Lenovo founder Liu Chuanzhi makes rare public appearance to praise China’s patent laws for contributing to ‘unimaginable’ growth

Liu said China’s protection of IP rights through the introduction of patent laws contributed significantly to ‘unimaginable dramatic changes’ since the 1980s
Before 2020, Liu had become a target for online attacks by China’s ultranationalist commentators, who accused him of being unpatriotic

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Coco Fengin Beijing

Published: 6:30pm, 7 May 2024

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Liu Chuanzhi, the 80-year-old founder of Lenovo, the world’s largest personal computer maker, made a rare public appearance via video at the anniversary celebration for one of China’s first patent registration firms, a year after Beijing banned online attacks against entrepreneurs.

In a video recorded to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the China Patent Agent (Hong Kong) (CPA), Liu said China’s protection of intellectual property rights through the introduction of patent laws in the 1980s contributed significantly to the country’s “unimaginable dramatic changes over the past four decades”. The video and transcript were published on the WeChat account of state-run newspaper China Trade News.

In March 1984, the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) and Hong Kong businessman Wong Kam Fu jointly funded the establishment of the CPA, a year before China’s patent law went into effect. Liu’s father Liu Gushu, who worked for CCPIT, was a co-founder of CPA.

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In the video Liu, who has not appeared in public for more than four years, recalled the early days of CPA, when employees “received foreign clients at the fancy China Resources Building” during the day and “slept in a shabby apartment” at night, at a time when water and power supplies were occasionally cut off. He thanked the firm for its “support and help” for Lenovo when the company expanded to Hong Kong in 1988.

Liu, looking cheerful and energetic in the video, said that without IP protection China would not have “become the world’s top patent owner” and “achieved a technological boom and international cooperation”.

China was the world’s No 1 generator of patent applications for the fifth straight year under the UN Patent Cooperation Treaty, filing 69,610 applications in 2023, compared with 55,678 by the United States, according to the World International Patent Organisation.

Liu, dubbed the “godfather” of the Chinese PC industry, retired in 2019. His last public appearance was at a Lenovo company party in January 2020, where he said China was the company’s “base camp” that it should “always guard”. In the preceding years, Liu had become a target for online attacks by China’s ultranationalist commentators.

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His daughter, Didi Chuxing president Jean Liu Qing, also became a target in 2021 when the company’s initial public offering in New York triggered a data security investigation by Beijing, citing potential breaches of national security. At the time, both father and daughter were accused of being unpatriotic, after netizens revived an earlier backlash against Lenovo, where it was accused of failing to back Chinese telecoms company Huawei Technologies in setting global standards for 5G. Lenovo denied the claims.

In December 2021, ultranationalist blogger Sima Nan attacked Lenovo for causing heavy losses in state assets after the Chinese Academy of Sciences divested a 29 per cent equity stake in the firm. However, experts pointed out that Sima had made basic accounting mistakes in his calculation of a fair price for the Lenovo deal.

The government eventually stepped in, with the country’s top internet watchdog, the Cyberspace Administration of China, pledging to protect private entrepreneurs from online trolling. In August 2022, the social media accounts of Sima were closed, and the following April the CAC launched a campaign to ban gaslighting of the country’s entrepreneurs, as Beijing tried to reinstall confidence in the private sector to revive a slowing economy.

A file photo of Lenovo founder Liu Chuanzhi at the company’s listing ceremony in Hong Kong, June 29, 2015. Photo: David Wong

At the time, Liu and his daughter both changed their account settings on the microblogging platform Weibo so posts could not be viewed publicly.

Lenovo’s current chairman and chief executive Yang Yuanqing made rare public comments for the 30th anniversary of China’s first internet connection, penning an article in the April issue of CAC’s China Wangxin magazine, where he said Lenovo has witnessed the evolution of China’s internet, from the PC era to smartphones, and that its future would be as an AI infrastructure provider.

The April issue published articles from other tech executives celebrating the anniversary. Will Cheng Wei, founder, chairman and CEO of Didi, wrote that government support for the digital mobility sector was “the fundamental guarantee for the development and expansion of Didi”.

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