Innovation should be cooperative, not isolated pursuit

Editor's note: Ren Zhengfei, founder of Huawei, recently met with two US scholars, George Gilder and Nicholas Negroponte, for talks over afternoon tea in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, in which he stressed how openness and cooperation, not isolation and confrontation, can promote human welfare and progress. In a post published on his WeChat account, Qin Shuo, a financial commentator, revealed some of Ren's remarks:

The main purpose of human society is to "create wealth" and lift more people out of poverty. That means human society must be built on win-win cooperation. In the information age, it is impossible for a country to advance development in isolation.

In the industrial age, each country could make their own sewing machines, tractors and other industrial products. But in the information era, it is impossible for a country to make one thing by itself. Therefore, countries must cooperate. Only through cooperation can we meet the needs of human civilization and enable more people to enjoy the benefits of new technologies at a lower cost.