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Meet Zhou Qunfei: the woman seated between Tim Cook and Elon Musk at China state banquet

The chairwoman of manufacturing giant Lens is one of the country’s richest self-made women, working her way up from Shenzhen’s factory floors

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Lens Technology chairwoman Zhou Qunfei seated between Apple’s Tim Cook and Tesla’s Elon Musk at China’s state banquet hosted by Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday night. Photo: CCTV
Wency Chenin Shanghai
Zhou Qunfei, the woman at the helm of manufacturing giant Lens Technology, found herself seated in a favourable position at the state banquet hosted by Chinese President Xi Jinping for US President Donald Trump on Thursday night, placed between two of her most important clients, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Tesla founder Elon Musk.

Several Chinese business leaders attended the banquet alongside US executives and officials, including Hisense chairman Jia Shaoqian, Wanxiang Group chairman Lu Weiding, Fuyao Glass chairman Cao Hui, Air China chairman Liu Tiexiang, Comac chairman He Dongfeng, Lenovo chairman Yang Yuanqing, Xiaomi founder Lei Jun, Haier chairman Zhou Yunjie, and ByteDance chief executive Liang Rubo, according to footage broadcast by CCTV and media reports.

Zhou Qunfei, born in 1970 to a poor family in a village in Hunan province, left school at 15 and moved to Shenzhen to work in factories. In 1993, at the age of 23, she gathered several relatives and started a small business in a residential building in the city’s Bao’an district, focusing on screen printing on wristwatch glass. A decade later, Lens Technology was established.

Partnering with Apple, the company took off. Lens won a spot in Apple’s supply chain in 2007 as a cover glass provider, just as the iPhone was about to reshape the smartphone industry. As the iPhone scaled globally, Apple became Lens’s largest customer, accounting for more than half of its annual revenue in the early 2010s.

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