Jobs for sale at Huawei? Hiring fraud and China’s tech giants

Chinese tech giant Huawei has recently found itself in hot water for serious violations related to recruitment practices, for which it disciplined and fired several employees. 

The Economic Observer (经济观察报) reported on 11 March that Huawei issued a 6,500-word internal memo on 10 March on its employee community platform (心声社区). The memo revealed that 72 employees and 19 non-employees had engaged in corrupt practices during the recruitment of non-employees, while several had also profited from selling company information assets. 

The report stated that the term “non-employees” typically refers to Huawei’s OD employees, short for “outsourcing dispatcher”. They are different from both full-time employees and general outsourced staff, as they generally sign labour contracts with human resource service companies and are dispatched to work at Huawei. Their salaries are similar to those of Huawei’s full-time staff, and they can become permanent staff through performance evaluations.

Information obtained by the Economic Observer showed that ‌the aforementioned memo is titled “Decision on the Handling of Individuals Involved in Violations in the Selection of Non-Employees” (对非雇员人员选择业务中违规事件相关责任人的处理决定). 

The internal memo revealed that audits uncovered violations by individuals in several Huawei departments, including ICT Products & Solutions, Semiconductor Business, and others. These violations involved proxy examinations and sharing assessment questions during the selection of non-employee personnel, as well as profiting from selling company information. Offenders were dismissed and required to return illicit gains and compensate the company. Huawei emphasised that non-employees are vital to its workforce and stressed the importance of integrity in personnel selection, urging staff to avoid fraudulent and corrupt practices.

A Huawei Chengdu Research Center staff member told the Economic Observer that the memo mainly targets the data storage division of the Chengdu Research Center, where 62 of the unit’s roughly 100 employees were dismissed or received official reprimands. “Many departments saw almost everyone fired”, but online rumours of building lockdowns and arrests were untrue. 

Topics related to Huawei’s recruitment fraud attracted widespread attention on Weibo. Some netizens praised Huawei for “not covering up mistakes”, “not passing the buck”, and for “holding their own people accountable”. However, other netizens criticised the fact that this incident undermines the fairness of talent selection and disrupts the normal recruitment process. “In the long run, this will be very detrimental to tech giants like Huawei”.

In fact, Huawei’s actions are not without precedent. As early as mid-2024, accusations surfaced on Chinese social media alleging that some Huawei HR personnel, internal staff, IT bloggers and external training firms had formed a “proxy examination industrial chain” that could help individuals secure OD positions for a fee.

According to Nandu Wancaishe (南都·湾财社), online information noted that some Huawei recruiters helped applicants cheat through proxy testing or by leaking exam questions. If the cheating candidates secured employment, the recruiters would then receive a percentage of their monthly salary as a kickback. 

Screenshots of chat logs circulating online showed that if a cheating candidate lands a job, the recruiter who facilitated the cheating would receive a monthly kickback of 3,000 RMB from the new employee’s salary for a year, given a three-year contract with a monthly salary of 15,000 RMB (roughly US$2,075).  

Several WeChat accounts, including “bug狮姐”, said that this is in addition to a referral fee — a one-time payment ranging from 15,000 RMB to 20,000 RMB.

It is alleged that over a thousand OD employees could be suspected of violating regulations. More than 100 full-time employees were also implicated, and the total amount involved reached approximately 67 million RMB. 

In addition to cheating during the recruitment process, rumours circulating on Weibo claim that some Huawei employees have also sold packages of the company’s technical documents and client lists, with individual transactions amounting to hundreds of thousands of RMB. 

At the time of writing, Huawei has not issued a formal response to the memo, media reports, or rumours.

Some independent media outlets revealed that Huawei’s internal recruitment violations only came to light because of internal whistleblowing triggered by unequal distribution of illicit gains. Some netizens thus quipped, “If everyone was satisfied, does this mean that nobody would have noticed this?”

The Paper reported that as early as 2005, Huawei’s senior management had already pointed out that the company’s biggest threat came from within, and that it was necessary to uphold the integrity and discipline of its management team.

According to 21st Century Business Herald (21世纪经济报道), Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei also stated at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2015, that Huawei’s biggest enemy “is not others, it’s ourselves”. 

At the time, Ren also noted that Huawei had given the people with issues time to come clean before 31 December 2014. He said that those who came forward before the deadline would be treated leniently, and that 4,000 to 5,000 employees eventually came forward to admit to various improprieties. “Who are these 4,000 to 5,000 employees? None of them were low-level employees; what could they possibly confess to? It is clear that there’s still much work to be done to improve our internal governance structure,” he said.

Though a decade has passed, it seems that corruption issues within Huawei have yet to be fundamentally resolved.

Apart from Huawei, anti-corruption storms have also swept through other tech giants such as ByteDance and Tencent over the past two years.

For instance, ByteDance recently issued an anti-corruption notice. According to Hongxing News (红星新闻), sources claimed that ByteDance’s internal report revealed that a total of 353 employees had been dismissed for violations in 2024, and 39 were referred to judicial authorities for criminal prosecution. These figures were confirmed by a relevant ByteDance representative on 7 March.

Furthermore, according to Yicai Global, Tencent released its anti-corruption “report card” for 2024 in January this year. Its anti-fraud investigation department found and investigated over 100 violations of the “Tencent High Voltage Line”, and over 100 people were dismissed for violating these rules. Offenders were fired, blacklisted and permanently barred from future employment. Among them, more than 20 were transferred to public security organs for suspected crimes.

Last November, several senior executives of gaming giant NetEase were also rumoured to have been taken away for questioning, with around a staggering 2 billion RMB allegedly involved. Economic View (中新经纬) reported that NetEase subsequently responded that it had investigated and addressed two corruption and fraud cases, and that nine individuals have been subjected to criminal coercive measures.

An increasing number of internet companies are “turning the blade inward” and daring to expose their own scandals, earning public approval. This is seen as a deterrent to others and a model worth emulating for other companies.

However, corruption in the workplace still has not been eradicated. Apart from personal greed, the difficulty of eradication is also related to the inadequacy of corporate internal management systems. Zhao Zhanling, a lawyer at Beijing JAVY law firm, suggested to China Business Journal (中国经营报) that “Anti-corruption efforts in internet companies should not only create a deterrent effect through individual cases but also explore the establishment of long-term mechanisms to reduce or prevent corruption. This includes improving internal management and supervision.”

Nevertheless, placing all hopes of eradicating corruption solely on corporate systems and management may not be a permanent solution. External supervision is equally important to ensure the sustainability of anti-corruption efforts.

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “花钱就能进华为？”.

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