Chinese netizens slam Huawei’s legal bullying of former employee with a series of codes · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

The image is derived from Marco Verch's image: Huawei logo under a magnifying glass (CC: AT)
Huawei, the most prominent tech giant in China, is considered to be one of the most successful national brands which has established a monopoly status in the domestic market boosted by patriotic buying. However, recently the corporation was under fire for staging the criminal prosecution of its former employee, Li Hongyuan, who was detained by the Shenzhen police for 251 days after the company accused Li of extortion, a charge for which Li was later acquitted.
As netizens rallied online for Li, other cases of Huawei’s bullying of former employees and critics emerged and the web censor started blocking the discussions on social media. Netizens then used a series of codes to mock Huawei's corporate bullying practice:
Huawei code that's trending now: 985, 996, 035, 251, 404.
Hire people from 985 universities.
Make them work 996.
Fire them at age 35.
Sue ex-employee for getting the compensation they are entitled to. Li Hongyuan was detained for 251 days.
Censor all social media discussions.
— Chenchen Zhang??‍♀️ (@chenchenzh) December 1, 2019
[Editor's Note: 996 stands for a 9 am to 9 pm workday, 6 working days a week.]
The incident was exposed after a court ruling document circulated online on 28 November. According to the document, Li Hongyuan, a former Huawei employee, was arrested by Shenzhen police on 16 December 2018 after Huawei accused him of extortion. He was detained for 251 days.
The court dismissed the charges due to “unclear criminal facts and insufficient evidence”. Li had negotiated with the company secretary for an employment termination compensation of about 300,000 yuan (US$42,430 dollars) and he had recorded his negotiation with the company secretary on tape. As the charge was acquitted Li received 100,000 yuan (US$14,100 dollars) compensation for his illegitimate detention.
Li later revealed to local media outlets that he had met a number of former Huawei employees in the Shenzhen detention center facing similar charges. One widely reported case was Zheng Meng. Zheng was arrested by Shenzhen police during his touristic visit in Thailand on 30 December 2018 and detained in Shenzhen for 90 days on extortion. He was in the process of negotiating with the corporation over his unpaid leave compensation.
Apart from employees, a number of netizens who criticized Huawei’s products were arrested for spreading rumors by Shenzhen police. For example, Wang Hao, who worked for a tech media outlet, was arrested in early November 2018 and detained for 252 days for criticizing Huawei mobile phone Mate 20. His charge was acquitted eventually but he had not received any compensation for his illegitimate detention.
As netizen uproar continued, the web censor stepped in to block the discussion on Chinese social media platforms. Prominent tech blogger William Long’s post on Weibo was blocked on 30 November and the blogger expressed his frustration on Twitter:
昨天在微博发的《华为13年老员工离职索要赔偿被关押251天》的信息被微博屏蔽了，我这里宣布，从今天开始，我将不会再购买华为的任何一件商品，这种企业真是令我感到恶心。
— 月光博客 (@williamlong) November 30, 2019
The post “Huawei former staff of 13 years was detained for 251 over employment termination compensation” was blocked on Weibo. Here I declare, I would never buy any Huawei product starting from now. This corporate is really disgusting.
Key term Huawei and Li Hongyuan had deemed unsearchable on major Chinese social media platforms:
华为李洪元事件，微博和微信在大规模删帖，现在不确定这是不是华为公关部的作为。有些时候，负面信息本身就可能被指令删除。但不得不说，这一事件，将孟晚舟事件一年来华为积累起来的认同感和支持率，消耗的差不多了。作为旁观者，觉得这真是蛮可惜的局面。 pic.twitter.com/dkgkMt2CTi
— 王局志安 (@wangzhian8848) December 2, 2019
Weibo and Wechat had deleted massive content related to Huawei and Li Hongyuan incident. It is unclear if the censorship comes from Huawei public relation department. The censor authority could always step in the curb the spread of negative information. Huawei had lost the public support it had accumulated since the Meng Wangzhou incident. What a shame.
Coincidentally, 1 December was the anniversary of Huawei’s CFO and Executive Director Meng Wanzhou’s house arrest. The executive is in Canada awaiting U.S-extradition trial over alleged bank fraud and Chinese propaganda had prepared feature reports to criticize the “politically motivated” legal action. Only this time, Chinese netizens did not orchestrate the reports with patriotic sentiment. Instead, they took the opportunity to slam Huawei. @Tullymonster77 screen captured some typical comments on Chinese news threads:
华为251算是彻底翻车了，群众纷纷表示孟晚舟抓得好。
党国的鸡血白打了?????? pic.twitter.com/8DBPl41lGR
— 荣誉非国民（公务繁忙，适度戒推中） (@Tullymonster77) December 1, 2019
Huawei 251 incident has turned things all around. People all said it is just to arrest Meng Wanzhou. The party-state propaganda is in vain.
Below are some of the comments in the screen captures:
孟晚舟就算死在監獄也不值得同情了。
No one will be in sympathy with Meng Wanzhou now, not even if she died in jail.
加拿大人，和我們中國人有啥關係？
(Meng is a) Canadian, she has nothing to do with Chinese people.
加拿大人還是太友好了，應該直接給粥公主關進看守所才對，只帶個狗圈讓她隨便溜躂還便宜她了。
Canadian are too friendly. They should have put the princess into detention center. Now she can walk around with a collar. Such nice treatment.
這家黑社會企業，怪不得美國查，在大陸有黑社會罩著，你們陷害了多少人，快倒閉！
Such a mafia corporate. No wonder the U.S has to investigate on it. It is protected by the triad [Note: traid is an organized crime syndicate] in China. How many people have they framed? Hope to see it go bankrupt soon.
On 2 December, Huawei responded on the incident with a statement:
华为有权利，也有义务，并基于事实对于涉嫌违法的行为向司法机关举报。我们尊重司法机关，包括公安、检察院和法院的决定。如果李洪元认为他的权益受到了损害，我们支持他运用法律武器维护自己的权益，包括起诉华为。这也体现了法律面前人人平等的法治精神。
Huawei has the right and duty to report illegal behavior to the law enforcement. We respect law enforcement authorities including the decision made by the public security police, the prosecutor and the court. If Li Hongyuan believed that his right was infringed, he could use legal means to defend his right and sue Huawei. This would enact the spirit of equality in front of law.
Clearly Huawei is not apologetic over Li's 251 days detention. And netizens continued to slam Huawei by spreading the codes: 985, 996, 035, 251, 404.