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  • Welcome to one of the largest cafeterias here at Huawei.

  • How else do you feed nearly 60,000 employees every day?

  • I'm spending a day in Huawei's headquarters.

  • It's located in the city of Shenzhen, in an area often referred to as the Silicon Valley of China.

  • It's 9 a.m. and we're going for a tour of Huawei.

  • Where is it?

  • Huawei is an information and communications technology conglomerate.

  • It's currently the world's third-biggest smartphone-maker behind Apple and Samsung.

  • At one point, Huawei had even surpassed Apple for a few months in 2017.

  • It's also the largest telecom equipment maker in the world.

  • Yet, it's less known in the U.S. for a variety of reasons.

  • AT&T recently dropped a deal which would allow Huawei to sell in the U.S.

  • Several U.S. lawmakers have had long-standing security concerns about,

  • what they said was, Huawei's ties to the Chinese government.

  • And U.S. government officials recently said they would not advise Americans to use products from Huawei.

  • Yet the U.S. market aside, there's no denying how massive the company has become.

  • What started just over 30 years ago has turned into a company with more than

  • 180,000 employees across the globe and it has annual revenue of $92 billion.

  • So what's it like inside one of China's massive tech companies?

  • The campus is sprawling with these kind of vans that take employees from

  • section to section in and around the campus.

  • Multiple 7-Elevens and mini-marts throughout campus.

  • It's 12:20 right now and this cafeteria in Huawei is packed.

  • It's a campus that has to feed nearly 60,000 people everyday.

  • This is just one of many cafeterias here on the campus.

  • In fact, if this looks big, this is nothing. This is one of three floors and there's over a dozen of these cafeterias.

  • Food isn't free here for employees, but it is heavily subsidized.

  • There's so many choices, you can get pretty much any cuisine imaginable here.

  • Hi! Hello!

  • At these registers, no one uses cash.

  • China is moving toward a cashless society.

  • So, it makes sense that people here are using mobile phones to pay.

  • I don't see anybody else with cash.

  • The cost of my lunch was about $2.50.

  • It's time to eat.

  • In parts of China's corporate culture, an afternoon nap is considered

  • completely normal and sure enough after lunchtime, I see a number of employees getting some shut-eye.

  • There's a lot of symbolism throughout the campus, one of them is these black swans.

  • There's three of them on the campus, which I'm told is meant to

  • symbolize non-complacency within the corporate culture.

  • Huawei says 45% of their employees are engaged in some form of research and development.

  • On this side of the lake, you'll see some villas.

  • These are used for meetings, for executives, for partners, for out-of-town guests.

  • Sometimes, you'll find things on this campus that seem a bit random.

  • I'm in a stationary train right now.

  • This is what's known as Huawei University. It's where employees come for

  • continuing education, classes, seminars, and by the looks of it, it's quite big.

  • The company says it offers 25,000 courses through its university program.

  • About a ten minute drive from the main campus, Huawei has a number of

  • buildings where thousands of its employees can live alone or with their families.

  • This city went from around 30,000 people to more than 12 million

  • in just about 40 years.

  • Because Shenzhen is such a new city, many people

  • who actually live here are not actually from here,

  • so the employee subsidized housing allows a lot of people who moved

  • to this part of China to live conveniently and relatively inexpensively.

  • There's also two hotels here.

  • On the ground floor, here you have a daycare, a coffee shop, massage place, grocery store,

  • pretty much anything you can think of.

  • This is presumably empty, because, well, it's two in the afternoon.

  • Everyone is likely at work.

  • And there's enough services and shops between here and the campus,

  • that some employees pretty much never even need to leave the Huawei ecosystem.

Welcome to one of the largest cafeterias here at Huawei.

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