After ban, ZTE promises to protect staff and clients' interests

Chinese telecomequipment maker ZTE Corp promised to protect the legitimate rights of staff members and shareholders after a ban by the US Department of Commerce. The company also pledged to shoulder responsibilities to global clients, consumers, partners and suppliers and insist on independent innovation in core technologies, People's Daily reported Tuesday.

"Despite extremely challenging circumstances, the board of directors and managers of the company will try their best to protect 80,000 staff members' legitimate working rights and the interests of their families," said Yin Yimin, chairman of ZTE Corp.

With the development of internationalization, the company pledged to protect legitimate rights of shareholders and uphold responsibilities to hundreds of global clients, thousands of partners and suppliers and hundreds of millions of end users, Yin added.

"Even though we received a denial order, we will still follow the standard of export control compliance for the world's first-class companies,"he said.

The company promised it will continue to communicate with an open, transparent and honest attitude, solve problems in a legal way in compliance with standards and try to reduce the adverse effects of the situation, according to the report.

ZTE, whose overseas revenue accounted for 43.06 percent of its total 2017 revenue, made great investments in compliance governance over the past two years. ZTE has established the Compliance Management Committee, built a team with global coverage composed of senior export control compliance experts and engaged several counsels and consultants to provide professional guidance in order to establish and optimize ZTE's export control compliance management structure, system and procedure, according to the company's announcement on its official website.

ZTE Corp also invested $50 million in compliance training last year, a number expected to increase, and has organized 65,000 staff members to attend, the report said.

These timely measures to solve problems found in self-examination embodied the company's effective and functional compliance system. Therefore, Yin said, the denial order from the United States Commerce Department against ZTE is unfair and unacceptable because it ignored the great efforts, investments and achievements ZET made to comply with export governance.

ZTE cannot accept the seven-year purchase ban on crucial US technologies, including chips, as it took effect before the investigation was done, he said. The company will not give up efforts to solve the problem via dialogue, and will spare no effort to protect its legitimate rights through all legally available means.

Meanwhile, the company promised to invest more in core technology innovation to make it stronger, Yin said.

As a leader in 5G wireless, core network and terminal technologies, ZTE Corp invested 12.96 billion yuan in research and development last year, accounting for 11.9 percent of revenue. It also formed a team of 4,500 for 5G wireless research and development with annual investment of 3 billion yuan, the report said.

ZTE Corp had accumulated 69,000 international patents and over 30,000 authorized patents by Dec 31, more than 1,700 of which are related to 5G technology, the report said.

ZTE also became one of the world's top two filers of international patent applications in 2017, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization.