Chinese company Zte to hire 2500 people in Southern Italy

Rome - Zte, a Chinese telecommunications company and Huawei's No. 1 competitor, signed an agreement to develop the Wind-3 Italia mobile telephone network on Dec 22. Zte is planning to invest 900 million euros to create a Research and Development Centre in Southern Italy and promises to hire 2500 people. The multinational company, headquartered in Shenzhen, a metropolis located in South-East China, which Beijing plans to turn into a national innovation hub, is listed and has a turnover of 15 billion dollars. Zte ranks among the top 10 smartphone producers in the world. In 2016 ZTE made its debut in Italy on the Media World marketplace with its cutting edge products: Blade V7 and Blade V7 lite. The latest model, called Azon 7 mini, is focused on music and has cast the world-acclaimed Chinese pianist ,Lang Lang, as its testimonial. The company started out in Shenzhen in 1985, when the 40-year-old Houu Weigui, joins a group of investors and establishes the Zhoungxing Semiconductor Co. Ltd Equipment Corporation. It all happened in the province of Guangdong, the main engine of China's development. Deng Xiaoping and his government had set in motion some reforms just a few years earlier and established the country's first Special Economic Zone in Shenzhen. It was a time of extraordinary industrial growth. China was a huge building yard with a multiplicity of opportunities for those who were looking for success. "To get rich is glorious", was Deng's mantra. The State led the market and the public sector overlapped the private. Zte stemmed from an initiative of the Ministry of Aerospace Industry. Hou Weigui was not even an entrepreneur at the time; he was a university researcher directing a research institute in Xian, in the province of Shaanxi, within Factory 691 controlled by the Ministry of Aerpspace Industry (MAI) which today no longer exists. Subsequently, he decided to move to Shenzehen where the research centre turned into a factory producing the first telecommunications equipment.