The research base, which started with a 10 billion yuan (about 1.9 trillion won) investment in 2021, is 80% complete and will accommodate up to 35,000 people when completed by the end of this year.
Located in Qingpu District on the west end of Shanghai, this area, where only farmland existed and is half the size of Yeouido (1.6㎢), is centered around a lake created by drawing water from the nearby Dian Lake (淀山湖). This is Huawei's largest and latest research base. In terms of area, it is larger than the combined size of Apple's Apple Park in Silicon Valley and Microsoft's Redmond campus in Washington.
The site gained attention when Thomas Friedman, a columnist at the New York Times (NYT), wrote a piece asserting that 'the future of the world is not in America but in China' after visiting earlier this year. It has become a popular destination for Korean dignitaries, including a visit by a delegation from the Korea-China Parliamentarians' League on the 24th.
Huawei once again proved itself as a national representative of Chinese technology corporations with the revelation that the chip used in the reasoning-type generative AI development by China's startup 'DeepSeek,' which unsettled the global AI industry last January, was independently designed by Huawei. Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei participated and spoke at a meeting of private business leaders presided over by Chinese President Xi Jinping on Feb. 17, followed by an unprecedented interview of Ren, as a private entrepreneur, on the front page of the People's Daily, China's must-read newspaper for its 98 million Communist Party members, on June 10. The Chinese internet is full of analyses of every word of his interview.
The Huawei Lianqiuhu Research Base, directly unveiled to Korean media for the first time, feels more like a quiet travel destination or a university campus than a typical workplace. While existing research bases like those in Dongguan are mostly in European-style buildings, the Shanghai base features American-influenced and Chinese traditional-style buildings resembling Shui Towns (水镇). The shapes of all buildings are different, including a media center shaped like a cocoon and a report hall resembling an opera theater. A guide explained, 'The buildings averaging 3 to 5 floors aren't tall because working in high-rise buildings can heighten tension,' adding that 'the lake acts as the water, and the buildings serve as small mountains.'
Divided into eight zones by fields responsible for the future of Huawei's technology, such as 6G (sixth-generation) wireless communications, semiconductors, AI, cloud, and smartphones, shuttle trains run around these zones. The yellow customized shared scooters, created by the Chinese lifestyle platform company Meituan exclusively for this site, also stand out. Each zone features convenience facilities like convenience stores, restaurants, and gyms. Restaurants' participation is continuously reevaluated based on employee evaluations over a certain period, requiring constant menu and service improvements.
With over 50 cafes, these locations serve as representative places for boosting Huawei's creativity and are also used for meetings with overseas researchers. Ren named these cafes 'places where cosmic energy is absorbed,' believing that creativity can be realized through the exchange of ideas. Each day, one voucher for a free cup of coffee marked as a 'cosmic energy voucher' is distributed. Even on the Sunday when the reporter visited, researchers were seen exercising in the 24-hour gyms. A dedicated room for new mothers to express milk and store it in a refrigerator was also notable.
Doo Jaowei, Vice President of Huawei Korea, noted, 'Huawei is very flexible in its consideration of research personnel,' adding, 'We even established a research center near a famous scientist's rural home in Ireland.' It is said that genius-level research personnel can choose their location for research.
Huawei's background in establishing a large-scale research base in Shanghai, having already set up over 10 research hubs in cities like Shenzhen, Dongguan, etc., comes from a shortage of space due to its proactive effort to secure research personnel, accounting for more than half of its total employees. Huawei built a research building in Pudong, Shanghai, in 2010, but as the number of research personnel increased, they had to rent nearby buildings, causing communication issues among research personnel. Huawei's total employee count was 110,000 in 2010, but by the end of 2024, the number of research personnel increased to 110,000. This accounts for 54.1% of Huawei's total staff (208,000).
According to the '2024 Research and Development (R&D) Investment Scoreboard' released by the European Union (EU) Joint Research Centre in December 2024, Huawei's R&D investment ranked sixth globally as of 2023, following Alphabet (Google's parent company), Meta (formerly Facebook), Apple, Microsoft, and Volkswagen, placing it one spot above Samsung Electronics.
Notably, a third of Huawei's R&D investment focuses on basic science research, which takes a long time. It is an expression of Huawei's resolve not to remain just a follower. Ren repeatedly emphasized the importance of basic science research in the People's Daily interview. 'Theoretical researchers are the hope of the country's future. Once the country has a certain level of economic capability, it should focus on theoretical research, especially basic theoretical research. It usually takes not 5 to 10 years, but 10, 20 years, or even longer. Without basic research, there is no root. No matter how lush and flourishing the leaves are, they can collapse with a single gust of wind. The high price of purchasing overseas products includes the expense they invested in basic research. In the end, even if we don't conduct basic research, we have to pay the expense. So, why can't we pay that money to our own basic researchers?'
Ren stated, 'Theoretical scientists are lonely. We must understand them with strategic patience,' adding, 'Huawei invests 180 billion yuan (about 34.2 trillion won) annually in R&D, of which about 60 billion yuan (about 11.4 trillion won) is devoted to basic theoretical research and is not subject to evaluation.' Unlike ordinary corporations that emphasize short-term interests, Huawei places greater value on long-term prospects. He said, 'Without theory, there is no breakthrough, and it is impossible to catch up with the United States.' Huawei has established math research institutes, among others, in countries like Russia and France.
Shanghai extended the terminus of subway line 17, which starts at Hongqiao Railway Station, to accommodate Huawei, which transformed this land that was once just farmland into a future technology research base. Shiqian Station is a 10-minute walk from the Huawei research base. Being just 30 minutes away from Suzhou in Jiangsu Province, it is considered a pioneering model of innovation in the Yangtze River Delta, enabling access to talent from Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Shanghai.
Nam Eun-young, a professor at Dongguk University's Department of Global Trade, analyzed that 'China has long regarded AI as a new infrastructure beyond just future technology, focusing on a co-growth strategy in an ecosystem that facilitates development across most areas of AI application,' and added, 'Huawei's R&D strategy is in line with this trend.'
Indeed, Chairman Ren Zhengfei stated at the business leaders meeting attended by President Xi that 'by 2028, we will achieve an over 70% independence rate of the industrial value chain by integrating 2,000 corporations and core domain ecosystems in the semiconductor industry software, etc.' In the People's Daily interview, Ren emphasized collaboration across various domains. 'Algorithms are not solely in the hands of IT experts. They are in the hands of experts in power, infrastructure, coal, pharmaceuticals, and other industries. China's pace of AI application in manufacturing is very fast, and numerous Chinese models will emerge.'
Ren stated that 'AI might be the last technological revolution for humanity' and noted, 'AI requires the advancement of sufficient power and telecommunication networks, and China's power development and grid are excellent, with telecommunications networks being the most advanced in the world, making it possible to implement Dongshuxi calculation (processing the economically developed East's data in the energy-rich West).'
Professor Nam pointed out, 'While the new government is right to foster AI as a national strategy, it is essential to approach with the perspective of learning from China's example while preventing potential issues such as over-focusing on high-tech industries leading to structural adjustment problems in traditional sectors.'